16 years on the blog, part I

Some posts worked out, but some — surprisingly — didn’t

This is the first of of two parts looking at some of the best posts that appeared during the blog’s 16-year history. Today, Part I: The posts no one appreciated, even though they should have. Part II: The most important posts in blog history.

I wrote almost 4,700 blog posts over the past 16 years, and the one thing I was never able to make sense of: Why some posts didn’t do well with readers.

I knew that the technical and business stories, the things that needed to be written, wouldn’t necessarily have a wide audience. Instead, it was the posts that should have garnered thousands and thousands of views, but never did.

Such as:

• Giving away money. I gave away Wine.com gift cards during Birthday Week on the old blog ($100 cards the last several years). But, even though the blog went to more than 1,500 people each day, I never got more than five or six dozen entries — and sometimes less. What did you have against free money?

• The film and TV parodies. The WC as Shaft? Bruce Lee kicking the crap out of wine judges who don’t respect Drink Local? And, most depressing, the Planet of the Apes takeoff, which had actual dialog (the great John Bratcher as Charlton Heston). I mentioned this to a friend, and she said, “Wine drinkers have no sense of humor.”

• Churro, the blog’s associate editor. The wine business complains that young people and Hispanics aren’t interested in wine. So I appoint my dog, a Chihuahua mix, as the blog’s associate editor and do a podcast with him, and no one got it. No one. Several people — and I’m not making this up — said, “He’s a dog.”

• The podcasts. Apple has an entire universe devoted to podcasts, so they must be popular with someone. But the blog’s interviews — usually with damned interesting people, often recommending quality cheap wine — never garnered much of an audience.

• Rose reviews, especially in the blog’s early days. I’d like to think my readers were past that old and stupid aphorism, “Friends don’t let friends drink pink.” You are, aren’t you?