19 Years

Can you believe that Miss Cellania has been a thing for 19 years? Most years, when this anniversary comes around (if I don't forget it, which I have quite a few times), I tend to go through a history of the site, or else reminisce about the beginning of the blog. I think I'll forego all that this year and save it for the 20th anniversary. By then I hope to be fully retired and able to put a real effort into it.

Instead, let's look at where we've come. You know that the advent of social media caused an explosion in numbers of people who use the internet, yet most of those new users never venture into the wider world wide web. It's also sucked a lot of users away from traditional blogs because it's just easier to rely on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram to feed people what they want to see, based on algorithms that know what they've read previously. Therefore, traffic for traditional blogs is down everywhere.

In the last few years, maximizing profit has gotten so out of hand that half of what you see is padded word count for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes and filled with ads where illustrations should be. A lot of the information is straight copied from other sites or rendered by artificial intelligence. I can't say that I produce quality or original content because I'm a link blogger, but at least I steer people to other sites and credit the source of the things I share, without the unnecessary padding. And I try to avoid using junk sites. Old school, ya know. But surfing the 'net to find quality things to link to is getting harder all the time.

Meanwhile, so many of the bloggers that I admired at the beginning have given up, moved on to other things, or are stuck in a loop of chasing dollars to support their habit. Some have died. Yes, there are still some old school hobby blogs around; you can see some in the "Recommended Blogs" section in the sidebar here. But there are fewer of them every day. I've been lucky in that I never invested anything in Miss Cellania. I've never had to depend on this site for a living. It's my hobby. Therefore, no desperation.

Lest you think this post is a downer, let me get to the point. Blog traffic is down everywhere, but I've noticed over the last couple of years that Miss Cellania is doing relatively well, with more people coming here than some surprising and profitable legacy blogs. And I can vouch for the quality of the readers. Many of you I consider friends! I guess people settle down to stick with what they like, and I can attribute the longevity of this blog to the readers who keep coming back to see the stuff I like, because you like it, too.

And that's why I do this. Miss Cellania is basically a place for me to share things that I find funny, informative, or at least interesting with friends. And I am exceedingly grateful to my friends who come here to see those things. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Pat yourself on the back, for keeping Miss Cellania around for 19 years!      

Top image from Married to the Sea.