wordpress – One Chance to See the World

How I visualize my blog stats to comprehend them

Yesterday I posted about the time I celebrated 500 followers. Today it is two years exactly since it was posted and I remember it like it was yesterday. I was delighted to have received this news and to try to visualize 500 people reading my posts was pretty cool even if a little difficult to do. But to visualize it makes it more real to me. On a screen full of text and numbers it can be easy to disregard such numbers. WordPress alone has over 75,000,000 sites according to online sources, I mean how are we supposed to comprehend such a number!?

I remember some of the very first followers I ever had. You know who you are, I still talk to some of you every day and it is fantastic. When we are talking numbers in the tens it is much easier to take in, however fun to think about. What I sometimes imagined was sitting on my computer at home and having ten people listening and watching me as I chatted away and typed up a post. I mean that is pretty nerve-racking to have ten people listen to you. I hated it during presentations in school and even as an adult in meetings. Presenting to an audience is not my thing.

So yes, imagine ten people listening to you read your blog posts out loud in your home, suddenly it doesn’t seem like a small number anymore.

I visualize everything. The views, the visitor numbers, anything that turns a number into a picture to help me analyse what’s going on. And before you know it, all that hardcore blogging pays off and you have 500 followers looking forward to each post. Amazing. I’ll add here what I posted in the link above when this notification from WordPress came my way back in 2017. It certainly shows how significant this number is.

Again, thanks to moth dad over on Twitter to help with this visual. Now I admit, we have to space everyone out a mile to get the distance, but 500 is still a very large number. It doesn’t seem so with the ridiculous follower numbers we see some people have on Instagram, however some people are just freaks. I mean another way I think of how significant 500 is, is this. Imagine you were sentenced to 500 days in prison, or told it would take 500 days for your WiFi to start working again. Or if 500 wasps were heading to your home or your team lost by 500 points. All will ensure sheer turmoil, and this gives me a nice little boost for the day.

But anyway, back to the map. If you have 500 followers, this is how far they would stretch if a mile apart. Supposing Brexit didn’t cause a problem at the border that is. If you don’t quite have that number of followers yet that’s cool, as 500 views works too and is a nice number to aim for moving forward.

My best month ever views-wise was January 2018. I hit 10,877 views for the month, visitor numbers were half this. But lets go with the 10,877, you know it’s our blog so we can make those kinds of decisions. We’re now talking about a small town population here. One with at least five pubs, there’s always one you just don’t go into as an outsider if you want to come out alive. One of those sized towns. Instead of seeing a number I see a thriving community, I see actual people all doing their own thing and living their own lives. Imagine that, a small town following what you do online and talking about it in the local fish and chip shop as they wrap the chips in the newspaper with your name as a headline.

I am providing the stereotypical British village/town visual for everyone, but I am sure you have figured that out by now. Feel free to change this for your local village setting.

And then, lets increase the statistics timeframe to one year. In that same year of 2018, I totalled 57,140 views and 23,961 visitors. But again lets go for the larger number. Why not? It gives me an added boost to see the glass half full. Now lets imagine we are walking up the steps of a football stadium and step out to this view…

This is the Vicente Calderón, a 54,907 seater stadium in Madrid. If these blog views were people, this venue would hit full capacity. Think of the noise this amount of people would make. The atmosphere and the buzz. Amazing. Now I know none of us are going to be sitting in the centre circle of such a venue with such a crowd simultaneously, that’s not how blogging works. But I just wanted to share how I visualize the numbers over the years. From a room full of people to a stadium full of people. Wherever you are on the scale, keep moving forward and keep watching your blog and community grow. My community is amazing and I have been very lucky to meet and talk to so many cool and interesting people through this site.

I hope this was helpful, even if a little weird, hopefully both. But we need weird or we are doomed.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you do anything similar!

Featured Photo by Eric Perez on Unsplash

Meeting Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Village Photo by Stephen Oliver on Unsplash

Stadium Photo by Liam McKay on Unsplash

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary or follow me @samest89 on Instagram

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging,

Sam

What a difference two years makes…

Another post I wanted to share was very fitting because it was two years ago tomorrow. I have had a habit recently of finding old posts that were posted on or almost on the same date but years prior, coincidental to say the least. This post has given me inspiration for a post tomorrow which is great and look forward to sharing.

