Time to reflect
In the blink of an eye we've passed the midway point of what can only to described as a six months we never want to live through again. Personal pain, personal tragedy, mental struggle, loss of life, loss of job, many of you reading will no doubt relate to one of those but sometimes through those times comes a world of good.
And for me thats very true of two things on that little list, but not for this platform. What is starting to become of it is almost an explosion of satisfaction not just here on this blog but writing for me in general. What I've felt the past three months or so is tiny victories against the virus, I haven't suffered from it myself but hopefully this blog has given people a chink of light every now and then to take time out away from things and immerse themselves in ramblings from me and also others.
I love a stat, always have done. What I hope you see and feel as you read through this piece is how staggering this has been in such a short space of time. I've have been blogging since September 2017 so it's coming up close to three years. My dream growing up was to be a sports journalist, nothing else really, but it's always been on the back burner as so to speak, life gets in the way. The invention of social media channels has given me a pathway into the industry I want to be in without needing to be mainstream about it.
The image above shows my figures for a full year of 2018, a nice little number for twelve months labour of love. I'll break it down just slightly for those of you who don't use Wordpress what it all means. Views and visitors work differently, each time you visit the site to read on a daily basis you are only counted as a visitor once, but each page or blog you read is a view no matter how many times you log onto the site each day.
Just before I add the second slide I'll add I set myself some targets for this year back in early January, sensible ones I felt to show a decent increase on 2019, they were to blog a minimum of six times a month, 250 visitors per month, to get 3000 visitors by December 2020 and reach 10,000 page views also by the end of the year. By the middle of May, I'd hit the 3000 visitor mark in less than half a year, April alone had over 1000 visitors! March blessed itself with 978 visitors, the 250 target blown out of the water. By early May 11,000 page views beat that target and in less than half a year all my targets were done. At that point it can be easy to get complacent and think time to put your feet up for the rest of the year, but not me! And then June unfolded...……...
One month! I am beyond words when I look at it, as if this isn't and doesn't happen to me but it does! To hit that many unique visitors in 30 days when two years ago I had 1543 in a year blows me over, truly staggered by it, how far this has come in two years has really shocked me but in a good and positive way.
I always maintain that it's not all down to me, it's down to you reading what I write which I is why I say 'thank you' at the very beginning. Of course it is down to what topic I choose to write about and where I promote it too, thats in my control, you all reading it is not and to get these kinds of figures is really humbling.
It's not just an English blog either, I know I have friends who travel abroad for business and of course people read while on holiday too, supporters exiled in other lands, but we've had none or very little travel for three months so to see the worldwide appeal is very humbling and that's an every month thing, new ones pop up all the time and they might only view one article but I couldn't be more thankful.
But, me being me I don't tend to rest on my laurels, this kind of thing makes me hungry for more and to keep taking it places I never thought possible to do, the introduction of doing video interviews on a Saturday afternoon has only added to what I can already do and as more football returns more opportunities will be there to grab, as they say the sky's the limit isn't it...……….