Written by: Greg Ellifritz
Seth Godin made a very powerful statement in a recent blog post.
“My most popular blog posts this year…weren’t my best ones. As usual, the most popular music wasn’t the best recorded this year either. Same for the highest-grossing movies, restaurants and politicians doing fundraising.
“Best” is rarely the same as “popular.” Which means that if you want to keep track of doing your best work, you’re going to have to avoid the distraction of letting the market decide if you’ve done a good job or not.”
I agree 100%. If find it amazingly interesting. I generally consider myself a “software” writer. I like talking about ideas and tactics rather than hardware. But that isn’t what my readers click on. Out of the 655 articles on my site, only 21 are gun and gear reviews. Yet 30% of my most popular posts last year were hardware related. Even more interesting is the fact that 9 out of my top 10 articles for 2014 weren’t even written this year. They were older articles that have been on the site for years. It’s nice to be rediscovered, but the older pieces are far from my best work.
That doesn’t mean that “most popular” is a useless metric. It is an indication of broad appeal. That appeal may not be the market I’m targeting as future students, but it is a group of people who like what I am writing and sharing it with their friends. So, keeping that in mind, here were my most popular blog posts (by pageviews) in 2014….
10) Don’t Run in a Straight Line and Other Bad Advice
Handgun Stopping Power: Science vs. “40 years of Experience” – See more at: http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/handgun-stopping-power-science-vs-40-years-of-experience#sthash.2me4HGzA.dpuf
Handgun Stopping Power: Science vs. “40 years of Experience” – See more at: http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/handgun-stopping-power-science-vs-40-years-of-experience#sthash.2me4HGzA.dpuf
9) The perils of Open Carry
8) Bird Shot for Self Defense
7) Insults and Challenges
6) The New KelTec KSG
5) Appendix Carry
4) Are Glocks truly Perfection?
3) Weapon Mounted lights and a Dirty Police Secret
2) A Comparison of .380 Pocket Pistols
1) The Bag Trick
These are the top 10 posts by popularity, but by and large, I don’t think they represented my best work. Which articles impacted YOUR life the most last year?
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