It is fascinating looking back to milestones I achieved in blogging, and I actually remember typing this post up and how happy I was at my achievement. What I have noticed is that I was as happy gaining my 500th follower as I was when I typed my last milestone post thanking 6,000 readers that have decided to join me on my journey. Like I have said, it isn’t the number but the growth that I love to see, and that so many people, whether it is 50, 500 or 6,000, are happy to engage with me and follow my blog. It really is appreciated.

I still can’t believe I managed to get The Proclaimers in there though…

From February 7th, 2017…

Drinks are on me.

So August was already off to a great start and then I noticed that I hit 500 followers this morning. Thank you to each and every one of you that has shown support and continue to do so daily. You know who you are!

If every one of you beautiful bloggers were to stand a mile apart, I would have a pretty long walk ahead of me to meet every one of you…. although oddly there is a high chance that you would then be much closer to me than you currently are, which is pretty cool to think.

And whilst I am on the topic of 500 miles, I have found this picture of Europe courtesy of moth dad on Twitter, showing where the The Proclaimers* would end up if they did indeed walk 500 miles, and then 500 more.

Are you in the dangerzone?!

*For anyone born after 2000 (especially outside of the UK), The Proclaimers were a band with a hit song about walking a thousand miles for the one they loved, we just don’t know the planned route. If you enter a British pub that is playing karaoke and this isn’t played, there is probably a glitch in the matrix.

Originally posted 08/02/2017

Re-posted 07/02/2019

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary or follow me @samest89 on Instagram

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging,

Sam

Four years of blogging: How to stay motivated

I woke up to this wonderful achievement today with two thoughts in mind. One, has it really been four years? And the other, has it only been four years? It seems like I have been doing it forever, however a lot has happened in four years and four years is a long time to be blogging every day, or even weekly

To think back to 2014, there are many things I didn’t expect to happen by 2018.

Trump would become president
The UK would leave the EU
I would see (online unfortunately, not in person) SpaceX sending rockets to space, paving the way for a base on Mars in the near future
England would get knocked out of the Euro’s by Iceland. ICELAND! I am used to it now, but for a country with a population less than my city, come on now. Fair play to Iceland though
So many inspirational and high profile names leave us, young and old
So many inspirational and high profile names caught in controversy and really fuel movements looking for change
Sunderland would be rock bottom of the Championship, on the verge on being relegated to the third tier of English football (this is making people back home in Newcastle very happy, trust me)
I would move to Australia, work in Sydney Harbour and swim on the Great Barrier Reef
I would get an achievement from WordPress saying I have been blogging for four years

I am sure there are so many other moments, discoveries, great movies, quotes and music that you could all help remind me of since this day. But yes, four years is a long time to keep at it.

One of the reasons I can do so is that I enjoy it. If I was to purely do it for the likes I would have stopped long ago. I have 1,106 posts including this one and I would say that 90% of them have only 2-4 likes and no comments. It takes a long time to build an audience and this isn’t guaranteed over a long period of time. Consistency is key. The moment I stop following my uploading routine the views drop like a stone and they take a long time to pick up again. It really is something you have to stick to, dare I say, religiously. It is something that I have to enjoy doing so much for so long. It is also incredibly important to engage with the community. I kept myself to myself for a long time whilst blogging, however nothing has helped me engage with the community more than engaging and reaching out myself. A band won’t be successful unless it tours. Why should I expect people to say hello to me if I don’t say hello to anyone?

Another factor is that you need to have an aim. I have always wanted to write a book (you can see this in my About Me section) and I was debating what I should do four years ago. Write a book or start a blog. I thought it would be wise to build an audience for my book to appeal to before throwing one out there with no one to read it. It is also a therapy for me, being able to write everyday about what I think about obsessively. I need to get certain things off my chest and blogging helps me greatly with this in mind. If you have an aim, you have a reason to blog. This could be to write a book. Maybe it is to share your passions for photography or poems, or it could be to reach out to those people that share your worldview, lifestyle or illness. I think I blog for all these reasons. If there is a end goal, this will help massively with motivation and productivity.

