A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I try not to look at analytics because they don’t reflect the actual goals my website has. I can’t know how much something resonated, or if it inspired someone, just by seeing numbers.
But then, I found an exception. Looking through the analytics, I saw in the sources panel that some visits came from a Substack post. Curious, I clicked on it. The writer, Emily, mentioned the Digital home zine I created, and said:
I beg you to read (scroll through/interact with) the online essay linked above. it is about the concept of a digital home, a website that is not attached to any existing social media, and can be seen as a digital space to exist, create, and share. the whole idea is getting my creative gears churning.
Today I found another source in the analytics, breezyscoolsite.neocities.org. Naturally I clicked on it too, it’s a course to make your own personal website, from scratch, using HTML and CSS, by Breezy. I read and explored the site, especially the page Why participate in the personal web? and saw this at the bottom:
I never posted about the zine on social media, except on my personal Substack. It was pretty much published into the void, like Kening Zhu would say. So I couldn’t know much about how it’s received, if people resonate… There are no likes, no comments, no feedback.
So what wonderful serendipity when I discover that someone not only read my work but shared it with others, and with such nice words. The joy from that makes my day.
It’s the sharing in small spaces, human-to-human, that makes the most meaningful impact. A 10-second Instagram reel might be seen by more people, but most will scroll and see another hundred reels.
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I wrote about this shortly, on my last newsletter.
I have a newsletter where I send out new posts (and maybe extra stuff too)