I am blessed to have a few die-hard friends that check the site pretty often for updates. There are a few more that check in from time to time. Looking at the usage stats for this blog, there are a couple of visitors that stumble in here every week, look around, and never come back.

But now I’m starting to get folks stumbling in from unrelated Google searches. This didn’t happen much until recently, and I started wondering what had changed. I checked my Google pagerank, and it has jumped from 0 to 4 (on a scale of 0 to 10). That’s kind of amazing. I could actually start getting real traffic through here, whether that was my original intention or not.

This could really go to my head. But it’s not a bad thing. More traffic = more fans, more fans = more demand, more demand = bestselling memoirs, early retirement, and hitting the talk show circuit. Cool.

But, every epic journey begins with a baby step. And one thing that successful bloggers do is open a Cafe Press store, and hawk their hats, T-shirts and mousepads, each emblazoned with their logos, witticisms or obscene mottos. It got me thinking about it. Wearing a hat with my blog on it would be a hoot. It would certainly be a conversation starter. So, I mocked one up at Cafe Press to see what it would look like (click for full-size):

That looks good, but it’s a Trucker’s cap, with a foam crown. It’s what the good ol’ boys called a ‘gimme’ cap. I’d rather see something of a little more quality.

That’s a nice-looking cap, but the placement of the logo in the patch is kind of awkward. It’s a rectangular logo, in an oval patch. Doesn’t work that well. Maybe just the plain cotton cap?

That’s nice. That’s a good looking cap. But I bet I could move beyond just hats. What could be better than a hot cup of coffee served in a PAgent’s Progress mug?

What a great mug. That’s a mug that folks would talk about around the watercooler. A mug like that would improve a cubicle just by sitting on the desk. But why limit myself to hats and mugs? If you have a devoted fan, they want to really advertise. They want the website blazoned across their chest for the whole world to see:

Looking good! That’s a really handsome T-shirt. But I’m not much for T-shirts, myself. I prefer long-sleeved shirts, and really like sweatshirts.

Now that’s awesome. A sharp, stylin’ hoodie, spreading the word about my website. I have to admit, that logo looks good on just about everything. Caps, mugs, shirts–

GAH! Too far! Too far!
Never mind.