While everyone else in the country was busy today celebrating Groundhog’s Day, an important milestone almost went unnoticed. Sadly, it’s not the first time we’ve been upstaged by a trained rodent. In case you didn’t know, today marks the one year anniversary of the launch of InternetZillionaire.com.
Our mission was simple: Present the world with a new way to kill time at work. Competition was tough at first, as people clung to their traditions of building rubber band balls and creating massive chains of paper clips. Gradually, people began to find that reading about save the date cards can be just as rewarding as photocopying their butt on the Xerox machine.
Anyway, I thought I’d use this space to share a little about our readership over the past year. Dave installed some tracking software to monitor the visits our site receives. The following are actual statistics about visits from other countries.
Here’s the top five:
1. Canada (282): When you factor in the exchange rate, our zillions are worth ba-zillions up North…
2. Bahrain (103): I couldn’t find Bahrain on a map if my life depended on it. After this many hits though, I think I owe it to them to buy an atlas.
3. Germany (65): This is even more astounding considering we have zero references to David Hasselhoff on our site.
4. United Kingdom (60): I feel honored to give something back to the country that gave us Def Leppard.
5. Bulgaria (56): This isn’t a surprise. Dave and I are like rock stars in Bulgaria.
As you might expect, not everyone came to our site intentionally. Many visits came via a search engine. Here are some actual words and phrases that people typed into Internet search engines that ultimately led them to Zillionaire:
Christbox (2): I’m sure there was a smattering of evangelical Christians disappointed when they found that “Christbox” is our newly adopted slang for an “XBox.”
Maleah McPherson (8): Seriously, Maleah… can you explain this? There are a lot of people googling you.
Eddie Van Halen Capri Pants (2): Actually, my beef was with Sammy Haggar’s Capri pants, but you get the idea.
Celebrity hit in the groin (4): See, I told you there was a huge market for this.
Camo Cumberbun (2): No tuxedo is complete without one…
Tango Neutralized (9): This proves there are other grown men out there speaking in an esoteric language rivaling the nerdiness of Klingon.
What will 2005 hold? Well I don’t want to give anything away, but you can expect to hear about my Sonicaire toothbrush at some point. And possibly some thoughts on remote controls. I might even tell you about the time I saw Dustin Diamond (Screech from Saved by the Bell) at a comedy club.
So stay tuned. And thanks to all the readers that have visited Zillionaire in the past year, and especially those who have commented. We’ve had fun killing time together…
I do have to agree that Zillionaire is a great way to kill time at work. The old standards espn. or sportspickle.com are always good for a few minutes, but Zillionaire is a truly great way to waste a few minutes and get a good chuckle while you’re at it. Unless you’re just not seeing any new posts (see the last couple months of 2004, after Halo 2 came out…I think MR and DA completely forgot there were a few of us out there who were counting on them for a laugh every now and then-I mean there’s only so many times a person can read about toilet-paper gloves), then things get frustrating, and you consider trips to Spokane to use the Volcano.
Anyway, congrats on the site guys, it’s been fun. I also have to say that I’m particularly excited about the upcoming piece on the Sonicare toothbrush, whenever that comes around. And remotes are always a good topic, and I will say that life with remotes gets a lot more interesting when there’s a little two-and-a-half foot tall monster running around your house stealing them, hiding them, dropping them in glasses of water, etc. Let’s just say I couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds for this site. Well maybe I could, but it would be tough.
And one last thing, now that there IS mention of David Hasselhoff on the site, expect your readership from Germany to really spike.
Gabe,
You may be onto something. In fact, I think your David Hasselhoff theory is really groundbreaking. Since this post went up, our hits from Germany have increased from 65 to 69. That’s a 6.15% increase in just four days.
This only goes to prove what Norm McDonald used to say on Weekend Update: “Germans love David Hasselhoff.”