Statuses

A funny quirk of social media is that despite having more followers on Twitter than Facebook (4,100 vs. 2,400 at the moment), and even with Facebook algorithms that seem to reduce page views for any post with commercial intent (e.g. product links) so you can pay to boost it, The Map Room consistently gets twice as much traffic from Facebook as it does from Twitter. Go figure. (Google+ traffic is 10 percent Facebook’s; Tumblr’s is a rounding error.)

More books have been added to the Map Books of 2016 page: have a look. Some are available right now; others you’ll have to preorder. As usual, buying via this website helps support The Map Room.

I thought about doing a similar page listing map colouring books for adults, but it seems redundant when you can just refer to the colouring books tag (or the coloring books tag, if you’re going to be insistently American).

In March, 30 readers supported The Map Room by contributing a total of $332: 10 contributed $62 via buying me a coffee and 20 contributed $270 to my web hosting fees. My thanks to you all for your support.

WordPress says The Map Room got 11,742 views and 5,978 visitors in March. Those numbers don’t include legacy archive pages (another 2,900 or so views), RSS subscribers (about 1,200), or people using a blocker (see my privacy policy). They’re about even with February’s numbers.

The most popular post in March: Map Colours and Colour Blindness. Coming a close second: Super Tuesday Results by County.

March’s bestselling book (as determined by orders via this site’s affiliate links) is, by a large margin, Gretchen Peterson’s City Maps: A Coloring Book for Adults (see post).

Just realized that today marks The Map Room’s thirteenth anniversary. (There was, of course, the 54-month interruption between June 2011 and this past January, so it doesn’t mean thirteen continuous years—unless you count the occasional map posts on my personal blog, on Twitter and on Facebook. But I maunder. In any event, another milestone.)

In the 48 hours since I posted on how to support The Map Room, 18 readers have contributed a total of $166. That’s tremendous given the size of my audience: there may not be many of you, but you’re hardcore. The split between buying me a coffee (it’s a tip jar, actually) and contributing to my web hosting was 28:72. Contributions to the latter are sufficient to pay for 10 months of web hosting on my current plan; they’d take a big bite out of the additional cost of the upgraded plan, which I will now look into. I deeply appreciate the support. Thank you.

Here are two ways to support The Map Room, if you’re so inclined. You can contribute to my hosting costs ($10 minimum) or buy me the equivalent of a coffee ($2). Both methods use PayPal.

With online ad revenues a fraction of what they once were, I’m exploring other ways of making this project economically viable; these are two of them. (I’m also contemplating Patreon, but not yet: I need to rebuild the audience a bit more for that to be worth doing.) Your support is not at all obligatory but would allow me to dedicate more time and effort to The Map Room and upgrade my hosting package to something more robust.

It’s also deeply appreciated. My profound thanks to those who have contributed so far.

I’ve been told that scheduled maintenance will be taking place on my server some time today (1 March 2016) between 7 AM and 9 AM Pacific Standard Time (10 AM to noon Eastern, 3 PM to 5 PM UTC.) A brief period of downtime of up to 30 minutes (but usually less than that) is expected.

The place needs decorating and a new coat of paint, there’s still a ton of things to do to make it feel like home, and more than a few glitches that still need fixing, but it looks like the structure will stay up and keep the inside dry and warm. Time to open the doors.

In other words: welcome back to The Map Room.

It feels good to be back at this.