A Merger of Sorts

It's always a sad day when a fellow Michigan blogger...or heavily skewed B10 blogger in this case, decides to shut down operations. The blog The Only Game That Matters, hosted and ran by a talented wordsmith who goes by the clever pen name of Beauford Bixel.

However, fortunately for those of us who follow that blog, he is not going away entirely, he's joining forces with Dave over at Maize N' Brew, the colorful Michigan blog who had a direct impact on me and my inspiration of starting this humble blog no more than 16 months ago.

While I will miss Beauford and his writing compadre "Champ" on their own hosted blogger site, I will continue to keep an eye on MnB for all of their content.

When a merger of these sorts occurs, I think it makes all of us blogger-types sit back and wax with a certain sense of nostalgia at our own cyber existence.

When I think of Michigan blogs, the usual suspects come to mind. Mgoblog, MZone (deceased), MnB, RBUAS, Varsity Blue, Michigan Sports Center...among other of course. These are the fellas that led me to start this humble site. I never thought for a second that I could do it any better then those guys, but I just had a feeling that it would be fun to have my voice out there.

When I started, I was right, it was fun...and it still is. At first, I didn't even track my visitors. I knew I didn't have any. But when I did start to, probably around the time of the Lloyd departure and the bowl game last year, I was hitting maybe 25 hits a day...mostly me of course.

But I started to market myself a little bit. The B10 bloggers were a huge, huge, huge step forward for me. Getting my link up on sites like BHGP, 11W, BSD and Zombie Nation, and then eventually the Michigan blogs listed above...things took off. My sites visitors shot up by a factor of 10. I joined YardBarker and Ballhype, got a couple sites to advertise with me...and we're off to the races. Mgoblog alone was accountable for easily half of my traffic.

But it was never about readership, that helps of course, but for those of us who do this on a daily basis...its a labor of love. I love blogging about Michigan football. It's easily one of the most fun things I do. I never thought I'd enjoy it so much.

Sure, it's tough. It's not easy to find good stuff to write about. Michigan football is covered extraordinarily well on the bloggosphere. A lot of what you can read about here can be found on multiple other sites. But I'm okay with that. There's clearly a market for good writing, and that's really all it comes down to. I've grown so much as a writer in the last 16 months.

I had no idea it would get to this point. My Ballhype college football blog ranking was up to 24 a couple weeks ago. That's just insane. I planned on maybe blogging until the end of last season...never in a million years did I think I could make it through the off-season.

So I guess I'll wrap this up by saying that it's been a pleasure doing this so far, I have no plans to stop anytime soon. I insist, if you enjoy reading this blog, please visit any one of the Michigan or B10 blogs linked to on the right hand column...there is some great content being posted by these guys...hundreds of posts a day. And to Beauford, best of luck under the new roof!