So here is a post that I never thought I would ever post when I started this blog, but here we are, 10 years and over 700 blog posts!
I started this hobby was back in 2014 as a little project to keep a track of my hobby journey and as an outlet for my thoughts and ideas. Over the last 10 years a lot has happened, from gaining two small people and moving house a couple of times, plus a growing collection of animals, currently 4 cats and 3 horses.
The blog has also gone through some changes as armies have come and gone, others have changed names and the narrative have altered beyond all recognition.
But what about the blog itself, what are the facts there? Well as I said, I have published just over 700 posts, with some years having far more than others. 2019 was the lowest year, with only 43 posts (not counting 2014 when I had 25 posts, but the blog was only 3 months old), in addition, May and September 2019 were the only months that I have published only 1 post. There have been a couple with only 2 posts published but September 2019 is the only month with just one post. 2017 was my busiest year, with 106 posts, more than two a week published! My busiest month was September 2017, with a massive 14 posts, mostly due to two event. The Northern Invasion tournament and the 8th edition guard codex, with several posts dedicated to list building for the tournament and the new regimental doctrines of the 8th edition codex.
While I haven't quite achieved my goal of posting every week, I have most years achieved posting the equivalent of once a week by posting at least 52 times a year!
But what of the posts themselves? Well the most popular post is still my guard leaks from back in October 2022, which still seems to gather a number of views every month! Additional a number of my kill team posts have been very popular, with most of my top 20 posts consisting of either kill team content or 8th edition content.
The various pages on the site have also seen a few views, with Astra Militarum page being the most popular, with the About Me page also proving popular for some reason!
All told there have been over 325,000 views, which is small change for some blogs out there, but I have never advertised or posted about my site anywhere, so I'm really surprised and pleased that it's been seen by so many people. Ok I'll admit a good portion of these "people" might not actually be people, more likely bots (usually russian) but still, I take the fact that my blog is popular enough for the bots to take notice and post their junk\spam comments occasionally. Apart from the occasional spike (February 2024 - 30392 views) I have been sitting around 2000 to 2500 views a month since around the middle of 2018, with early 2022 averaging around 3000 views a month.
But where have these views come from I hear nobody ask! Well, that's a good question and the answer is mostly the northern hemisphere. The good ol' US of A is top of the list making up nearly a third of all viewers, especially when you add in Canada and call it North America (USA 29%, Canada 2%). Singapore is next on the list with 21% and call me skeptical but I don't think a people in Singapore are some sort of blog superfans, although in real terms it's something like 0.012% of the population that have looked at the blog, so maybe?
Anyway, the next most popular country is Honk Kong (8%), followed by the UK (5%) and then Germany, Russia, Sweden and the Netherlands (all on 4%). These 8 countries make up just under 80% of my viewers, with only Israel (3%), Canada (2%) and France (1%) having defined viewer percentages. There are a whole host of countries that fall in to the <1% category and form the remaining 15% of my readership, with Australia topping the list from Indonesia and Ukraine. Finland is the lowest on the list with a figure given, with just 937 views from there, so maybe there's two dedicated followers reading my blog in Finland!
Other interesting fact are that more people use Windows (46%) than apple (32%l and chrome is by far the most popular browser of choice (59% to Firefox's 21% and Safari's 13%).
One last note to mention is that I decided to add adverts to the page a while back, just to see what would happen and there are a couple of things to note. Firstly they seem to pop up everywhere in my posts, regardless of what settings I actually have on! I have also made a grand total of 38p, and have made 6p in the last 3 months, down from the 10p I made in the three months before that! So are ads worth it? No, probably not, but it doesn't seem to be effecting the page in general, so I'll probably leave them up and see if I ever make the magic £60 mark to get paid!
So that's 10 year down, I wonder if I'll still be here in 2034? Hopefully and hopefully there will be someone out there still interested in reading about my hobby journey and random thoughts!
No comments:
Post a Comment