Do you want to know how I got 400’000 page views on my blog? Granted it took me about ten years, but I started from zero and grew step-by-step. It’s been about ten years since I started this blog.
Back in October 2008, I published my first article about ExtJs on my blog. It was the moment a long journey began, and I think after ten years the time has come to look back.
Usually, I do not look into statistics of my blog. First of all, I write articles just because I want to write them and there is no reason to feel bad if an article does not get many views. On the other hand, I value the success of a single person out there who learns something from my article and gives me feedback in the comments higher than a number indicating “success”.
But after ten years, I thought it’s the right moment to take a look at a few (at least for me) interesting and surprising stats from my blog.
The Goal
At first, I just wanted to learn about blogging, learn about WordPress and improve my English. After a few years, I realized that I provide some value to a few people and just continued writing articles until today.
From the beginning until now the main focus of my blog is software developers, but I also wrote articles about topics that are relevant to other people as well, e.g., the latest article about mentoring.
I am also sure that I was able to improve my English writing skills because of my blog. At least if I go back to my first articles, I see a lot of grammar mistakes and a much smaller vocabulary used. I admit my articles are still not perfect and will never be perfect, but at least I made progress.
Often, I want to write about a topic, and while doing the research, I learn much more about the topic itself. Sure, it is a time-consuming process, but the reward regarding knowledge gained outweighs the effort in my opinion. It also follows a popular quote I am a fan of:
Articles
During the last ten years, I published 42 articles. Those 42 published articles received about 230 comments in total. I answered nearly every single comment, and I am thankful for all the feedback I received. They helped me to improve and motivated me to put in the work.
Also, I have 40 drafts saved on my dashboard. I know that there would be a few more if I had not deleted them. So only about 50% of the articles I initially started got published to the site.
I either do not complete those drafts, or I think that nobody wants to read them or I believe that they are too short to provide value.
Visitors
Most of my readers visited the blog from one of these five countries:
- The United States of America
- India
- The United Kingdom
- Germany
- Brazil
The first three countries were expected because I write all articles in English and those are countries where English is the primary language. I am a bit surprised about Germany and Brazil taking place four and five, but both of them are countries with many people, and it seems like they like my blog. My home country Switzerland ranks in 7th place.
Views
How many visitors do you get on your blog?! A question people ask me from time to time. Sure, I have a rough number in mind, but usually, I do not lie if I say I don’t know. But, now I exactly know the numbers.
I wrote my first article ten years ago and started with zero views. In 2013, my blog got some traction and articles started ranking in Google. Before this date, I only had a few articles, and Google did not list the blog.
After that, I got a few more readers every month until I peaked in March 2016 where I got about 7’600 views in a single month.
After March 2016 the visitors decreased, and in November 2018 (the last completed month by the time of this writing) I got about 2’700 readers. The data of the last month in the chart (December 2018) is incorrect because the month just begun at the time I created the screenshot.
What I learn from interpreting this stats is that the traffic follows your effort with a delay. In my case, the delay is about a few months to a single year.
There was a time I wrote many articles (in 2013), and there was a time I did not write much anymore (2015 until recently). Despite that, I got most of my traffic between 2014 and 2017.
It means that I took my blog up to a year to get traffic from the effort I did in 2014, but the traffic stayed about three years even though I did not write a lot of new content and the old content got older and older.
Browsers & Platforms
Although everyone has a smartphone by now (at least I assume most readers from my blog having one) the percentage of mobile readers is just about 10%. 90% of the viewers read my blog from their desktop computer mostly using Google Chrome as their browser.
I know that most of my readers find my articles in Google and since most of my articles are somewhat related to work I can imagine people finding my articles at work. I promise I won’t tell it to your manager.
Total views
The number that stands out the most to me is 400’000. I got about 400’000 page views from ~290’000 users on my blog in the last ten years. Those numbers are amazing. I never thought about how far this journey will go and how many people find something valuable on my blog.
I believe that if you provide value to a specific audience, the people will find your content (thank you Google) and learn something from it. If they like what they see, they even might come back.
In my case, most of my readers only visit a single page, get their value from my article and won’t come back. It’s okay for me. The only thing I would appreciate is to get some feedback to my articles in the comment section.
How much money I earned
Having a lot of traction on a website leads to a lot of money, right?! The question is if I have enough visitors on my blog to make some money and if I would have enough visitors how would I make that money.
I have never run any advertisements on my blog and, I do not intend to change that in the future. Maybe I will promote my products or my work, but I will not integrate a generic advertisement network like Google AdSense to my blog.
First of all, I assume that many of my readers are using an adblocker. Second, the only thing I would consider is promoting products I have a relationship – something I use myself or share the same values. I did not get contacted by any company so far. Therefore, I assume that my blog is too small and I genuinely accept it.
I have paid my hosting and my domain for more than ten years straight without making any money at all. As I wrote above, my primary motivation is not making money but sharing knowledge.
Final Thoughts
I do not force myself into writing articles, and I have not been consistent so far, but I decided that I want to continue and you can expect something exciting new soon. If you want to know about new articles on my blog and if you’re curious about what’s coming soon follow me on Twitter.
Last but not least, I want to say thank you for all the feedback you provide in the comments, and I hope that there will be another article like this roughly around 2028. I wonder, how the statistics (and my life) will look like then.
