200 and Counting, Folks

Sometime either later today or perhaps first thing tomorrow, the diminutive red-and-white counter located at the bottom of this page’s right-hand column (under the “I Power Blogger” button) should turn over to 16,000. That’ll mean The Rap Sheet has had 16,000 unique visitors since it first opened for business less than three months ago. Also significant is that the post you’re currently reading is this blog’s 200th so far.

Little did I know, when I converted The Rap Sheet into a blog, what would become of it. I was hoping it’d be a bit more relevant than it had been as a monthly newsletter, and I was definitely looking forward to the help of other regular contributors in this daily enterprise. The results have been more favorable than I ever supposed. According to the StatCounter service I’ve been using, the Sheet gets 200 to 400 visitors every day (with that trend heading upward each month). Especially important in building up this audience have been links from other Web sites and blogs, including January Magazine, CrimeSpot.net, Sarah Weinman’s Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, Hard Case Crime, and Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine. I’m both surprised and gratified to learn that, while 76 percent of folks who visit The Rap Sheet stick around the site for less than five minutes, another 14 percent stay for more than an hour to investigate its offerings. Since I intended the site to be both diverse and well-written, this level of reader attention gives me cause for bragging (not that I would ever do such a thing, of course). So does the fact that more than 34 percent of visitors on a daily basis have clicked over to the Sheet 10 or more times in the recent past. We must be doing something right, eh?

Even after this short time, the blog has delivered some standout postings--not all of which were written by yours truly. If you’re new to these parts and would like to go exploring, let me recommend that you look over our takes on copycat book jackets, picking books worth reviewing, summer reading (see here, here, and here), television’s Law & Order franchise, Lieutenant Columbo’s first name, the 100th anniversary of architect Stanford White’s murder at Madison Square Garden, the 114th anniversary of James M. Cain’s birth, racial diversity in mystery, the much-anticipated return engagement of private eye Lew Archer, the drug-overdose death of Dorothy Uhnak, the closing of London’s historic Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, the demise of Mickey Spillane, the Sleuth Channel’s survey to name the top TV or movie detective, paperback artist Robert McGinnis, music from crime films, crime fiction featuring Fidel Castro, the underappreciated 1970s TV series The Magician, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 107th birthday. Oh, and from earlier this week, the 60th birthday of McMillan & Wife costar Susan Saint James. I have a particular attachment to that item.

Another interesting facet of The Rap Sheet’s evolution: I started out with about 100 crime-fiction links in the right column; the count is now 319, and growing every week. One other site applauded this blog as a terrific research tool for people interested in the genre, simply because of our links collection. Glad to help.

There’s tremendous satisfaction in realizing that people have noticed and appreciated The Rap Sheet. Like a child off to his or her first day of school, you never know how a venture such as this will be received. Will it be praised? Looked at askance? Or maybe beaten up in some hallway? I’m pleased to say that, after 200 posts and almost three months, this blog still has all its teeth and senses in place, and has been accepted into a community of bloggers and readers who share its authors’ interests and tastes. Who knows how much more we’ll all have learned after 500 posts, or 1,000?