My 2011 resolutions for SN:

• Increase site traffic from 150,000 hits to 200,000 (around 25% growth).  I actually had about 219,000 (roughly 38% growth).   
• Write at least 100 writing articles.  Including guest articles, we had about 105.
• Get published.  Not yet!

My 2012 resolutions for SN:

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I talked a little bit about my writing advice, amusing personal tidbits and The Taxman Must Die with the author of Rapid City, a superhero comic blog.  Among other dark secrets, you will learn which one of the following is not true:

1. I once worked for the least badass police agency in the world.
2. I was probably the beneficiary of my high school’s senior prank.   Either that, or everybody in my high school was ****ing blind.
3. It’s harder for me to deal with comments like “This is really good–when’s it coming out?” than “This is awful–go die in a fire.”
4. I think the most common problem with superhero scripts is that most authors don’t spend enough enough time developing interesting superpowers.

I have surgery on Thursday and I anticipate that I’ll be more or less out for 3-5 days. (Then again, they told me 3-5 days last time, and it ended up being half a day). Sorry for any delays. If you need a quick response on something, your best chance is to contact me before Wednesday night.

Yeah, I’m still getting eviscerated by auto-tuned cats, Newsweek and Lady Gaga.

The surgery to remove my wisdom teeth went unusually well. I should be responding normally to comments/emails by tomorrow (Tuesday).

If you’re waiting on a response, please post a comment below to remind me.

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I passed the Foreign Service Exam.  Getting closer!  The Personal Narrative Questions are next. 

P. Mac (my unevil twin?) got 100,000 readers last Saturday after the New York Times linked one of his posts.  So he performed some dark sorcery on the server and now the server’s sites (including this one) can cheerfully handle tens of thousands of people.  Good times!  I remember when 12,000 people caused SN to crash.

The fact that I found this amusing is probably my body’s way of telling me I shouldn’t stay up this late.

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My resolutions for 2009 were:

1. Expand SN to 500,000 hits and 1.5 million page-views. That didn’t happen, but I did end up increasing my hits by 100% and my page-views by 150%.   I’m especially happy about getting my bounce-rate from 59% down to 52%.
2. Get a comic book published. It hasn’t happened yet but I think I’m at the finish line.  I submit in late February and anticipate the first round of responses by May.
3. Finish writing the nonfiction book. I have finished the manuscript, but I think it’ll take me a year or two to get it published.  (I need to get some fiction published first).
4. Work on my novel. I gave up on this, actually.
5. Find a fulltime job. Got it!

My resolutions for 2010 are…
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I’m applying for a job a day for two weeks.  So far, I’ve gotten an offer I’m considering.  And a bait-and-switch scam.  I forgot the cardinal rule of writing: any writing job that pays more than $10 an hour is a lie.  (I’m exaggerating, but not much).

So far I’m up to 34 pages on my first comic book issue. I think the first draft will be ~40 pages and then I’ll edit that down to a final draft of 32 pages. I terribly underestimated the amount of space I would need for each scene. For example, in my original outline, I estimated the two main characters would meet on page 8. As actually written, they meet on page 28.

Anyway, if you’d like to review the first draft, I will have that ready by Friday. If you’re interested, please let me know so that I can e-mail it to you.

If you’re here because you’d like to color the comic book I’m working on, please keep reading. If not, you’ll probably find this pretty boring.

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I’ve been updating the index of writing articles like a fiend.  Give it a look!  Yesterday it had 80 articles, and 120 today.  Unfortunately, I have about 150 more to go.

I’ll be back in a few days and won’t be on much until then.

I just bought a webcam, but I’m ambivalent about using it here.  Would it be helpful if I supplemented our usual lineup of written advice and reviews with some webcast material? Or would it feel like a gimmick?

Here are some of the factors I’m considering. What do you think?

1. The visual element can provide a solid opportunity for style and personality. For example, Angry Nintendo Nerd’s rants and Ask Prudie’s etiquette advice both use the author’s presence to create flair.  However, quite a few webcasters waste that opportunity by dully reading a script.  What’s the point?  I wouldn’t subject my readers to something that’s slower and more complicated unless I was confident that I had the style to make it work.

2. Webcasting generally strikes me as more entertaining but less informative than pure text. For one thing, it’s harder for readers to follow a video at their own pace and it’s easier to misconstrue something that is spoken rather than written.  However, university classes about fiction writing often involve a lot of oral instruction.  So I think something like a video-lecture is plausible.

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Hello.  If you haven’t taken our survey yet, I would really appreciate if you gave us 10 minutes of your time.  That will help us get published.  You can take it by clicking here or by reading under the fold.
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We just got up to 10,000 comments. Congratulations to Holliequ.

