The Impetus

Several people have talked to me about the value of blogging. however, it wasnt until I saw a blog that referenced me (actually the 3rd that did) until the decision to start my own blog was cemented (excuse the pun). I found the other blog in the most unlikely of ways.
My website host has a function that logs visits and provides statistics on my site. At the beginning of the month, we showed at our first home and garden show. A rather expensive endeavor, I was very curious to monitor the results and see if it made sense to do it all again. Checking the statistics, my web traffic had grown quite a bit. then I checked where the traffic was comming from. although most searched for me directly, there were 2 clickthroughs from a blog. Researhing the blog, I found that someone had commented about the show and our booth. MOST of it was favorable, and ALL of it was informative. This very honest third party opinion didnt know that we had been standing for 10 straight hours on a carpet without padding. We know that they must have stopped by the booth after 7pm, because it was in this final hour of the show on Saturday that we decided to break out a bottle of wine to toast our success and the end of a very long day. We felt that the wine was a classy touch to a classy product offering. We still think it was, and appropriate considering that the main display was a wet bar! and, it was a very good bottle of wine.