2013 in Review: Blogging

It would be almost silly to have a full look back on 2013 and not discuss blogging. Though my major 2013 in Review post will run in the days following this post, I wanted to work on a post to give you my ups and downs with blogging for 2013.

This year had its ups and downs when it came to blogging, that’s for sure.

In regard to ups, I’m happy with how things grew. I always have known I wasn’t going to be one of those super over-the-top bloggers. I’m not going to draw hundreds or thousands of readers per day because, honestly, with a personal blog, it can be hard to do so. Instead, I kind of gauge success with getting a decent number of page views and being able to have fun and be part of a community.

Still, I like the slight bump in people looking at the blog.

I started keeping track of statistics in early 2011, a year in which I ended with 20,669 page views. In 2012, the blog received 23,925 views, followed by 26,017 in 2013.

That’s something be be quite happy with.

The year also gave me my highest one-month total, when there were 3,810 views in October. In fact, in six of the 12 months, I drew the highest amount of readers in said month since starting statistics.

Not too shabby.

I’ve also tried to stay more up on people who visit and comment. In the past few weeks, I’ve been pretty lax because of the new job. But I need to get back into it. In September, I posted a blogging pledge that I wanted to live by. And though a bit slow at times, I’ve been doing my best to go with these items.

Those items included:

• Responding to each comment on my blog.
• Visit other blogs during linkup or blog hops
• Visit blogs of those who comment on my blog.

I haven’t been perfect, by any means. But I’m getting better. I have a blogging planner for 2014, so here’s to hoping that helps me continue to try and grow with my pledge.

For those who do it, blogging isn’t easy by any means. Especially, if you want to have some sort of consistency. I like to try and have at least five posts per week, if not a full week. So I tried to keep through that. I have found, however, that doing it with certain work-related things, can be hard.

So I need a routine, one in which I am building now.

But during the summer, when I was working as a photographer at a baseball camp, the hours, along with other extra-curricular activities, really made me kind of aloof when it came to blogging.

From January through May — months in which my life was job searches and the like, I averaged about 28 posts per month. When I worked at the baseball park for three months — June-August, I averaged 12 posts per month, which included a year-low eight posts in July. After that job ended, I had 28 posts in each September and October, followed by 20 and 21 in November and December. I started this new job in mid-November, so it seems the blogging routine I’ve tried to create is better than that of the one I had during the summer months.

WordPress, the software I use for blogging, also puts out a yearly “report” for each user so they can see what their numbers did etc. Some of the interesting tidbits include:

• The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 26,000times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
• The busiest day was Oct. 17, when I received 844 views, with the top post that day being my one about the CZW House of Horrors match. I received some help, for sure, with several people with a lot of followers re-tweeting that post and sharing it on Facebook.
• A ‘lil HooHaa was visited by people in 120 countries, with most coming from the United States. Canada and the United Kingdom were also top places where visitors visited from.

Shout outs 

The year-end report also includes the top-five people who left comments on the site. So, I’d like to give them specific shout outs, with links to their blogs. I can’t thank people enough for commenting as it makes it fun to blog. I also know I need to reach out and comment more on other blogs in 2014.

These are in order. I give extra thanks to these five!

1. Phil at The Regular Guy NYC.
2. Ziva at Ziva’s Inferno.
3. Paul at A Photo a Day.
4. John at Nonameddufus.
5. Nicky at We Work for Cheese.

Thank you all for visiting. It’s much appreciated!

Favorite posts

Below are links to my favorite posts of 2013. Because the CZW House of Horrors match is linked above, I’m leaving that one out as it may have cracked my top 10.

The rest are linked below, in no particular order.

I especially enjoyed these posts this year, so hopefully you’ll have some time to look back and check things out.

• From January: Photos without an agenda
• From January: Smooches and Stompeez
• From February: Making blintzes
• From March: Dunkin’ Siesta
• From May: Baseball scorekeeping is still fun
• From September: Carnival Pride cruise
• From September: Beating the heat
• From September: Age is but a number
• From November: Walk through to the light
• From December: Goodbye, old friend
• Honorable mention: Gentlemania (January) and CITO event (April).

In the end, 2013 wasn’t a bad year for blogging on my end — especially with the personal blog. I have a lot of things I’d like to do in 2014 (a post will be coming up with week on that subject) to see what I can do to take this blog a little bit to the next level. I don’t need it to become some massive blog (though it would be cool), but to be able to find some more “blogging friends” or things like that would be awesome.

One thing that helped this year was becoming one of the New York representatives for the Northeast Bloggers Network. This has allowed me the chance to find some new blogs, get to know many more bloggers and be part of a really cool blogging community. The reality is there are a lot of bloggers out there and groups like this — as well as another I joined, Bloppy Bloggers — have been so good for me in 2013.

There were some highlights, too. It was the year I started the HooHaa Photo Blogging Challenge, a monthly photo challenge/linkup. It’s been a whole heap of fun, and hopefully it will continue to grow. I finished the writing challenge at We Work for Cheese for the second time. There were a few other challenges as well, so it was enjoyable.

Still, it’s time to turn the page on 2013 when it comes to blogging. It was a pretty solid year in blogging, so here’s to making the next year even better.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!