Was It Something I Said?

Blogging, humor, lessons learned, politics, rankings 2 Minutes

As many of you know, I check my WordPress stats way too often.

One of the stats I check is the number of followers, which is a fairly public stat that other WordPress users can see.

Yesterday, I hit somewhat of a milestone when the number of followers reached 900. I wasn’t going to mention it, because I was waiting to do that on the day, hopefully, when I reach 1,000. That will certainly be a topic for a blog, and I plan to offer prizes for the 1,000th follower (like unlimited access to my accounting lectures/sleep-aid, and an e-book of my favorite 400 blog posts I have written).

I was assuming I would hit that 1,000 follower mark sometime before Thanksgiving, but now those plans have ground to a halt.

You see, when I went to bed last night I checked my stats one last time, and I was up to 901 followers. In other words, I just zoomed right past that 900 mark.

But then when I woke up this morning and checked my stats, I was down to 897!

How is that possible? A few people actually took the extra effort to actually unfollow me. Was it a concerted effort? Was there a rebellion starting among the masses? Was it something I said?

All these thoughts were running through my head before I even had a chance to get out of bed.

I went back and read some of my recent posts, but I didn’t see anything that would be considered controversial. No political comments. No religious comments. Nothing remotely intelligent.

I then started to think that it was finally happening. People were coming to the realization that I had nothing interesting to say and that their time was better spent watching videos on the mating habits of the tsetse fly. I just hope the other 897 people don’t come to the same conclusion, at least not too quickly.

So now I am in a desperate race to at least add more followers each day than I lose. But my goal of 1.000 followers is suddenly in serious jeopardy.

Of course, even if I lose most of my followers, I’ll continue to blog. After all, that’s essentially what I did for the first four and a half years.

And to those three people who unfollowed me, all I can say is congrats. Your IQ will soon recover from the depths I lowered it to…

*image from tppc forums

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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86 thoughts on “Was It Something I Said?”

  1. You’re losing sleep over unsubscribers? I’m helping my wife manage her youtube channel, and we recently lost at least 30 subscribers in two days because youtube made a massive culling of spam or deleted accounts. I don’t know if it also happens here in wordpress – but a possibility is some people deleted their wordpress account, hence was also unsubbed to you.

    Also, yeah, another possibility is that they realized that tsetse flies must be more interesting. hahaha…

    Hopefully you reach your milestone soon. It would be interesting to have access to your accounting lectures.

    Have a nice day!

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    2. Just want to point out there was a slight mistake in your math or you just ignored one of the 4 people that unfollowed. You said you went to bed with 901 followers but woke with 897. At the end of your blog you only acknowledged 3 of them…can’t keep followers by ignoring their unfollow. 😁

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  3. For a price, I’ll post something to my followers to get you over the edge. Between WP, Twitter, FB, Tumbler and a LinkedIn, I have around 13,000 followers, but only a steady dozen or two that actually read it and comment on a steady basis. I wish I had time to focus on stats again….I used to be almost, repeat almost as obsessed as you are with them. Now, I can barely find time to post anything.

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      2. I did take out some blogger’s insurance a couple of years ago. It protects me against anyone who tries to use something I said in my blog and claiming that it is a legitimate source…

        Liked by 1 person

  7. I wonder how many people unsubscribe someone because of their content. The only ones I’ve unsubscribed to were those who send so many posts (5-10 per day) that I can’t keep up. For me, there is such a thing as too much.

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  9. Yeah, followers come and go. Like many of the stats on WP, the real value is when they are looked at over longer periods of time, where trends and such become more obvious. I have run into the same thing, Jim, anticipating an upcoming milestone just to watch it fade a bit. Have heart, my friend, as I can see you are already back over 900. I was tempted to unfollow you just to have a chance to win that luxurious prize package for being the one thousandth follower, but my luck I would be 1001.

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  10. It’s a normal thing in the course of the life of the blogger, some come, some go. Over time it all works out I. Your favor stat wise. Those who opted out don’t know what they’ll be missing!

