A Big Day for Vagabond Journey.com

A big day for Vagabond Journey.com —

Yesterday, Vagabond Journey.com saw its first 2,000 visitor day and its 500,000th unique visitor. Two thousand people out there — somewhere — visited this website yesterday, and a half a million visited within the past two years. My wheels are beginning to take me to the place they set out for those years ago when I began this website project without even knowing how to make a new folder on a Windows operating system.

“If Vagabondjourey.com could get 2,000 visitors a day I would be dancing in the streets,” I wrote to Andy Hobotraveler.com last autumn. I was bringing in around 700 to 800 daily visitors then, and the couple thousand mark seemed far away.

Now I suppose I owe the streets a jig or two, because yesterday, September 3, 2009, Vagabondjourney.com went over 2,000 unique visitors in a single day for the first time.

Vagabond Journey traffic for past month

Sometime yesterday Vagabond Journey.com also received its 500,000th visitor. Half a million times within the past two years someone had uncovered this website within the clutter of the internet.

Half a million visitors

In two years this website has grown from receiving a small handful of daily visitors (whatever friend or family member I could commandeer into reading) to a couple of thousand each day. After an excess of bushwacking — after working on the site for 5 to 10 or even more hours a day, every day — I am beginning to open up a path to where I want to go. I am beginning to see a return on my efforts. And this feels good.

I have not yet turned a reasonable return in dollars and cents off of Vagabondjourney.com, but rather the soulful knowledge that I just may be building one of the top independently operated travel sites on the internet.

I would much rather be a poor pauper who chews through a brick wall to get to the other side than a wealthy fellow who forgoes the challenge by walking through the open gate.

I remember an old quote from my adolescents:

Rather than passing through open gates, it is better to tear them down.

To be honest, two thousand daily visitors means more to me than two thousand daily dollars . . . The prospect of being able to fund my family’s travels 100% off of Vagabond Journey.com is enough justification to keep my wheels turning, though down deep this may be far from my real intentions.

I like doing this, it is that plain, it is that simple.

I take more joy from a growth in my traffic stats than my adsense and affiliate program revenues.

I have worked so friggin’ hard at this project for years . . . and I am becoming fortunate enough to feel a quick jab of satisfaction from my efforts.

Every time I check the Sitemeter to find that readership is rising, every time I get a comment, every time a new reader writes me an email to introduce themselves, and every time someone says “Wow” when I bashfully tell them how many visitors Vagabondjourney.com receives, I smile really big.

Though I know that I have only the readers of this website to thank for this feeling. Without you, I would be babbling alone in a dingy floating aimlessly in an empty sea.

Thank you.

Now if I can only get up to three thousand daily visitors and one million total . . .

Though I know that this is a mountain that will never be summited.