Well, it’s time we should go over the stats for the first three months of 2008–a.k.a. 1st Quarter 2008. It’s been a while since I did this, and now is the perfect time to do so, since Spring is less than a week away!

The Numbers

Data as of March 15th, 2008:

Visitors: 10,765

Page Views: 13,236

RSS Subscribers to Date: 23

Google Page Rank: PR3 (No change since October 2007)

Alexa Rank: 214,787

Technorati Rank: 331,293

The Changes

First things first: The new Privacy Policy. I updated this right after Google revised their Terms of Service for AdSense. You should do the same if you have AdSense on your site. There are Privacy Policy generators, such as this one.

I have waay too many categories! There’s going to be a huge category overhaul before the month is out. Right now, there’s about 45 categories. After migrating from Drupal to WordPress, I didn’t bother to fix them since they were originally tags. There are minor cosmetic changes going around, especially with the categories widget. They are accessible as a drop-down box until I get them under control. I am looking into changing the blog layout, but this theme is perfect for the time being until the middle of Spring.

The Future

There are some things I want to add in the future, but it may not make the cut in the end, even if I put a lot of thought into it. I really thought about adding a forum, but I don’t think the blog is ready for it. It’s something I really wanted to do for a long time, since 2003. At the time, I didn’t know how to promote it without getting blasted for spamming or attracting trolls. The good thing is that getting members will be no problem now, thanks to this blog. Right now, I am just going to focus on content and comments.

Things are going smoothly so far, thanks to Entrecard and new methods of promoting a blog. The advertising for CEN.TAKU.ME is handled by Project Wonderful, where I can run campaigns to promote the blog for a set amount of time, for $.10~ a day. I’m also running a couple of widgets for others to get exposure.

Entrecard is great! It’s responsible for making the blog entertaining and inspiring me to write more blog posts. Entrecard also helped execute a successful contest. I hope to have more contests in the future, but more prizes will be involved. Not just Entrecard credits.
Entrecard has 5,400 users and counting! I can’t keep up with everybody, so I apologize if I missed anyone. I will get back to you soon! ^_^

I’m also going to promote CEN.TAKU.ME off-line at small events, such as anime convention. Nothing excessive like standing in one place, handing out flyers, viral-like. I plan to hand out business cards when I get the chance to meet someone who would be really interested. I expect to see 5-10 new off-line readers this Spring, lol.

I’m very serious about the progression of the blog. It’s not just a personal blog with journals of my gaming endeavors, but a blog on just about everything of geekdom! I’m also looking into getting contributors–a.k.a. Guest Posters–to the blog. So I’m asking you this now: If you have an idea of a guest post to the site, feel free to submit it! It must have something to do with the subject of this blog: Anime & Manga, Video Games, Cosplay, etc. Even a story of how you started your blog! I’m working on a way of how to get this done so it will be easier than e-mailing me.

Final Thoughts

The numbers are great, although the number of RSS Subscribers needs improvement. Not bad though for being a primetime blog for 7 months! Thanks to Entrecard, the blog has an Alexa Ranking in the 210k range. CEN.TAKU.ME turns 8 months old tomorrow. Now it’s time for a 1 year anniversary.