Seven Years: A Blog Appraisal

~ beetleypete

I tipped over my seven years as a blogger at the end of July, and I am looking forward to the eighth year in 2020.

I thought to have a look at the current ‘All Time’ stats provided by WordPress in the ‘Insights’ feature.

Total views as of today.
277,610

Total visitors so far.
82,270

Follower totals.
WP 4,561
Email 37
Social media 218

Total 4,816

Posts Published.
2,710

Most popular day.
Monday

Biggest views on one day.
Sept 2nd, 2019

Most popular category.
Blogging

Most popular tag.
Guest Post

It’s important not to become obsessed with blog statistics, but I always find them interesting.

If you have just started out, take some encouragement from these figures.
And remember, my blog is small!

63 thoughts on “Seven Years: A Blog Appraisal”

  2. Thanks for sharing these numbers with us, Pete. They’re truly an inspiration for a beginner like me. Keep up the great work!

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  9. My blog even smaller, and haven’t posted as much the last couple of years – but, to me, in the end? My overall stats in window just shows me what part of the world I’ve managed to connect with – my email inbox shows me what awesome pen-pals I’ve made (some over 7 years+ now) and in the end? The reality of what the connections means to my heart, and quality of life, just cannot be shown, in stats – 😀

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      1. I remember…long ago…when a new acquaintance I had shared a ‘blog post with’ to elaborate on what they had wanted more information on, and, I thought, “why re-write? I can just share this – it has links for further info, etc.” – and they said, “how do you make your blog pay for itself?” and I was stymied – “um…it’s free…um…I’m not ‘branding’ or trying to get followers to sell to …um, can you clarify?” and he said, “well, people blog to make money, so how do you do that?” and I didn’t have anyway to answer, other than, “I don’t blog for money – I blog for my heart, my soul, my quality of life – I get ROI on my writing/commenting/connecting time by meeting really fascinating people, who live elsewhere – who see life differently than I do – who maybe speak a different primary language – live in a culture foreign to me – live in a part of the world I will most likely never experience, in person – so, to me? putting a $$ tag on that is just radunkulous – cuz my blog endeavors have the best ROI like, EVER, of anything, I’ve ever spent my time investing in – and it will ‘pay of in returns’ for so long, I think wall street could learn a thing or too – – 🙂
        But that’s just me – – I am rather grumpy about folks on social media (Facebook) who promote their biz on their personal feed – for the love of all that is holy – set up a biz page and invite me to follow – :). sigh – again – just me – connections opportunities to market/make $, but marketing, IMHO, never forms lasting connections – – (um, sorry I ‘blogged’ in your comments area – but yeah – that’s why I miss the boat on ‘understanding’ stats overall, or using them, or what – I do look at what folks view, just in case the info is in need of updating, cuz I found a better way, OR to even just say, “Um…I wrote this in (year) and guess what? Still working for me!” :). THAT is the power of stats/visits, to me – keeps me from being one more in the never ending line of ‘chaos/false news’ – 🙂

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  14. It’s statistics like these that have made me realize more people will read me this way than if I went to the trouble of self-publishing a book. Unless I write a blockbuster which is picked up by an agent and a mature press, I will stick to this format.

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  16. Pete, I get a bit obsessed with the numbers at times, and it frustrates me that non-wordpress users can’t leave comments…so I get a lot of comments on my facebook link, but fewer on the post itself on wordpress…oh well, it’s when I get comments from you and others that matter…and the enjoyment from writing and sharing stories…bravo on your stats Pete!

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      1. My site doesn’t offer that at the bottom…is it because I’m on the business account? I’ve gone to my site from other computers and that isn’t at the bottom…I just tried from my wife’s computer and when I tried to “like” it, it asked me to sign into my wordpress account

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        1. Maybe that has changed, John. I will have to investigate.

          OK, in ‘Settings>Discussion’, there is a box that states ‘Users must be registered and logged in to comment’. Try un-ticking that, and see if it works.

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  17. I’ve started to wonder about the reliability of viewing numbers. My own blog is on Blogger but I also have a linking WordPress site in order to participate in both communities. It seems to me that WordPress understates views whereas Blogger overstates them. My Blogger stats include a suspiciously high number of views from places like India and Russia. One very popular WordPress travel blogger I follow (apetcher ‘Have Bag Will Travel’) shows 987,000 hits, yet further down the sidebar he gives a breakdown by country with a total of 1.5 million views – so he has discrepant numbers for the same blog (again including from countries you might not expect). Can anyone shed some light on this?

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    1. As far as I know, David, WP does not count ‘likes’ as views. It also doesn’t count replying to a comment as a view, and any views by the blogger (as in me) are not counted as views either. When people view the blog on a phone app but do not click through to the actual site online, then that likely doesn’t count as a view either.
      So my guess is that the travel blogger ‘site hits’ include referrals from external links, which are not counted as views as such. Also perhaps clicking on the site trough a Google search counts as a ‘hit’, but not as a view? That would explain the difference.
      But I could be wrong of course. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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      1. It’s all rather opaque. One downside of Blogger is that it doesn’t have Likes – e.g. people often use it in WordPress to indicate they’ve see a reply to a comment (Blogger does have a gadget to use Likes for content but not for commments, though hardly anyone does).

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        1. I only reproduced the stats given to me by WP. I don’t take them too seriously, and of course cannot vouch for their accuracy. I do believe the post total is correct though. I have published a LOT of posts!

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