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I’ve been AWOL lately from writing. Trying to get some “behind the scenes” stuff done – apologies. I have another bleg (an “ask”) of you, our loyal readers and it is pure Capitalistic, kinda. Well, two of them sorta aren’t and one, voluntarily, is…
Our last GrokMeetup, held at Murphy’s Taproom in Manchester, was a successful trial for a mid-week meeting. New folks, lots of talk, the pizza was good, and I agree with what Steve said; it was a successful night. We’ll do it again! However, I did mention two things during the panel that I addressed in passing, now I’m returning to them and asking you folks to help us out.
We’ve grown spectacularly lately – certainly due in part with the upgrade to our website but also very much due to great writing and reporting on stuff. Visits, page views, comments, “engagement” on Facebook and here on-site have all gone through the roof. That said, I’m asking if you would do something for us: sign up for Alexa’s plugin for your browser and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Alexa Internet is how we monitor our traffic and compare ourselves against the other media sites here in NH:
If you’ve been reading Steve’s “ranking” posts, we are only outdone by the Union Leader, Seacoast Online, Concord Monitor, and Fosters.com. We’ve been swapping places with the Monitor (and now potentially Fosters) for fourth place. We’d like to stop that swapping.
We know folks are coming to GraniteGrok – I just looked and the stats say that every visitor is looking at around 12 pages per visit and time on site is around 43 minutes (WOW!).
But the rise of our site-specific stats isn’t being totally reflected in our Alexa Ranking which is computed when readers with their plugin hit our site. All it really does is “went here, went there” without the data aggregation that Google itself (and Facebook, and others) do. If you would go here, it’s a one-click install and takes about 3 seconds (I just did it). This, as hinted above, is capitalistic but not requiring you to buy anything from us – it will, however, allow us (as traffic grows) to charge more for ads and thus keep GraniteGrok going (helpful for an all-volunteer effort).
The other thing, a bit more capitalistic, is subscribing to our YouTube channel. Because of some abuses, YouTube changed their terms of monitization a couple of years ago – we used to get a few pennies each time someone watched one of our over (now, anyways) 3,000 videos that we’ve collected on the political goings-on here in NH. I just went to see about getting that reinstated and found out we can’t. Long story short, we certainly outdue their minimum of hours watched (they want 40,000 hours of “watching” every year – we’re over 60,000) but we don’t meet the required number of subscribers – their minimum is 1,000 and we currently sit at 447. Thus, the next “ask” is if you would go to our channel and subscribe, we’d appreciate it. Costs you nothing (except for a few emails, perhaps) but helps us right away once we hit that 1,000 mark. Go here and hit the SUBSCRIBE.
The last “ask” IS pure capitalism: our DONATE button (top, upper right) now is working again (it hasn’t since we moved to Grok 3.0). And yes, we’d appreciate it if, as other bloggers put it, would “hit the tip jar”. I’ve created a number of “gift” options ONLY because PayPal won’t let me set up an “open” donation amount in which you choose – pick one, if you would and then click on the “Buy Now” button. That bring you to PayPal and allow you to log in and use that method of payment if you have an account?
Don’t have one? No worries! Right under that login is a “Pay with credit or debit card” button – pick that option and we’d be very thankful indeed!
And as always, thank you for spending your valuable time with us at GraniteGrok!
