Pardon me while I toot my own horn. Oh wait. That sounds kind of kinky. Let me start again.
Pardon me while I take a few minutes to brag a little.
You see, my blog broke all kinds of personal records in August. It accrued 14,306 views from 2,820 visitors, 4,699 likes, and 2,281 comments. Woo hoo!
That compares with 11,397 views in July and 9,997 in June. Prior to June, my max views in any month was only 4,741 in March 2018.
From May 2017, when I started this blog, through May 2018, my blog received a total of 39,805 views. But in just the past three months, it got 35,700 views. So almost as many views in the past three months as my blog got in its first twelve months!
To what do I attribute this exponential growth? No question that it was my decision to start my own daily one-word prompt, “FOWC with Fandango,” after the folks at WordPress announced the demise of the daily, one-word prompt.
Of my top 10 posts in August, eight were FOWC with Fandango prompts. My post, “Better Than Sex,” was the second most popular post of the month, while “SoCS Badge Contest” came in eighth.
A number of my fellow bloggers jumped in to fill the gap left by WordPress and I would venture to say that each and every one has seen a significant spike in views as a result. It turns out that many bloggers, myself included, are combining multiple one-word prompts into their posts, which can be challenging given the diversity of the daily word prompts.
Anyway, I know I’ve said this before, but I want to thank everyone who has participated in Fandango’s One-Word Challenge each day. I love reading the incredibly wide variety of creative and imaginative responses.
So, the next question is how long will I be able to keep this daily one-word prompt going? Well, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English language contains 171,476 words in current use. But it also notes that a vocabulary of just 3,000 words provides coverage for around 95% of common texts. So even if I limit my daily posts to the 3,000 most common words, I can potentially keep this going for another eight years…if I live that long!
But the key is for me and for all of you to have fun, so as long as that’s the case, I’m good.
This, That, and the Other 
Congratulations. I really enjoy the prompts.
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Thank you for regularly participating.
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Thank you for the prompts Fandango. It’s a pleasure to participate.
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I appreciate seeing your one or two posts in response every morning when I wake up, Frank.
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Congratulations! You deserve it!!!!
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Thank you.
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Fantastic!
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Nicely done, Fandango.
You are officially a WordPress celebrity!
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Thanks, but those “real” WordPress celebrities have tens of thousands of followers and get thousands of views each day. I have a long way to go before I can achieve celebrity status.
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;D You are already on the path, Fandango.
And, the nice thing is that you did it without the help of Facebook and Twitter.
You filled a void — the WordPress Prompts that were discontinued by the staff of WordPress.
Someone needed to meet those demands and that person was you.
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Great prompt work!
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Thank you, Paula.
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That is a wow from me. Pls keep the spirit going.
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Thanks. I will definitely keep it going.
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Congratulations! Just … don’t expect it to always stay the same. Stats go up and down. I broke 21,000 last November, but it was a bubble and immediately afterward WordPress lost my blog’s title and I had to rebuild from almost zero. But even without WP’s help, it doesn’t stay the same. People come, people go. It’s great when they are up, but try not to lose your mind if they drop. Stats have more to do with whether or not Google has you near the top of their search engine. And I think we get about 50% more hits than are registered through distribution.
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I’m pragmatic enough to realize that it’s unlikely for my stats to keep going up month after month. But, for now, I’m celebrating the numbers. If they drop next month, well, c’est la vie.
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You do the work, you deserve the kudos! Congrats!
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Thanks, Cage.
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Where do you find those? I didn’t know you could do that! 😛 Congrats! FOWC is my most linked word prompt site. Those stats are impressive! I am lucky if I hit anywhere near 10% of them, a month. Guess I need to start hosting a prompt! Yeah, right. You are doing a great job. Keep it up (please)
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Thanks. I appreciate your continued participation.
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Thanks for the shoutout in your “Three of Many” section.
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Why do you post this, oh! Forgot you were bragging..?
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So pleased for you as it so well deserved!
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Thanks!
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Congratulations! This is great.
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I appreciate that.
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You are welcome.
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You only beat me by 12,000 views.
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Now you have something to shoot for!
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I am driven to write as I blog constantly, but you are in a whole other league than I am. By the way congratulations on your achievement and if you are still around in 8 tears from now, I guess I will have to make a lot more corrections on your posts.
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Yes, especially if I’m still around “8 tears” from now! 😱
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Congratulations on the higher stats! Keep the prompts coming. Eventually I will get caught up on them … LOL
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Thanks Leigha. I look forward to reading your posts in response to my prompts.
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You’re welcome. I’m glad to hear that!
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