Week 47 Blog Stats

Stats for the 7 days ending 28 July 2012:

Croda's Inscripion Guide - The Critical Review

Hola Critical Fans.

As promised here is the unbiased Critical review of Croda's Incription Guide Paid Version herein lovingly referred to as CIGPV.

The burning question first, would I the great Critical Goblin pay $5 for CIGPV? 

Z-Man's Baby Scribe

Critical is Z-Man's blogger alt! Who would've thunk!

No, not really. But its nice to know Critical's setup is not far off how one of the oldest and bestest pros in gold-making does it (that's assuming Z-Man = Zamboni?). And yea ok the term Baby Scribe he made up not Critical. But you gotta admit, its much more catchy than Secondary Maker. So that's what we're going to go with today.

Only 2 lessons today. Short simple and to the point, that's why you love Critical's blog right?

Week 46 Blog Stats

For the 7 day week ending 21 July 2012:

I guess ya'll wondering why Critical's back. No special reason, just missed you smelly lot and reactivated wow to join my guild's weekly wed/thu DS raids. Have wasted many a lunch break trying to decide what direction to point this blog. The bad thing about being on TUJ's front page is you gotta perform. The good thing about not being there is if your writing sucks no one cares. But there is the nice free publicity though, that's always a bonus. I definitely commend those writers that have the courage to sign up. Critical is not that brave.

French Fries are Like Glyphs

The one thing you can be sure of in the wow blog world are great comments on Critical's blog. Always well thought out and and nice to read (well most of the time).

So anyway, there I was asking myself why does Critical go to so much effort just for glyphs when everyone else thinks its crazy to have such a setup. Don't get me wrong, the Super Glyph Shuffle is real not just a theoretical "if i had 6 spare chars what would i do". Its actually what Critical does.

Let me introduce the humble MacDonalds French Fry:

Super Glyph Shuffle

The sudden spate of glyphing posts on TUJ is making Critical itchy. Twitchie's 2 character post makes Critical super itchy. While a 2 character operation is nice, Critical says to go balls out, triple that and then plus one. Who can do this? Anyone who has a scribe, therefore basically everyone! Read on to see how Critical pwns his server with a stupidly ridiculously specialized glyph manufacturing team.

Week 43 Blog Stats

No this is not a resurrection and yes Critical does suck at writing about other topics other than pro glyphing. Just popped in to see how dead things are. Very very quiet, but as you can see from the blog stats below pageviews have gone up nicely.

Have tidied up the front page a little and have highlighted Popular Posts. Mainly because it looks like this blog has become more of a historical reference site for pro glyphers rather than a daily newspaper with continuous new content.

Anyway quick blog stat snapshots for posterity, 7 days ending 30 June 2012:

Quality, Cost and Time

PS: how do you guys like the weekly Wednesday (or Tuesday for most readers) posts so far? Yea i know, a big change from the daily posts in the past. Anyway thanks for stickin' around. 

So as you can guess, today we're going to talk about the magical relationship between quality, cost and time, in relation to business. 

80 / 20 Rule for Inscription

Albertus asks an excellent question on Croda's blog:
"Why will you spend a ton of time and money to max a profession and in the end only use a Small part of it."

I know I promised to move away from wow/glyph/gold topics but this worm was too juicy to not take the bait. Why was this an interesting question you ask? Because Critical's whole blog previously was focused on only part of the inscription profession: glyphs and DM trinkets. I never sold books, inks, pigments, raw materials and the only times I sold MFCs was to cheese off a particular competitor until they buggered off and then I stopped. I am the guy the question is exactly aimed at and it was thought provoking to say the least, thanks Albertus.

So I'm guessing most of my Critical Readers will know or have heard of the 80/20 rule yea? By having it in the title its pretty obvious that's what we're going to talk about today.

The Measure of a "Good" Blog

Some people are competitive, others are not. Some people are winners in life. Some are losers. Some people care deeply about anything and everything whilst others dont care at all. Whichever category you belong to, I am pretty you have asked yourself at one point in time, I wonder how my blog is doing?

If you're a noob like me, you'll be stumbling around having a good ol time trying to figure out this blog game because there is no "Become a Pro Wow Blogger in 30 Days!" program. So how do you know how well your blog is doing?

Here are a few of Critical's favorite measurements:

Blog Partner

A blog partner is another blog that your blog interacts with regularly, preferably mutually in both directions. A prime example is Tobold and Greedy. Another older and no longer active pair was Foo and Breevok way before Critical was conceived.

Why is it important to have a blog partner(s)?
Good question. Having a good blog partner increases readership because your readers can become his/hers and vice versa.

Daily Blog Posts

Today's topic: Daily blog posts.

Below are some quick fire bullet points what Critical learnt while sticking to a daily posting schedule for 3 months and its advantages:

Blogging a Passion??

Welcome to Critical's first post completely not related to his usual glyph ramblings!


So there I was, asking myself, what are the best topics to blog about, to achieve "success" in terms of blogging? What should be my new topic(s)? The obvious choices are either: what you are personally passionate about, or what you excel at. If you can hit the sweet spot that nails these two ... booya! Instant win!

Why do I say this? Look at the blogs that go from strength to strength to strength. Greedy, his blog does well because he is passionate about his topics. Same thing with Flux/Jim, Cold and Markco, they know (knew in Markco's case) exactly what they want their baby to become.

In reverse what about the blogs that die or slowly phase out, such as Critical's own blog or if you're an oldie you may remember Bangkok Bill. I dont think its because he/we lost the passion of blogging, more likely because we lost what we were passionately blogging about: the gold universe in wow.

So anyway, back to this blog. Hmmmm what is Critical super pro at and also loves, thats not glyphing and is still semi related my 89 subscribers? Blogging of course! Yes yes I'm a blog noob but 0 to 95 subs in 91 days, I believe is a decent achievement (actually I have no idea, there's no standards to compare against).

Its a huge tangent but hopefully not too many Critical Readers abandon ship during this change in direction. Hope you stick around for an interesting adventure!

Week 20 Blog Stats

Hola loyal Critical Fans still subscribed to my feed! And u other guys who keep coming back and boosting my page views even though there's been no new posts!