As we prepare to say goodbye to 2023, a blogging ritual I quite enjoy is watching the race to see if my site stats can pull through and beat the previous year.
In my nine full years each time (apart from last year), my views have surpassed the previous, and this year it’s going down to the wire on whether it will beat 2022.
There is something I find exciting watching this, especially as, for some reason I can’t explain the last few years, my blog’s highest views happen in the October, November and December months.
It may seem sad but there is something exhilarating getting to the final quarter of the year thinking you’ve got no chance against last year’s best, only for it to pull through.
Luckily all this is in good fun, and I don’t take site stats as seriously as I used to, or base it for validation of my blog’s own personal success.
I would love to be able to transfer this attitude to a lot of other bloggers, as I think a fair few use this as a measure of how good a writer and blogger they actually are.
If this is you, I want you to think about taking a different approach.
Food for thought: rethink how you view your blogs success.
When looking back at how your blog has grown over the past year I want you to do me a favour, I DON’T want you putting all your self worth into follow count, views and money made.
Think of other ways to reflect how you’ve been winning this year.
Look at the quality of connections you’ve made.
Your ability to keep up a consistent schedule.
Small steady improvements you’ve made to your writing craft.
Or realising you know more about the skills behind creating a blog than you did last year.
Your blog is making you greater beyond measure
Everyday you write your blog is a victory, writing is a pleasurable process, that in it’s own intangible way helps you grow every time you sit down and put pen to paper.
Your persistence to keep writing week in week out is amazing, finding creativity despite set backs, pushing through the distractions that life throws in front of you, and keeping going even when at times you feel jaded by a lack of “success”.
I say your blog is making you greater beyond measure, because there is no way of applying a quantifiable figure that allows you to add up how far you’ve come.
It only takes one
You may not realise this, but the articles you write are having an impact on others.
This could be something as simple as your words raising a smile when someone is feeling down, finding inspiration and motivation when lost, and finding some small purpose when they’ve previously had none.
For me, if one, just one person has read something on here that has changed there life forever, then:
- the countless hours spent writing, hundreds and thousands of words written (and the many more that never have been seen),
- the times of frustrations that I don’t get dozens of comments expressing adoration for my words on every post,
- the time I could have used doing something else,
- or just the false expectations I held when I started that blogging will lead to something bigger (hello dreams of multi-release book deals!).
Then this has all been worth it.
Bloggers – as you progress into 2024, do keep thinking about the bigger picture, you are more powerful and amazing than you realise, and your words can make a big difference to someone.
Wishing you a Happy New Year
James @Perfect Manifesto
Perfect Manifesto 
Very encouraging and inspiring 🙌
Thanks 👍
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Thank you 🙂
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After 3 years of blogging I’m so happy with where my blog is at. It’s not at all how I thought a successful blog would look like. I imagined thousands of followers, money and sponsorship and even perhaps giving up my day job. Instead I’ve found a creative outlet with a small loyal community of truly interested, interesting and supportive people. I don’t like blogs with massive numbers of followers where individual comments are lost in an enormous string of contributors. No, I like the perfect little elite groups of people that connect on blogs. I still miss a couple of new bloggers I followed over the years who gave up, even people who only posted a few times. The feeling of excitement that a new post is in from a blog you enjoy following is amazing, even if you’re only one of 3 followers on the blog. We need to celebrate this more, small blogs are better, in my opinion!
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I know where I’m at now is not what I envisaged at the start of writing and publishing books to a die hard audience – it’s certainly part of process with blogging to have difference between expectations and reality, and that can make a difference whether we really love it and continue or quit.
I know what you mean with massive blogs, in terms of commenting I do think ‘why bother’, that’s why I view it as a unique selling point advantage for small blogs to engage with their core regulars. Its funny because around covid I realised I’d spoke to people who regularly comment on my blog regularly more than people I know in real life!
There was a blogger whose work I really loved when I first started, they did similar stuff to what I write about, so it felt like we were mutual allies there to be the top fan to each others posts – I remember when they said they were going to quit because they questioned their purpose and I was trying to tell them how good I thought their stuff was – such a shame when they gave up.
