On this Wednesday, the 30th day of November, 2011, I present you, my friends, with my one hundred and fiftieth post on this little blog. I started the blog on January 28 (306 days ago) so some super simple math that I don’t even need a calculator for tells me that I’ve been blogging, on average, once every two days. Those that have been here awhile know that it’s actually gone in spurts. This last couple of weeks, for instance, I’ve been on blogging fire! Whereas, in the summer, I was sort of an absentee blogger. Sorry about that :)
So, for a fun 150th post, I’m going to share some statistics. I sort of feel like I’m getting naked in front of all my friends, here. But hey, in the spirt of over share… let’s go! Note that I didn’t install Google Analytics until February 7. There could have been some serious visitors and page views that aren’t getting counted in that first week (jk).
- First Post: “Fifty-Two” (formerly, and incorrectly, titled “Sixty-Four”) on January 28, 2011.
- Total visits: 3,980
- Absolute unique visitors: 2,580
- Total pageviews: 10,814
- Most popular day: April 13, 2011, 670 visits, 852 page views. (I was stumbled by popular bloggers that day)
- Most popular post: Camera Bag In Action (most hits come from stumble upon, Google and Beers & Beans)
- Most of my visitors come from Canada (44%), the US (38%), the UK (5%) and Australia (3%). With the next runner up… Denmark (1%). And, my visitors from Denmark spend the most time on the blog (an average of 7.5 minutes) and check out the most pages (5.22). These have been pretty steady visits over time. So, thanks Danish friends!
- I’ve got 119 comments (of which 31 are from me), this blog is clearly not much of a conversation! Web 2.0 fail. The comments mostly come from mom (hi mom!), bloggers whose blogs I quote – mostly travel bloggers who are big on the comment train (hi travel bloggers!), and other repeat visitors (hi!).
- Akismet has protected me from a heck of a lot of spam (a heck of a lot more than 119 comments that’s for sure). But, I can’t figure out where to find this number. However, for reference, there are 72 spam comments in my spam folder at this very moment.
- Of all the time my blog is being read, new visitors are reading it about 30% of the time, returning visitors are reading it about 70% of the time. Thanks repeat friends! And I hope some of you new guys will stick around!
- This graph is kind of telling, it shows total number of visits (blue) against average length of time (dashed grey). Looks like those big spikes in April and August did nothing for the quality of my readership. It also looks like people were spending way more time (like twice as much time) on the blog in February and March.
What does this graph tell me?
- Visitors from Stumble Upon make me feel great when I see how many people popped in and make me feel SAD when I see how little time they stay for.
- People used to read my blog for longer. Much longer. I don’t know why. Food for thought.
- I lost some visitors when I slowed down my blogging this summer.
- Both my number of visits and my average time on the blog are trending up again. Maybe I’m starting to do something right?
Being an accountant, math nerd and pretty much all round nerd in many respects, I’m gonna go ahead an give you a virtual high-five! Congrats on 150! :)
Yes!! Virtual high five right back at ‘ya!
How does it work with people like me who read this on my iPhone from an RSS app (Newsrack).
Am I being counted? Also that’s the reason I can’t comment not user friendly from the app, and I need to go to the actual site!
The short answer is “no”. But, I do also monitor my subscribers with a big caveat: it depends on how you subscribe. If you click on the “subscribe” button on my blog, you subscribed through feedburner and I monitor those stats. If you just type my url into your rss reader, no. I don’t count you. But it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know I’m actually UNDER counting rather than over counting!