It’s December, so we can look at the final numbers for the blog for November. I SAID I KNOW YOU DON’T CARE.
We had 5,937 views with 3,835 visitors for the month.
Not bad, but that’s not why I’m mentioning it.
For the year so far, we are poised at 55,298 views, with 32,256 visitors.
I know you hate bar charts. This is the last one, promise.
This is a huge increase over last year, and even if you factor out the one blog post that went crazy viral, it’s still nice increase over 2016.
Again, that’s not really why I want to draw your attention to this.
We are within striking distance of 60,000 views for the 12 month period ending December 31, 2017. This blog has really gone crazy this year and I want to thank you for that.
Odds are, with the contest results being posted in a few weeks, we will get thousands of views and go over the 60,000 mark before the end of the year, but even if we don’t, it’s still pretty amazing what happened.
That’s it.
I just wanted to be a little excited and share that with you.
Now, if you really wanna know, the main effort of growing the blog took place at the end of 2014/beginning of 2015. You can see that from the numbers in the bar chart you didn’t wanna look at. How did I grow my blog “so quickly” after it not doing much for so long? I followed other blogs, commented on them, and some of them followed me back. After doing that for a while – and it wasn’t really that long, but I made a lot of friends along the way. Want good followers? Be a good follower. Simple as that. Find common interests and interact. Want volume quickly? Do it a LOT. Soon after employing that “growth” effort, we were on a roll here, growing steadily each month under our own power without doing so much new reaching out. Good content, a fun attitude, and replying to comments did most of the growth from there, and adding contests did a big increase after that. ONE blog post went viral (or small scale viral, I guess) and that added a lot to the numbers, but so what? The numbers were good before that, too.
DAN ALATORRE 
15 replies on “I know you don’t care about this but I do so bear with me”
I care, Daniel. I care deeply. (And these are great stats, congrats!)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah yeah. You’re all about bar charts.
LikeLiked by 1 person
lololol.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Celebrating your every success!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Am I the only one wondering what post went viral?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe. It was the one about how to show a proper text conversation in a story.
LikeLiked by 2 people
just curious 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sure, I know. I thought I referenced it but that was probably a different post.
No worries. It was good, informational post that answered a question that needed to be answered, but I don’t think anybody predicted it would end up getting as much play as it did. I’m equally proud of that and annoyed. It inflates my blog numbers so I have to always factor it out if I want to see any true growth. Also, I didn’t really author 100% of it, it was a combination effort. That’s kind of annoying on my blog.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Marketing will kill your creativity. Playing the social media game will turn your brain into yogurt. Quantifying page and site hits is one thing. How long do the spend on every page? Are they “like and follow” harvesting or are they reading? I’m down with your newsletter idea, and writing for 2018. Because you can spend all your time being visible and getting what look like results doesn’t get your material out there. Save the popularity contest for FB, write for us here. There’s a great line out there that applies so well to Social Media marketing. Never confuse activity with productivity. Congrats on the page hits. But at what price, and to what quantifiable effect?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Marketing is half the battle of being an author. A necessary evil. And one that requires constant attention. As far as killing creativity, it might take some of your energy, but like anything else that’s a muscle that needs to be built.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I highly agree with you, Dan. I’m still in the process of trying to land my book with an agent and one thing they are all looking at is your “platform.” Like you, I have gone long stretches with neglecting my blog but I’ve been making more of an effort recently. I think your strategy is sound and all that is really required is time. Of course you also need to have quality posts that people want to read and can read quickly. That is my problem, as you can see, I have trouble being brief! haha. Good post though, I appreciate it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wonder how many of my readers will think I go long stretches with neglecting my blog
LikeLike
Oh, I only recently followed you so I don’t know if you actually neglected it or not! I just read the above where you said you hadn’t posted as frequently in the past as you had in the last two years. But you’re obviously doing something right with that many followers!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Actually it’s just the opposite. I started posting about five days a week in 2017, up from once or twice a week in prior years and once a week in my initial years.
No big deal though. Welcome aboard.
LikeLiked by 1 person