“No, really?”

This past weekend, I visited a couple of websites/blogs that I designed in the past but that I had stopped maintaining because they simply zapped too much of my time. One is about running “mommy camp” for your family over the summer, the other is about finding cheap, “kosher” fun around Southern California for families and date nights. I was curious to know how they are doing, because ever since the local day schools went on Chanukah vacation last week, I’d been receiving emails and phone calls for activity recommendations. I wondered how many people had headed to my website instead of to the phone.

Lo and behold! The sites are actually doing quite well. That’s without all the publicity and SEO tactics I’ve adopted for this site. In particular, the family camping site shows a lot of promise. I’m contemplating going back to spiffy up the blog and try to monetize it (originally, it was a community organization project). It makes me feel a little weird, because my author site (although it’s picking up) has never had the kind of consistent numbers that other one has. Part of it is certainly a matter of audience–more people are interested in finding fun things to do in SoCal than in obscure Jewish writers. I’m wondering if there are other lessons to be learned from this situation.

Has anyone else had this experience?