Over 1 Million Viewers!

Every hour of every day there is someone around the world looking at the Contemporary Makers Blog. 

We now have over 1 Million visitors since we have been keeping count. Sitemeter has listed over 1,000,000 visitors with 3,687,920 page views. This is the counter at the bottom of the page. The invisible counter is Stat Counter whose logs has list 1,460,477 visitors with 3,698,341 page views. There have been over 20,275 photos posted in 3,964 post. We have showcased over 575 makers. The blog previewed on February 8, 2008 and started posting daily on February 29, 2008.

Below are some of the countries that are frequent visitors.

Argentina

Austria

Bangladesh

Brazil

Bulgaria

Canada

Chili

China

Croatia

Denmark

Egypt

Finland

France

French Polynesia

Georgia

Germany

Greece

Hong Kong

Hungary

India

Indonesia

Ireland

Israel

Italy

Japan

Jordan

Kenya

Korea

Kuwait

Lebanon

Lithuania

Loa People's Democratic Republic

Macao

Mexico

Netherlands

New Zeeland

Norway

Pakistan

Philippines

Poland

Portugal

Prague, Cheh Republic

Qatar

Republic of Korea

Romania

Russian Federation

Sarajevo, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Saudi Arabia

Singapore

Slovakia

South Africa

Spain

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Sweden

Switzerland

Taiwan

Thailand

Turkey

Ukraine

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

United States

Uruguay

Vietnam

When the blog was first started on February 8, 2008 we had no idea where it all would lead. Art and Robert had long talked about using an electronic media to showcase all the different makers. Then I discovered blogs and it wasn’t long before Art and Robert decided that was what was needed. The name Contemporary Makers come from the title of Roberts’ book.

In the beginning the post were random. Sometimes there would be several posts throughout a day with no logic or thought. Then Art posted on the American Longrifle Forum about the blog and that there were new post every day. The die was cast. Originally I had to be up before 7:00 daily to post. Then Goggle introduced a way to set the time when the post would go live.

There are a couple of things about the blog statistics that stand out to me. There are people every hour of every day looking at the blog. At 2 or 3 in the morning there are people in America looking, not just those getting up in Europe. People go into the depths of the archives looking at old post. Some people have logged onto the blog more than 1,500 different times. The number of different countries that are repeat viewers is amazing.

Thank you to al those who view the site. Thank you to all those who send us photos to post. Thank you to all those who allow us to go to their web site and get photos of their work which may be the only way we are able to showcase some work. Thank you to all those who have allow me to photograph their work or their collections. Thank you to all those who leave comments and email us about our post. Thank you to all those who introduce themselves to us at shows and tell us how much they appreciate the blog. Thank you to all the friends that we have made because of the blog.

Thank you to Robert for his friendship. The only time we met was at the first CLA Show. Especially thank you to Art for his patience for all the hours that I am at the computer formatting, organizing and uploading images. Jan Riser

The "Contemporary Makers" book I published in 1980 took over 5 years to finish. Of course it was not a full time project, but most of the guns had to be photographed here on the west coast which meant convincing the owners or makers to trust the mail... and me! For all that effort, I was only able to finally record about 33 different gunsmiths. In the end we printed 3000 copies and it took nearly 15 years to sell them all. Most of the sales were in the U.S. but eventually many made it to Europe and a few went to Asia and Australia.

Through the untiring efforts of Jan and Art Riser, our blog with its thousands of images has now been viewed over a million times and all that in about 4 years! The world has become smaller but is more interesting than ever. Thanks to all the doers and the lookers. Robert Weil

When the original idea for the blog was first discussed we had no idea what we were about to get into.  Robert and I are quite good at coming up with ideas that someone else has to bring to life.  That unfortunate someone was and continues to be Jan.  Her tireless efforts have brought to light to the world at large some of the finest work being done today and occasionally some fine work from days past.  We are blessed to have builders sending us images for inclusion, but a great deal of the work photographed is done is by Jan herself. She is generally just a blur at shows starting her work early and not stopping until the show closes for the day.

The next time you look at the blog just remember one person is working seven days a week without time off to bring you images for your review.  Robert and I are most grateful to her and to our viewers.  Our visions would only be just smoke if it were not for you and for our one woman staff.  Thanks Jan and thank you. Art Riser