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Most Popular Posts of 2012

12.25.2012 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

Well, we’re approaching the end of 2012, and that leads to a lot of looking back at the big events of the year. For me, it was the birth of my first grandchild. During the four days we spent in Minnesota with him, I didn’t even miss biking.

But in the world of Bike Noob, we can look back, too. I thought it would be fun to check the analytics on the blog and figure out the most popular posts of the past year.

During the four and a half years I’ve been blogging, I’ve noticed that posts that are popular when first put up might fail to attract eyeballs as time goes by. Conversely, other posts might start slow and gradually get more views later on. That certainly seems to be the case here, with some posts whose popularity in the last 12 months has come as a surprise to me.

Here they are — the top 10 blog posts of 2012:

10. What Does “Car Back” Mean to You? Jan. 31. I’m bugged when cyclists don’t get into a single line when traffic is behind them.

9. Have You Ever Fitted Yourself? Feb. 26. Apparently, a lot of you have.

8. Four Years of Noobishness. Feb. 19. Includes links to five of the most popular posts of all time.

7. The Hotter ‘n Hell Hundred. Aug. 26. My cycling highlight of the year.

6. Stravalogisms. Jul. 26. The GPS-based ride mapper has spawned a lot of descriptions — some not so complimentary.

5. Testing Some More “Fitover” Sunglasses. April 12. A lot of you must be in the same boat as I am.

4. Moisture Wicking Base Layers. Jan. 24. Boy, you folks really must sweat a lot!

3. How Long Do Your Tires Last? May 31. I think 3,000 miles is good, but some of you beat that by a long shot.

2. How Much CO2? Feb. 9. 12 gram or 16 gram? And at what cost?

1. Steel vs. Aluminum. April 29. My impressions of 11 days of riding my friend David’s steel road bike.

Thanks, everyone, for making 2012 a great year for Bike Noob. I have more page views than ever before, and it’s gratifying to know that there’s still an audience for stuff I put up. Next, I’ll tell you what some of my favorite posts of the year were.

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Blog Trollers Begone!

11.29.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 1 Comment

This post is somewhat off-topic, in that it’s not about biking, but about blogging. From time to time, I get emails from people who offer to contribute a guest post. Here are my thoughts on the matter.

Over the years Bike Noob has been running, I’ve even accepted some of these offers. Sometimes, the resulting post has been all right. It deals with biking in a manner that I hadn’t yet addressed here, and the link wasn’t obnoxious. A few times, the post has be excellent. Much of the time though, the writer is not a cyclist and contributes something on the level of an eHow post — so simplistic as to be potentially insulting to Bike Noob readers.

I wouldn’t even mention this, except that over the last three days, I’ve gotten three such offers. Here’s the problem: the wording of the offers is so similar, I wonder if they’re coming from the same place, just under different names. The pitch goes something like, “I am looking for blog sites to post guest articles. The article will be 100 percent Copyscape protected (a plagiarism checker), and will run about 500 words. The article will be published only on your site, and informative to your readers.” The pitch also requests a link back to the writer’s own blog, or business, or some gizmo they’re associated with.

If it’s about cycling, I’ll carefully consider the request. I’ll vet the writer, either by visiting his or her blog and evaluating the quality of the writing, or I’ll ask a few questions about their cycling experience. For the overt link hunters, I’ll send a polite “thanks, but no thanks” reply.

I blog because I like to write about my experiences, and I hope that my experiences might ring a bell with my readers. The feedback I get indicates that this is so. I do accept guest posts, and if you’ve read this blog for a bit, you’re already familiar with Don Blount and Jeff Hemmel, two cyclists who have contributed their own guest posts for about three years. But the stuff Don and Jeff write about is in the same vein as I write about, and it’s for the interest and entertainment of our readers — not an attempt to market one’s own (perhaps non-bike related) business.

So guest post trollers, be gone! If guest posts appear here, it will be because they have something to contribute that will interest my readers (I hope). In fact, you’ll be seeing at least one guest post in the next couple of weeks from someone we haven’t heard from before. Stay tuned.

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Four Years of Noobishness

02.19.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 16 Comments

Yeah, do you believe it? This marks the fourth anniversary of the Bike Noob blog. One thing I’ve noticed since I started writing in 2008 is that cycling seems to have gained in popularity, so much so that it’s now featured in one of those Internet “what they think — what I think” memes that’s going around:

Click to embiggen.

That fits me to a “t” — especially the chimp. I’m him.

I’ve been wondering what keeps bringing people back here to read my posts, and it occurred to me that if I just dig into the statistics provided by the fine folks at WordPress, I might get a clue. So here are the five most popular Bike Noob posts of all time:

5. Metric century. I hadn’t checked all time stats for a while, and this one surprised me. It makes perfect sense, though. A metric century is probably the first major mileage milestone targeted by noob riders.

4. The Selle San Marco Ponza. This is the racing-style saddle I rode for about a year, including on two century rides. I wonder now how I did it, it was so uncomfortable after about an hour. The Ponza is a fairly well-known saddle, and I seem to get lots of traffic from people looking for a review.

3. Triple chainrings — or compact double? For a long time, this was the number one post on this site. I think once new riders get a bike and ride it for awhile, they start to wonder about the advantages or disadvantages of whatever chainring setup they don’t have. To the point that…

2. Triple vs. Compact Double –Again! is the second most-viewed post on the site. Folks, I think we’ve run out our discussion on this one.

And the most-viewed post on Bike Noob of all time?

1. CO2 cartridges or a pump? This post goes back to the first few months of this blog, so its longevity has something to do with its popularity. It’s also one that I listed in my “Favorite Posts” tab, which undoubtedly drove traffic to it. But clearly, these kinds of basic equipment discussions pique the interest of the target audience for Bike Noob — riders who are either new to our pastime, or who are looking for straightforward information about the basics of our sport. And to the post itself, altho I carry a cartridge and an inflator, I will still rely on the pump in the event of a flat.

So — equipment and/or accessories tops our interest quotient. That continues on down the list. Other popular posts include a survey of Speedplay pedals, cleat position (under the ball of the foot for power, but all the way back for long-distance comfort), wet or dry chainlube, and cyclocomputers.

My guest posters, Jeff Hemmel and Don Blount, have also contributed posts on equipment. Jeff’s reviews of the Bontrager Inform and Bontrager Affinity saddles are right up there in page views, as are Don’s posts on trainers vs. rollers and the Bont ctt3 shoes with the moldable insole.

It’s hard to pigeonhole the least-viewed posts — they tend to be all over the map, although many of them were posted in the blog’s first year, before Bike Noob caught fire and rose to become one of the pre-eminent blogs in all of bikingdom. Several of them had to do with specific rides I took. Lots of bike blogs write about rides, so maybe that shouldn’t be a focus here. We’ll see.

I’ve taken down the tab for Favorite Posts, simply because I think it has driven traffic to those posts to the exclusion of others, and for that reason I think I’m not getting an accurate picture of what really interests my readers. We’ll see if the stats appreciably change in the coming year. Besides, if I were to list what I consider MY favorite posts, they’d probably be a different five altogether. (Remember “Smoked By An Old Guy?”)

And while I’m mentioning Favorite Posts, I should note that after two years, it’s time to redo the look of this blog. Nothing drastic, but enough to keep it fresh.

Anyway, in the coming year, I pledge to try my best to keep you interested and engaged with what you read here, as you follow the ramblings of an oldish and unmechanically-inclined cyclist of middling ability and an entry-level bike who just happens to love getting out on two wheels.

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