Happy Birthday to my blog,
Happy Birthday to my blog,
Happy Birthday Puget Sound Maritime,
Happy Birthday to my blog!

It was just one year ago (tomorrow, actually) that I posted this at Navagear.com:

Announcing A New Blog: Puget Sound Maritime

If you read Navagear regularly, you already know that I don’t stick to “gear and gadgets” exclusively. Sometimes, I stray into territory I find interesting, hoping that some of my readers share my enthusiasm.

For over a year, I’ve tried to strike a balance between relevant, on-topic gear and gadgets posts and fascinating, off-topic regional maritime stories. A lot of the great stories I’ve encountered were so far off-topic that I was obliged not to include them on Navagear at all. It’s been a bit of a struggle.

One year later, Navagear’s still growing, and Puget Sound Maritime has grown from no readers at all to several thousand. It’s difficult to know how many people are reading; I don’t have figures for RSS subscribers, for instance.

What I do know is that over the past year, over 26,000 “absolute unique visitors” have loaded over 58,000 pages from the site itself. I have a small, dedicated group of truly devoted readers (Hi mom!). Seriously, over 300 people have visited the site over 200 times during the year, and another 1,100 have visited between 100 and 200 times.

Financially, Puget Sound Maritime isn’t earning anything to speak of. Puget Sound Maritime is purely a labor of love, at this point.

Perhaps I’m spoiled, though: Navagear’s gear and gadgets focus dovetails extremely well with the ad-supported blogging model, so it has been a money maker for a long time. Don’t ask me to work out my hourly rate for Navagear, though—I don’t want to know!

Anyway, I wanted to acknowledge the anniversary of PSM’s launch, and invite readers who are only aware of Navagear to stop by for a visit at PSM, and vice-versa.