Yesterday, I began looking at the results of our “a little help from our friends” week. The week isn’t over yet, so my current thoughts aren’t set in stone, but the trends have been consistent from day to day.

Here’s what I’ve seen:

Daily visitors surged, and each of them downloaded at least one freebie daily.

(People who subscribe to my newsletter had access to additional freebies. Sign up using the form in the right sidebar, if you’d like to receive it. It’s free.)

Less than 1% of those who downloaded freebies bought a product or donated anything to our moving fund.

But hey, only about 10% even clicked on the poll to let me know what they’re looking for in the future. (That percentage is even lower if this weeks’ visitors weren’t the exact same people every day.)

I have to accept that, for most people, this was a “Sure, why not?” opportunity to snag something free, period.

On the very positive side, nobody — not one person — bought an item for just one cent. Everyone paid the suggested price, or more. (Thank you, that is greatly appreciated!)

I’ve learned a lot from this. Part of it is extreme gratitude to those who donated to the moving fund, bought anything, linked to this site, or left a comment to say, “Thanks.”

Thank you, thank you, to everyone who helped us this week… and who’ve helped us at other times, as well. HT and I are enormously thankful for friends like you!

Now, I’m looking at what I can improve.

Part of my current review is painful 20/20 hindsight. For example, when I split up Aisling.net (my original behemoth of a website) and created sites that weren’t necessarily associated with my name… I think I lost a big piece of my online identity.

The plan had been to make it easier for people to find the hundreds of free how-to articles I’d put online.

It’s now looking like, to many people, I became “Aisling… who?”

What’s most important is to learn from this mistake (and many others), fix what I can, and move forward.

Ultimately, I can only hope for “a little help from my friends” if people actually think of me as a friend. If this website (and my other sites, and my podcasts) aren’t cohesive and don’t lead people to connect with me as a friend and fellow artist… well, these are just a bunch of random websites.

I’m rethinking a lot of this. Big time. I thought I knew where I was going with my websites, including Santa Flamingo, but my plan may not have been well considered.

If I’m going to continue as Aisling D’Art — which is a pen name adopted in the early/mid-1990s when I was one of the first bloggers online — I need to rebuild name recognition.

I’ll be thinking about this when I’m on the road, next week, driving from Texas to Maine.

Speaking of that… I’ll be on the road (and offline) during the first week of May. Between now and then, and while we are getting settled (probably most of May), I won’t be online very much. This is a huge move for us.

Meanwhile, thank you so much to those who gave something in return for the freebies. Whether it was a purchase, a donation, a link back to this site or a comment saying, “Thanks,” I really appreciate your friendship and support.