The Waiting Game

My wait continues. Over a month after registration began, I waited. I watched deadlines come and go for qualified runners and deferred runners who didn't finish last year. I waited as other charities opened their registrations and started filling their teams. I waited and waited, sometimes I even waited patiently, and yesterday was the day. Kind of. It was, at least, FINALLY my turn to apply. 

So what do I do now? I wait. My charity (which I still won't name given that I haven't officially been accepted yet) is new to the Marathon this year, and as such took a bit more time getting set up. So I'm again playing the waiting game until I hear back for sure, and it's getting harder. 

I need better things to focus my energy on than watching my inbox. To pass the time, I've decided to work on some fundraising strategies. One of the most important parts of my fundraising last year was actually starting this blog. Almost overnight, my fundraising efforts doubled, and I was able to hit my $5,000 goal with weeks to spare. 

Those figures are actually kind of amazing given the stats I've been looking at. Google tracks page views by post, and I can remove my own views (seriously just about cuts the views in half) so I can see just how many people read each post, and when. From March to April, my first 5 posts, I averaged just under 38 views per post. I don't really know if I was expecting more or less, but I think raising about $3,500 on 38 views per post from March to April isn't half bad. 

My one post-race entry? 456 views. Holy crap. Now I'm working on how to get those types of numbers without any bombs going off. 

To achieve that, I'm adding a few things. First, and sorry that I didn't realize before, it seemed comments were disabled unless you were registered, or signed in, or something. Now it should allow you to comment any time, and please feel free to do so, or send feedback on any aspect of the blog. I also added a couple of widgets to follow me on Google+, so feel free to add me to your Circles of Trust and I'll do the same. I'm also going to add a couple polls on fundraising ideas and some other things once they come up, but all in all, I want this to be more interactive. Actually, in reality I'm just starved for attention. I crave it, and I need an audience to play to. Ok, not really, but it would still be great to see some more comments and feedback. I do read it and I will respond! 

So here's my plea for now: whenever you see a post (and actually read it), share it on Facebook. Add me on Google+. Take my picture and put it on the bulletin board of your local coffee shop next to a few dozen ads for guitar lessons or 1-man recreations of the entire Harry Potter series. Just make sure you throw the blog address or title in there somewhere, too. Whatever you do, even if it's just clicking one 'share' button, it's going to help, and it means a lot to me. I'd love to start seeing these page-view counters get up into the hundreds by the time I'm ready to run in 2014. 

Now I'm going to wait again. And see if any of these changes helped. I'll certainly be checking to see if YOU read this.