I had a difficult time last year and it made blogging challenging especially with reading others works, though as things started to improve I vowed I’d take more time to read more newer and smaller bloggers, figuring if there is one person out there engaging with their work they might be encouraged to keep going!
Thank you for your thoughts.
Best wishes, James
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Thanks for these encouraging words, James! I often thinking of giving it all up. Sometimes I write a post/create a video, and it gets a good response. So I follow up with something that, based on the past success, I think will be well received, and it goes over like a lead balloon. So frustrating! But as you said, if even one person gets some good out of it, it’s worth it.
Because of the internet and social media, we are made to feel that if we don’t have tens of thousands of views or follows, we’re abject failures. But I once read some very good advice that has stuck with me and helped me when I felt discouraged: Just picture the number of views/likes/follows you do have as people in a room. It then becomes much more real and tangible. Yes, those are actual PEOPLE, and if we were giving a lecture or presentation in a room with that many people, we’d probably be thrilled! So I guess we should just be grateful for whatever impact we are able to have, and just keep trying to grow and improve as much as we can.
Happy New Year!
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Happy New Year!
That’s the thing with posting – some of the stuff I’ve spent weeks/months planning and writing doesn’t go down very well and two of my most popular posts were hastily written in a lunch break – it would annoy me years later when people were still commenting while the stuff I truly loved was ignored! 😂
That’s good advice, I’ve tried taking it back to when I first started using the Internet before being a content creator was even a thing – where I’d just post to share a view, idea, whatever and be happy, and get on with life and not be constantly looking at analytics as a measure of success!
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That is all nicely put, James. My blog stats are down on last year’s but I’ll continue to do it for as long as I’m still enjoying blogging. And as you righly said, if just one person gets some help from one of my posts, then that makes it all worthwhile.
Unfortunately some bloggers see it more as a popularilty contest. I’ve been there and it was not long before my enjoyment of blogging ran out. Do it because you want to do it rather than for somebody who you think wants you to do it.
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Thanks Hugh, for first eight years my stats always grew, until last year when they dropped which I knew would inevitably come.
It happens more often than bloggers realise but people are getting something out of posts, it’s just that most readers won’t comment.
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I agree. I’ve seen a decline in comments but an increase in lazy comments – you know, the ones – ‘great post’ and ‘I enjoyed this.’ I have a post coming out next week, which includes a section on how I will be dealing with dead-end comments. I think we discussed it recently, so thanks for the idea of informing readers how I’ll be dealing with certain comments.
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I’ll have a look out for that, the quality comments I still get seem to come from long established readers. People who don’t generally comment are the ones being lazy with ‘great post’ etc, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence!
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Your timing James, to take from your blog’s title, is perfect, as only over the last 24 hours I’ve been contemplating whether it is worth carrying on with my own blog. I had decided to carry it on as I’ve paid for it till the summer, but otherwise I probably would have probably called it a day.
But your post has helped, though I need to write more often (just 10 posts this year). Thanks for the reminder on why doing it can still be worthwhile.
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Thanks Paul, glad this is timely for you!
I’ve had periods whether it’s worth continuing on, especially when paying an annual domain fee makes you think if it’s worthwhile renewing if you’ve not been overly active or enthusiastic with writing.
I decided at the beginning of the year if I was going to continue doing this I had to reframe why I was doing it – trying to chase the viral post, the one that would get me dozens of adoring comments, or the one that was guaranteed to be the top result in a Google search was giving me creativity paralysis as I tried to create that perfect post.
Letting all this go, I realised I had to write for me, and the personal growth benefits that came with it, and if anyone else happened to get something out of what I’m saying, then that’s enough for me.
Good luck with it, Happy New Year 2024!
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And the same to you, I’ll follow the same approach and hopefully we’ll both get more satisfaction next year. All the best.
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Thanks, and a Happy New Year to you, too!
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Hi,
I definitely needed to hear this, so thanks for writing it. Cheers.
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Thanks Justin, glad it’s been of help!
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