It took us three years, but we finally got to 1000 posts.  These include about 400 writing articles totaling ~150,000 words.

Now we have a tiny favicon to help you keep track of which browser tab belongs to Superhero Nation. Favicons are only 16 pixels by 16 pixels, so they’re very hard to read. Here’s the 64 by 64 version.

I was mulling over a few alternatives, but they were fairly uninspired or unworkable: a book, a cape, something with a pen, etc. I’ll let you know if this significantly affects user-retention rates.

What do you think?

It’s been our most successful month so far.

• Most importantly, we completed the first draft of our nonfiction query.  We are almost ready to start pitching to agents.
• We had 15,000 visitors, about 500 a day.  In contrast, we only had 350 visitors per day in February.  A 40% growth rate is pretty impressive.  We can’t sustain that rate of growth, but if we could, we’d be up to 10,000 visitors each day by December.
• Our readers spent a combined 1310 hours here.  That’s 65% higher than our previous record.
• We doubled our amount of review forums.

If you look at the top of the site, you’ll find a link that says Behind the Scenes at SN.  Here are a few of the things we’ll cover there:

• How to join our volunteer staff
• Details for our staffers
• Our statistics

• Notre Dame just announced that the President is doing our commencement speech this year.  I’ve always been opposed to the idea of commencements and do not plan to attend mine, regardless of the speaker.  This announcement merely makes it absolutely certain that my absence will cause my parents to flip out.  They’re still sore that I successfully missed my high school commencement, even though I had a valid excuse then.
• In other Notre Dame news, the police busted my St. Patrick’s Day party.  Very exciting.
• Over these past three days, we’ve been averaging 1000 visitors per day.  That’s about three times as many as normal.

Here are some brief tips for stimulating visitor loyalty on your site.

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Today we received our five-thousandth comment.  Incidentally, today we also received our fifteen-thousandth piece of spam.  According to Google Analytics, we’ve only had 65 Russian readers but somehow about a third of our spam is in Russian.  Assuming that all of the Russian-language spam came from a Russian user, that would be an impressive 75 messages per user.

If you find it tricky to code tables in HTML, I highly recommend Tablemaker.  You give it the data you’d like in the table and it gives you the appropriate HTML.  Neat.  Your table might look something like this break-down of our user statistics for the past year.

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It will probably be a few days until I get around to doing regular updates.

1. In February, we set a new personal record for new visitors.  (We had around 10,000 for the month).
2. Today, we reached 75,000 total visitors.
3. On Centsports.com, I am putting my $4.75 on Arizona to beat the Steelers today.  I fully expect to lose (defense wins championships), but I am fully buying into the much-hyped Arizona miracle.

Fevered rumors occasionally surface that Marvel and/or DC have copyrighted the word “superhero” and plan to sue anyone that uses them.  That’s obviously bunk.  However, a more credible blogger claims that Marvel and DC have jointly trademarked the term superhero and are the only ones that can use it when naming a comic book.  It is true that they have the trademark, but there is virtually no chance that it would hold up in court. (Whether or not your publisher is actually willing to risk a case is another question, though… it’s cheaper to come up with a new title than go to court).

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Superhero Nation is slightly eccentric and wacky, so I kind of want an eye-catching cover that conveys that.  Here are a few of my latest ideas for our first cover.

1.  This cover shows a desk with a careful array of US presidential bobbleheads.  (It’s Agent Orange’s desk, so this should look a bit wacky).  At the front of the desk would be bobbleheads of Agent Black, Agent Orange and their boss.  In the background, we’d place a motivational poster for humorous flavor.  (Maybe “Human Resources:  Killer Service Every Time.”)

ALTERNATIVE:  The desk still has presidential bobbleheads, but the bobbleheads of the cast are gone.  Agent Orange is behind the desk in a surly boss pose and Agent Black is staring at him dumbfounded.  As before, there’s a motivational poster for humor.  (Hat-tip to Brett).

2.  Agent Black is getting chewed out in an over-the-top manner by Agent Orange.  I’d probably frame it like a scene between Peter Parker and JJ Jameson.  I’m relying on the “what the hell?” factor of having a mutant alligator as the boss to make this eye-catching and appealing.  I’d probably give Agent Orange a business prop like a wacky chart or graph in lieu of the motivational poster.

3.    Agent Black is in a mock Rambo pose, ineptly wielding a machine gun on a firing range.  All of his bullets are wildly off his target.  (The bulletholes may spell out the Superhero Nation logo).  Agent Orange is looking on exasperatedly with a hand on his forehead.  He’s shaking his head.  This is probably better-suited for the second issue than the first.