A review of the blog in 2022

January 01, 2023 #blog

In the 2021 review I set a few targets for the blog in 2022:

For 2022

❎ Publish at least 50 posts

Published only 12
❎ Reach at least 100k readers (would that mean 300-400k measured from the logs?)

Stopped analyzing so much, but nowhere near 300k even if I did have a couple reach the front page. Furthermore, I migrated servers, so lost some logs.

From the remaining logs, however, I have had only 15k readers here, and around 30k on TheMarketplace.Guide

One sixth the traffic from one sixth the blog posts makes sense.

It might be worth getting some help in promoting the blog so that I have more time to write.
❎ Build an audience (either recurring readers or Twitter.)

Entirely failed, even if I did given it the tiniest of tries. And I did have a few subscribers on Revue.
❎ Publish something on at least two other sites

Didn’t even try unfortunately, although I have prepared a list of sites that take guest posts.
✅ Focus more on interesting and positive posts instead of whiny ones

The first substantial post of the year was Big tech should help tackle misinformation on smaller platforms originally written as a criticism later re-phrased to make it helpful instead. And generally much more conscious of this.

I published 12 posts, totaling approximately 4600 words. The average blog post length is 390 words.

Big tech should help tackle misinformation on smaller platforms is the longest post at ~1015 words, followed by Replacing Google Analytics with just GoAccess with 910 (although it has code samples that shouldn’t really count).

The sample size isn’t sufficient to comment on whether the average length is sufficient.

Posts were mostly about experimenting on things or ethics.

Jekyll, interestingly enough, dominates. Editing the source markdown of a generated static site in the browser is honestly one of my favorite experiments. I’m using it right now.

I did notice that Feedly reports 15 followers on my blog’s RSS feed. This is definitely an increase from last year’s 1 (me).

It seems to have had more traffic than the main site, but I do think I spent more time on it and posted a few articles there.

Several more people actually bought the PDF version. I was very pleasantly surprised. I was very surprised though.

Two approaches to product design also got some traction because it got shared by someone on Twitter.

I’m fairly sure that another article got quite popular but I can’t find it at the moment because it was before I switched servers.

I do like writing, still. Once you get in the zone it’s amazing.

It really takes time, and this year that was in short supply.

I guess, the targets are basically the same as this year and provided no new upsets, should be doable.