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  11. Every now and then WP unfollows me from a blog. I suddenly think I’ve seen nothing from a certain blogger for a while and when I look for them I am no longer a follower. I don’t know why this happens as it isn’t only blogs I rarely visit but some that I visit every day like Sue Vincent’s blog where it happened.

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  14. I’m the only one who knows exactly how many followers I have, as the public figure also includes social media to which I share posts. My task is to gain new blog followers faster than I lose the ones on Twitter! I liken the task to pushing water uphill – with a rake.

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    1. It seems like in the reader view in WordPress I can see the number of followers of everyone. For your blog, it shows an impressive 1,125 followers…

      I love Twitter, I just don’t put the time into being part of that community…

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      1. Ah, hadn’t thought of that! I was going by the combined total shown on my site. Most of those followers are long since dormant, or trying to sell me something!

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  15. Awww….stop that! Don’t disparage yourself! This is the simple flux/influx. Many will follow only to be followed then drop you if you don’t, some drop you directly after you follow them, others may have just ended their blogs etc.
    You keep doing you and the followers that stay with you, are the ones you want to keep.
    Chin up friend! We are still here with you and appreciate you very much.

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  16. Congratulations on your 900, Jim! Doesn’t matter that you dropped to 897 … you’ll be at 1,000 before you know it. I well remember my elation when, on the 1st anniversary of my blog, I hit a whopping 30 followers!!! I was so excited. And then, a blogger took me under his wing and mentored me for a few months, gave me some invaluable tips and pointers … that blogger at the time had over 56,000 followers! I’ll never likely get that high, and that’s okay … it’s just a number. The important thing is that you have followers who actually READ your blog, like and comment. I have just short of 4,000 followers, but only about 100 faithful readers … those are the ones who count, who have become family. A lot of times what happens is somebody will be directed to one of your posts by Google or another search engine, they will like what they see and automatically follow. Later, they will realize they aren’t actually enamoured of your content and then they unfollow. Don’t worry ’bout it … those of us who love you will still be here!

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  17. You’re doing great Jim. I have that same problem, I look at stats a lot, but personally I think it’s important. I had a hard time passing 800 because for a while I was losing faster than gaining. Over the last 4 months I have lost nearly 40 followers. Reaching 1000 should take me another year at this rate!😂😹 You will make it soon I’m sure! Have a great day!😀😺🌞

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  19. Its their loss!
    I have had the same thing happen to me, and I think Jill said it perfectly! 🙂 I just want to know if you are giving away a beach house for the 1000th follower, for maybe I should unsubscribe when you get to 999 and then subscribe again so I can win??! 🙂

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  20. Jim, if it takes me creating 100 other aliases and perfunctory email addresses to help you reach a cool 1k, I’ll do it … Seriously, I thought I’d hit that lofty milestone after a year. No biggie. It’ll come. You’re easily worthy of a million more. Watch out for possible aliases subscribing to B’s B. DougieInAccounting@gmail.com signing up now. 🙂

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  22. Other from what other comments there’s also people who does it like in Instagram. They follow you and then unfollow once you followed back or simply unfollowed you because they expect you to follow back and maybe did not do it fast enough (if you’ve plan to do so)

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  24. The comments were an enjoyable read, Jim as for stats…Pffff….although I do worry about some of my followers and I think they are just chancers looking for a sale or something…and then they unfollow…who knows I have my favourites and that makes happy and yes sometimes WP excels itself and unfollows some for us…Enjoy your weekend 🙂

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  25. Followers are like sheep lost in another dream. Few truly return to be permanent residents in the readers gallery. Actually, I have come to appreciate the dialogue in sharing comments with readers as well as other bloggers.

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  26. Nah they unfollowed you probably because they had followed you in the hopes that you’d follow them back lol. But I understand you. If I were you I’d feel the same. Also, thanks for not brushing off this experience saying it don’t count as blog topic. This gives me so much courage to share much more mundane details of my life ♥️.

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