April Numbers

Legends of America continued to gain readers in April, increasing daily unique visitors by about 1% over March.

Reported period	Month Apr 2008
	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits
Traffic viewed *	473395	653770 (1.38 visits/visitor)	1640053 (2.5 Pages/Visit)	36046618 (55.13 Hits/Visit)

April's average unique visitors per day was 15,779, compared to 15,501 in March. And your spending quality time on the site as well, with over 6% staying up to 15 minutes, and 3.1% up to an hour.

Visits duration
Number of visits: 653770 - Average: 245 s Number of visits Percent 30s-2mn 48465 7.4 % 2mn-5mn 35358 5.4 % 5mn-15mn 41408 6.3 % 15mn-30mn 23149 3.5 % 30mn-1h 20486 3.1 % 1h+ 8658 1.3 %

What did you read about in April? Our figures show that, besides landing on the main page or using the on site search, Jesse James still tops the list as the most visited page. Twisted History, Route 66, Old West Legends and Ghost Towns rounded out the top five.

/WE-JesseJames.html 29010 /GH-TwistedHistory3.html 19403 /66-Mainpage.html 14433 /LA-OldWestLegends.html 12316 /LA-Ghosttowns.html 12120

And an estimated 72% of you added Legends of America to your favorites!

Add to favorites (estimated)

343698 / 473395 Visitors

72.6 %

Historically, many of you get ready for Travel in May, which brings a lot of visitors to Legends Of America. Be sure to check out the Travel Destinations of the Old West, or bone up on the in-depth coverage of Route 66. Kathy is busily adding more, so check the What's New page often for updates.

Thanks for making April a banner month for Legends Of America!

Awesome March

The numbers are in for March, and Legends Of America saw over 480, 000 unique visitors stop by. According to Awstats, here's the breakdown

Reported period	Month Mar 2008
First visit	01 Mar 2008 - 00:00
Last visit	31 Mar 2008 - 23:59
	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits
Traffic viewed *	480546	644352 (1.34 visits/visitor)	1662610 (2.58 Pages/Visit)	36068275 (55.97 Hits/Visit)

So what were you reading about in March? Well, for the most part, Jesse James continued to have a strong hold, mainly due to the release of the DVD "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". The Top 10 search phrases (out of over 247,000) that brought visitors to Kathy's website were:

jesse james	2.2 %
route 66	2 %
robert ford	0.8 %
la llorona	0.7 %
doc holliday	0.5 %
doc holiday	0.5 %
geronimo	0.4 %
wyatt earp	0.3 %
harriet tubman	0.3 %
calamity jane	0.3 %

Besides the main page and search results, the Top Ten pages visited were:

/WE-JesseJames.html	34430
/GH-TwistedHistory3.html	23762
/66-Mainpage.html	15531
/WE-JesseJames6.html	12810
/LA-Ghosttowns.html	12607
/LA-OldWestLegends.html	12396
/LA-VintagePhotos.html	10595
/WE-JesseJames9.html	9700
/WE-RobertFord.html	9516
/LA-GhostlyLegends.html	9142

We're working on getting stats from last year for a comparison, but due to the server move in February it's taking a while. We have the data, it's just that it's on Kathy's computer. And getting Kathy to relinquish her computer long enough for me to get the data off is a challenge. She works on the premise that no matter what's wrong with her computer, or what's needed, there's never time to stop updating stories, restoring photos, and answering emails. Now, you might wonder why I don't just do it while she's taking her daily power nap, or in the middle of the night while she's sawing logs. That's because she never closes any of her work, and if I just happen to reboot I'm afraid I'll be sleeping on the couch for a week. So, I've resigned myself to the fact that there must be a distraction that will prompt her to let me do my techy stuff.

That distraction will come soon enough as Kathy meets me out in Las Vegas next week while I'm on a business trip, and we take a few days to travel through parts of Utah on another adventure. She has to turn off that damn laptop to travel, and I'm sure I can get access to the data from the hotel room before she starts her day. It's going to be a fun trip to Utah, and one that will produce several blogs here for sure ;).

Leapin into Better Health with Jesse James

My legs burn...a feeling of being lightheaded, and the sensation of still moving....Yep, I actually had my first workout this morning! As I wrote in my last post, ol' Doc C is really riding me about my health, and this week I got the grim news. Do or die time, so to speak. So I joined the local health club yesterday and pumped myself up for a change in habits.

Kathy is supportive, in her own way. At 5am this morning, looking at me from her comfy chair with both hands cupped around her coffee, the look in her eyes one of sympathy and concern, with a touch of amusement all rolled into one..."Don't over do it dear." I was just thinking about that myself, which is why I took my own personal trainer to the workout with me. Nick, my 16 year old, goes through this kind of training for football, and I knew he could guide me proper.

Did just over 1.6 miles on the treadmill in 30 minutes, the first five of which was spent with a touch of panic trying to figure out the fastest way to slow that damn thing down. The rest of the time was comparing Nicks workout to mine, envying him as he doubled my speed and didn't seem to break a sweat...Ahhh, to be in my teens again. Once I was on it for a while it actually felt good, and I can honestly see why other people enjoy working out. Now, let's see if I'm one of those people. It was a great way to start Leap Day!

Meanwhile, Kathy says she's having another banner month on Legends Of America. Over 400 thousand unique visitors, with 32 Million hits in February, as of last night, and she still has today. The biggest drive to her site has been Jesse James. Evidentially there were a lot of people like us who decided to wait for the DVD to see "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". Brad Pitt did a respectable job playing Jesse, and based on everything I've read about the James clan, I really think this movie probably had more truth than we'll ever know. It didn't portray Jesse as some kind of hero..more like a paranoid killer on the run, and one who finally decides he's done hiding. Kathy's Jesse James page, along with Robert Ford, were both in the top ten on Legends Of America all month. Jesse James page has been number one on her site for the past couple of weeks.

Kathy and I are headed back to Warsaw this weekend, spending some time at the lake house. Despite the fact I come home Monday, Kathy is sure to stay a couple of weeks and enjoy the peace and quiet. It's funny how much history you can find in your own back yard. Kathy had a small story on Warsaw, but just this week decided to really dig into the town's past. She's busy in her office now wrapping up on probably 5 pages of wild times during the 1800's, that included the town being burned by Union Soldiers. She'll load em up today I suspect, and I'll come back into the blog and link it here.

For now, I'm finally settling back into the old normal routine, heart rate has slowed and the dizzy spell is gone. Gotta say, that first cigarette when I got home just wasn't as good, so I guess that's probably my next task....that'll be a while though...gonna eat this elephant one bite at a time.