I made the front page! w00t!

Today I found out that my AmeriNZ Podcast made the front page of the iTunes Store (USA) Personal Journals sub-category of the the Society & Culture category of podcasts. To those who don't know what that means (or don't care), it's sort of the equivalent of being on the NY Times bestseller list. Sort of. Okay, it's not all that much like that, but it's the best analogy I have.

There's a little bit of mystery as to how these rankings are determined, but a lot of it has to do with iTunes reviews (especially the 5-star variety). I'm up to 13 reviews on the US store, along with one each in Australia and Germany (I haven't checked other countries recently, so I think that's it).

My main goal in soliciting 5-star reviews was so that my podcast would be listed first in the search results of anyone who searches iTunes for my podcast. These reviews help that, but they've also now lifted me onto the front page, and that may help me gain new listeners among casual browsers.

I frankly never paid much attention to the front page until Eric from Confessions of a Southern Boy in Yankee Land moved onto it after begging (pleading, cajoling...) for 5-star reviews. His podcast started well after mine did (I'm just sayin'), so that kinda got my attention. To be honest, I'm glad it did because hitting the front page feels good.

I'll never ask for a donation or cash support of any kind for my podcast. If you want to help me, or if you like what I do, then please write a 5-star review on your country's iTunes Store and that'll help me a lot. If you don't want to do that, go to my podcast's section on your iTunes (search “amerinz”, as in the picture with this post) and click “yes” to the question, “Was this review helpful?” That helps a lot, too. By the way, you can do this on any country's store, but you can only (easily) write a review for the iTunes store you're registered for.

Blog bits

Just so this blog isn't left out of all the meta talk, I was looking at the keywords used to access my blog. By far the most common way people have found it lately is some variation on a search for information about the song “Forever Young” as used in the Tourism New Zealand commercial (and now this post will turn up in the search results, too...). But one was “the point of life is not to arrive in good condition”. I thought that was really interesting, but I have no idea what that has to do with my blog. Still, it seemed appropriate with my birthday on Monday.