Retro Hound

Five years ago today, November 9, 2008, RetroHound’s first post went up! And we’re still here! In all that time I’ve never gone more than a week without posting (ok, sometimes an 8-day week). Hard to believe I own this much crap and there’s so much more! Other than albums and an occasional piece of ephemera, I really haven’t bought anything collectible in 25 years.

Stats:

RetroHound’s either had 493,523 pageviews or 407,517 (depending on who you believe, Worpress stats or Google Analytics respectively). Averaging around 550 views per day (average grows every year), with a total of 224,000 unique visitors. Most of my traffic comes from search engines and most of that seems to come from image searches. Not much of a surprise there, as I don’t usually post much in the way of text. Retrohound ranks pretty high on an awful lot of searches and that really pleases me.

Struggles lately:

I hope to keep this thing going for another 20 years or more. The wind’s been taken out of my sails lately though. With Webshots closing, most of my pictures will disappear off my posts, and that’s been a huge bummer. I got a Flickr account, but now I have to move all the pics and re-post them and I’m not completely happy with Flickr’s layout and flexibility. How can you rearrange pics there? I’ve considered going back to Blogger for the followers and ease of commenting, but, who knows.

My most popular posts are:

• Les Paul’s obit which for some reason had about 5000 hits last year on the anniversary of his death.
• Goofy Greats, Looney Tunes and Funky Favorites K-Tel and Ronco albums, seems lots of people loved those albums
• My review of Batman Forever the numbers were helped considerably by the release of The Dark Knight Rises, in fact I hadn’t even realized it had moved up that much!
• The one that has the most comments is next, Ames Harris Neville desert water bag. The amazing thing about this is how the comments have brought together descendents of Ames, Harris, and Neville families! Lots of history in those comments.
• My extensive list of Psychedelic albums and songs is perennially popular.

Comments about Comments:

Besides the family of the water bag, I’ve had comments from Laurie Steen Killingsworth, a member of Jesus Music band New Folk, and Staci Layne Wilson, the daughter of The Ventures guitarist Don Wilson and model Buni Bacon/Nancy Wilson!

Shout Outs:

It’s been a great 5 years, met many cool people along the way. The blogs that send me the most traffic are RetroSpace, LP Cover Lover, and my good buddy at Starland (formerly Bunched Undies). Another good friend to mention here is Jesse at Just A Car Guy who’s offered to by the first round if we should ever cross paths in the real world.

Collecting:

I’ve sold off a bunch of stuff, either through people contacting me through the blog, or a booth I recently got at a local antique mall, or on eBay. BTW, did you know collecting is a disorder of the brain? Though Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collectingquotes a study that claims it’s caused by low levels of serotonin. A few shots of my collections.

So, this has probably gone on long enough. Thanks to all my readers! Look for some giveaways in the next few weeks! And if you made it this far, leave a comment! Let me know what you like and/or don’t like. What would you like to see more of?