One Million and Five
It’s that time of year.
5 years ago yesterday IrishKC started quietly with this tiny post. A week from tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day, traditionally the biggest day by a mile on IrishKC, followed shortly after by Hoffenpurpenburger Day.
Before we get to those dates IrishKC will tick over its one millionth visit. If I paid close attention I could even give the millionth visitor a prize. I won’t (give a prize, or indeed pay close attention).
While IrishKC might have appeared semi-dormant this past year there are still typically 400-1,000 views a day here on the site and hundreds more elsewhere. Also it’s not as neglected as it may appear; every week I work away on it in the background - adjusting navigation, tweaking elements of design, and updating links. There’s approximately 5,000 pages here and it takes a bit of work keeping them in order.
Every week the blog brings in questions from people looking for info and unfortunately I only get to reply to about 20% of them - sending them to the relevant Irish shops, performers, etc. This may or may not be related to the fact that a much smaller % actually get back to me and thank me.
I also get many people thinking the site is where they book a table at an Irish restaurant, book an Irish performer, volunteer for an Irish festival, register for an Irish parade, etc - as if it were the official site for those businesses. I used to point those people in the correct direction too, as well as let the relevant business know, but with an almost non-existent % of thanks for that I no longer do this. If people choose not to read and to believe that this is the official website of Daniel O’Donnell or KC Irish Pub Dot Com etc., I’ve decided it’s not my responsibility to disavow them of the notion.
Some good things come out of the archives too. In the last year a painting that featured on IrishKC was chosen to be the cover of a book of true Irish stories. And a post that first appeared on IrishKC was selected to be among the 70-odd stories included - it’s the only story in the Irish book with a reference to Kansas City. The book sold out its print run of 2,000 so you can now only purchase it as an e-book - I heartily recommend it.
To those who only perceive a lack of activity on IrishKC and think I’m therefore fairly inactive these days online, I’ve never been more active.
In the 5 years since starting IrishKC I’ve also started my cartoon site American Hell - in 2007. It’s been a finalist in the Irish Blog Awards, had syndication requests, and been the subject of a possible book deal. It’s readership is around the 1,000 a day mark and growing.
In 2009 I also started the blog that concentrates on my paintings, my photographs, my cycling, and my dog - Bicyclistic. Much of this is material that once would have appeared on IrishKC. It gets just 100 visitors day typically but with major spikes over 1,000 for certain posts. Last year in Galway it made me very proud when it won at the Irish Blog Awards.
Also, today 4 years ago - after lurking for a few months - I joined twitter. I was just a few days outside the first 100 Irish people to join, and I have been singing its praises since. In fact not only am I eolai on twitter, but the dog is on twitter (1st dog in Ireland on twitter), American Hell is on twitter and even IrishKC has its own account.
When you throw in a few accounts on FaceBook, and even keeping up with communications from people on MySpace, I’ve never been busier, or more present, online. And Kansas City is still in there. It’s a lot of work, but like a seemingly dormant IrishKC, it sells paintings. That’s the bottom line for me.
To those who are interested in my take on things Irish, you can follow me on twitter or my Bicyclistic blog. I still follow online everything Irish and related in KC but rarely get to write things up. Painting and paintings dominate. When television and radio programmes want to talk to me about my paintings, IrishKC is first to take the hit. I wished I’d told you about that presentation by Dr. Matthew L. Jockers on Charles Driscoll’s Irish in Kansas at Benedictine College in Atchison the night before last. I’d planned to for ages, but…time. Did you go?
If you are interested in Ireland itself (rather than slagging off green beer whilst drinking copious amounts of other beer so as to celebrate the country, your heritage, or something) you might be interested to know that later this year I’ll be doing my biggest adventure since cycling across America 15 years ago. It should be my biggest online venture yet - when I tour Ireland, thousands of miles of it all going well, painting it, photographing it, and blogging & tweeting it as I go.
It’ll probably mean a new website. I might tell you on here about it, I might not. But I’ll definitely be talking about it on twitter and on my personal blog.
Talk to you later - maybe tomorrow, maybe next month. If you’re reading this on my IrishKC rather than on a reader, your visit is one in a million. Thank you.
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