I am also tired of working for other people. I enjoy work, but I cannot help thinking that I want to work for myself and want to share my own ideas and opinions instead of being paid to promote someone else’s. Life is too short to not give something to the world and we all have our own unique talents and abilities. I want to use mine, no matter how big or small, as much as I can as often as I can. If I can one day use my blog to help fund my dream of publishing a book and furthering my creativeness and productivity, I would much rather do that instead of working in a job not because I want to, but because I have to. This would also free up so much time that I cannot afford to waste.

I also need to give up using excuses. One thing I have noticed, and I have been a culprit believe me, is that so many people start off their blog post with:

‘So I bet you are wondering why I haven’t been posting lately. This is because of X and Y, forgive me!’

The problem is, the readers haven’t been wondering where you have been. They are now looking elsewhere. If I want to keep my readers, I cannot be allowing excuses to get in the way. I could give excuses, but this won’t stop people from feeling disengaged. If I want to build my blog, I need to keep at it no matter what. So now I blog on my commutes to and from work. In long lines. On my days off and before and after work. Some people find that is exhausting, and this is of course fine. But success isn’t easy and I don’t want to fool myself into believing that it is.

Blogging is a huge commitment when blogging daily. It takes effort to actually sit down and set up a blog, to design it and keep it afloat in an ocean full of great fellow bloggers. I know I am not putting in as much effort as so many other blogs, but this is evident in their success. If I want to grow, I have to work for it. And I couldn’t do this without having the passion first. If you have passion, you have the secret weapon that a lot of people don’t. You have what it takes to keep going when so many bloggers try and give up.

If you are reading this, congratulations, your fire is still burning.

Keep those firelogs coming!

Sam

Where I come to blog

The WiFi at home has packed up, meaning it is impossible to blog at home unless I use my phone, and this eats my data very fast. For that reason I have spent a considerable amount of time in the local coffee shop, which actually motivates me more as I am out of the house and doing something. There is something about being in public that stimulates me, I feel a bit more alive with all the chatter around me.

I like this place because A, it is right around the corner from my place and B, the WiFi is good. It also has charger points in good locations in case my laptop runs low on battery and the staff are a little friendlier than some of the places I have been to. On top of this you get a nice little addition of chocolate drops on the spoon, which is a lovely touch even if it does quickly melt to the mug. It looks like they added more this time too. I don’t know what I did to deserve that, maybe they caught me blogging and assumed it is a review. I don’t do reviews and I am no where near big enough to promote a business by advertising their products. I don’t want to be that kind of blog anyway.

So I wanted to give a little insight as to where I type my words, like I said I find blogging much easier out of my home. I also mix it up a little bit to keep me from becoming demotivated, a new spot helps perk me up. I do however have to have a secluded spot, I don’t like the idea of people behind me peering onto the screen and watching me work. I have always been a little self conscious as to what I do, I like the mix of being in a place bursting with life but having a little privacy. I bet it is great fun being a very popular blogger, one that has hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of fans that like and comment the second the ‘Publish’ button is pressed, but can work completely uninterrupted in the process. That certainly sounds fascinating.

Where do you blog? Do you have favourite place in or outside of the home? I feel it would be nice to get to know you all a little better.

Just because you aren’t seen doesn’t mean you aren’t doing great

I love looking from my current location toward the city centre. The huge skyscrapers huddled together in a space 1cm across. In that space are what, tens of thousands of people? Hundreds of thousands?

Each pixel will possess hundreds of unique stories. The people in there doing fantastic or inspirational things with fascinating life stories. But from here, what makes one pixel different to the last? Nothing. It all blends into one as if those stories aren’t there.

Do you wish your blog was viewed more? More likes and interaction? More people appreciating the hard work and effort put in and the incredible stories you have to share? Those people are out there, they just can’t appreciate it if you are out of view.

Imagine this skyline at night with all the lights turned off. Every blog post turns a light on in your building, one by one. Eventually that building will be seen for miles and miles and will get heads turning. It may become the most noticeable building out there. That’s a bit like blogging in my opinion. Keep posting and keep switching those lights on, sooner or later your audience will have little reason to look anywhere other than your way.

Keep blogging!

Thanks

Thank you to what seems to be every nation apart from the UK celebrating Mother’s Day today, resulting in the annual moment of panic as I fail to remember ours has already been and gone. This actually leads on quite fittingly from my Words post earlier today.

Also, thank you to everyone who follows, reads and likes my blog for allowing me to hit 13,000 views today. I love you all!