I blame me

The odd thing about wallowing in your success is you have to wallow in your failure as well.

Yes, things are starting to slide south and I’m not happy about it. While I’m not happy, I take comfort in knowing this is a problem I can address, and I’m to blame for things sliding anyway. I’ve made the mistake of thinking just showing up for gigs and playing the best show I can is enough. It’s not, not by a long shot.

Unique visits to the web site are down about a 100 from last month. This is the first non-growth month since the site opened. MP3 sales are slumping as well. At this point I’m showing 463.41 Megs downloaded. While this does represent about 154 MP3 downloads, for me, it’s quite dismal. The release of “Show 507 LIVE” did not do as well as I had hoped. Of course, when you consider the rather small investment in time involved with the project, it’s a smashing success, but contrasting it to actual releases it’s a dismal failure.

Of course there are factors to consider. Second Life does slow down a bit in the summer months. I experienced it last year, but didn’t really notice it so much because at that time I was pretty close to the bottom of the barrel anyway. I had commented the traffic numbers had gone down about 15,000. But that is quite in-line with the traffic numbers last year in the summer months.

Another factor is, while I don’t really operate in the prime American time slot, a healthy number of my supporters are Americans and America is having a bit of an economic meltdown. I do believe this factor will effect Second Life, how profoundly only time will tell.

While there are extenuating factors, I can’t hide behind them. I’ve been quite slack in the promotion department. I’ve let the turmoil of my personal life effect my ability to campaign effectively in Second Life. I’ve gotten lazy and complacent.

When opportunities are scarce is when you must be on the top of your game. So I need to get back to the business of doing business.