I think we all go through a phase when we realise blogging can be so much more than you talking to yourself on the internet. Some might want to turn it into a bit of income to help out the family while staying at home, some might want to go the whole ProBlogger hog and rule the web. Some might want it to springboard into a freelance writing career (like me!), and some just like to see just where this blogging gig might take them (also me!).
At that point, it’s natural to want to see where you’re at in the blog world. Where do you fit? What’s “normal”? what’s “good”? How do you know how much more traffic you should be getting, if you don’t know what’s needed? Often you’ll be told traffic doesn’t matter, and smaller blogs with good engagement are just as useful to brands than the big bloggers with tons of eyeballs on their site, and that’s true. But it doesn’t mean we don’t like to know where we stand and where we can go from where we are.
Blogging can be such a solo mission. We write, we send it out “there”, but we don’t really know what goes on behind the keyboards of other bloggers. So while I was digging around in my analytics the other day, I thought it would be fun to show you the journey my stats have taken. It might be more or less than yours, but I stopped worrying about that sort of thing a long time ago. Even four years ago when I started, there wasn’t the amount of blog readers there are now. People just starting out these days get far more views in their early days than I did – so the only way to go from here is up!
I started Veggie Mama properly in March 2010. I added the Google Analytics stat counter at the end of October 2010, so we’ll start from the next full month. Each number is for that month only.
Unique browsers: 36
Page views: 110
Unique browsers: 1153
Page views: 2369
Unique browsers: 2161
Page views: 4680
Unique browsers: 5831
Page views: 17,910
Unique browsers: 10,591
Page views: 31,724
Unique browsers: 15,037
Page views: 44,950
Unique browsers: 22,907
Page views: 54,530
Unique browsers: 33,317
Page views: 83,521
So there you have it. No better or worse than anyone else, just my journey. I had both my babies 18 months apart during this time, so I’ve not spent a lot of time growing the blog aggressively, and there is a ton of stuff I could have done/could do to grow my traffic. But I’ve been distracted (haha) and really haven’t made it a priority. I think 2012 was when blogging felt like it really took off here, and my stats reflect that (quite a big jump from 4680 page views to 17,910 in six months!). I really don’t think anyone should get caught up in the numbers too much (there’s SO many variables that sometimes we can’t even control), I feel there’s a great deal more to blogging than that. But I also know it’s fun to see where others are at, so here you are!
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History of a Blogger – the Veggie Mama evolution
Blogging as an alternative to a traditional media career – my hints and tips!
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