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| tugboat on the Erie Canal |
Ultimately, I'd like to make some money from this blog, so I can honour my vow to never ever again hold a snow shovel in my hands! (That means being out of Canada for the winter in case you're not getting it). As most of you know, I'm a writer for SAIL and Waterway Guides, as well as other publications. Writing for free is not how I want to spend my free time.
One way to monetize the blog is to bump the blog hits up, way up, thus making the site attractive to advertisers. That's the reason I'm always asking you to share LiveBloggin' with your friends, other sailors and boaters - the more who read, the more who join, the easier it is to sell advertising. First however, I have to get those numbers up there.
The recent Free Boats posts have been 'ginormous' in terms of hits. The first free boat post quintupled the number of hits from the highest ever day - from 300 to over 1500 hits in 24 hours. FYI - that many hits in 24 hours puts you in the top leagues for blogging. Clearly, the Free Boats feature is not going away soon, but it's not going to take over this blog, that I promise you. We'll still have features and stories on the ICW, which was and is the original purpose of this blog. So don't despair when you see the occasional Free Boat post - they aren't taking over.
I'm also looking at another new feature, one that will bring you and other LiveBloggers some much better prices on boating stuff. That's in the works and hopefully, will come to pass - more on that later.
So be watching for new features over the next few months, but don't worry about LiveBloggin' becoming a new creature - that's not in the cards.
Now for some boating news - LiveBlogger Al McGillivray reports that the Erie Canal is shut at E13, and will be closed from two to three weeks while a broken dam support is repaired. Or was that a damn broken support, I'm not quite sure on that.
He's currently in Lake Erie heading that way and is trying to determine what his plan will be. He's at Fairport Harbor, to the east of Cleveland, so he's got a couple of days before reaching the Canal.
One route would be to take the Canal to Oswego and then jump out to Lake Ontario and run down to the Champlain end of the canal. You could also do that via the Welland Canal. I'll be looking up information for Al and Susan, and also Debbie and Glen, who are in Lake Ontario and facing the same problem when they reach the canal. I'll post this information shortly after this post appears.
