This blog turned 1 year old this week. Hooray!
Thanks to all my faithful readers for sticking with it. What started as a whim, as an outlet for my rambles, has matured into something I take more seriously now, thanks to your views and your inputs. Looking forward to the year ahead and many more to come!
Thought I’d share some statistics for you, thanks to the good folks at WordPress.
Over the past year Upscale Shack has seen 84 blog posts that have been viewed 2,898 times by 1,444 visitors (each time you visit the site you are counted as a visitor, this doesn’t mean that 1,440 different people have viewed the blog). Visitors came from 56 different countries, from as far as Azerbaijan and Hong Kong and Cambodia. The overwhelming majority of views came from the United States (2,324), but the next top five countries include Australia, United Kingdom, Botswana and Germany (tied) and France. We now have 89 faithful followers, most of which came to us via Facebook and Twitter, but a few from the WordPress feed itself. The blog posts have received 65 comments, including my replies.
Our best day ever was 136 views from 39 visitors on October 4, 2014, which coincided with the posting of our most popular blog post to date, A Century of My Grandfather, commemorating what would have been my grandfather’s 100th birthday. This post has been viewed 124 times to date. The second most viewed post was Daily Gems, which has received 119 views. Both of these posts benefited from generous repostings and sharing on Facebook by our followers.
The photo blogs of my travels have been consistently popular, although the least viewed post on the site (seen only once) was 10 Years, 28 Countries: 2011 Part 2, which I’m assuming got overlooked somehow, because it’s a beautiful post from Cameroon and CAR with lovely pictures of gorillas and elephants and me looking adventurous (do check it out).
Posts of my poetry and music blogs have consistently received fewer views, the music posts just aren’t very popular, and I have largely stopped doing them. As for what this says about my poetry, oh well, I won’t be dissuaded. I know the poetry has brought in a number of followers itself, and I will continue to dabble in poetry whenever the muse demands it.
The book reviews are consistently popular, and I will try to do more of them in the future, just as soon as I find the time to actually finish a book.
Some of my shorter works of fiction have received several views. But the longer ones have not. I know that a 500 word post is much more likely to be read than a 5000 word post, and I know that I have a tendency to be overly wordy at times. But thanks to everyone who has been following the chapters of my ongoing fictional saga of Jake and Wakesho, and I promise to get a new chapter up just as soon as my writer’s block goes away (maybe in another 20 years).
Monday has been the most popular day for views, at 5pm, oddly enough. October and November, 2014 were our best months, and viewership has slowly tapered off since then, reaching a low of only 81 views in June, 2015. But this is mostly due to my lack of regular posting. I published 14 posts in October, 12 in November, but only 1 in June. Lesson learned, people visit more frequently when you post more frequently.
So that’s a summary of the first year of the life of the Upscale Shack Blog. Thanks again for reading and please keep coming back! This blog wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for all of you!
Upscale Shack 