This is the first post for 2011 – no pressure to start the year off with a good one right? While this is not the one year anniversary for Life of an Architect, I am going to take a look at how my site performed last year. I can remember when I started out last year that I searched for any and all information I could find on blog sites. I had no idea what to expect, what was normal, who comes to the different blog sites, etc. When I told a few people I was going to write this post and reveal all my numbers, some said I was crazy and some thought providing some transparency was a great idea.I suppose I’ll find out soon enough…
Let’s start with the biggie first – the actual traffic to my site. This information is available to me in many different locations but I am going to work with the data provided to me from the company that provides my web-hosting. The data here is slightly different that the information I can find on Google Analytics but not enough to make much of a difference – I just think the information/ graphics are more concise and compact from my web host.
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My web service is provided by Blue Host and I set up my account on March 4th – that’s why there isn’t any data shown for January or February. For the most part, I experienced quality growth each month since I started – double digit growth – with the exception of the first 3 months when I was still riding the waves of the Top Ten Reasons to be and not to be an Architect posts that went global toward the end of February. Once that push died down, I went into a period of standard growth. You can see that I had 5,554 unique visitors in March and that number grew to 30,535 by the end of December. Does this mean anything to you? I’m not sure that it does for me other than I feel a small measure of pride that as many people came by as they did.
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This graph indicates when people are visiting the site. I could have guessed that the peak times would fall during regular work hours – but I would have thought that there was a much larger drop-off during the other times of the day. While a vast majority of the people who visit my site are from North America, I do get a fair amount of traffic originating from other parts of the world. Take a look at the next graphic …
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This is a map the represents where people are coming from in a macro view. In all, Life of an Architect has had someone visit from 190 different countries and territories. If the county/territory above is colored in, I have had visitors from that area of the world. Wow! I can honestly say that I am amazed that almost the entire world map is represented above – just a handful of African countries and some islands in the far north (the Norwegian islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen – which has no permanent population). I’ve never even heard of these islands but since I am half Norwegian it’s a point of pride that I get someone from there visit my site . they are on my radar!!
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So this is a graphic from Hootsuite regarding my Twitter information. I am really torn about the amount of time I spend on Twitter. I have met some really interesting people but as my number of followers has increased, it has become proportionately more difficult to make those connections meaningful. I started using Twitter on the same day that Life of an Architect went live – March 4th – and the people that I made a connection with when I had only 100 people – those are still the folks that I check in on. If you were #2014, I’m sorry that I don’t have time for you like I used to and I really feel bad about that but what can I do? At a certain point, I just can’t keep up with 2,000 people with any depth despite my best intentions – I’ll try and do better. What I do find awesome is that I am included on 255 lists as of this writing.
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This is a chart that mapped my follower growth over the last 6 months – pretty consistent isn’t it?
So what does this all mean and does it have any value to other people? I don’t know – but it has been a source of motivation for me over the last 9 months. What does matter to me – not necessarily the actual numbers (but those are good for my self-esteem) – is that there is consistent growth.I hope that I can spend some time and watch things continue to improve, moving backward would be a huge drag. I thought this post would be of value to my readers so they knew that they were a part of something good … actually it is something great. For the people who stumble onto this post after conducting a search just like I did, there will be some information available to them to compare and contrast, help them set reasonable expectations. Should everyone expect to experience what has happened to my site – probably not. If you write in a niche market and you post with the same regularity as I do (3x/week) then maybe you can get the numbers I have. If you don’t – not to worry. It’s not the numbers that have made this a fun experiment for me. I can honestly say that I have made some real connections with people, opened some doors, and been presented with some amazing opportunities – but that is an entirely different post that I am saving for later in the month.
Thanks for the ride in 2010 – I hope that 2011 will be even better for all of us. Thanks for being apart of my experiment and in a strange way a part of my life.
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