Practical Hacks began, quietly, one year ago.
Actually, I first began blogging in February of last year on WordPress.com; the blog was called LifeApps. (I wonder if any of you reading this visited that blog?!?)
After a couple of months I better understood the limitations of that (free) blogging platform, and began thinking about moving to a hosted site so I could expand what the site offered and customize it to my liking.
But I had a problem – I’d written dozens of posts by that point and didn’t want to lose that content. After a lot of investigation and planning (I am not a technophile), I crossed my fingers, flipped the switch and made the jump to WordPress.org… on July 28th, 2008.
A quick digression, and a small illustration of how funny and full of coincidence life can be: I’m writing this on the evening of the 27th… and until 15 minutes ago I didn’t realize the 28th was the blog’s one year anniversary. Avoiding a couple of longer posts I should be working on, I somehow flashed on the idea of looking at what I’d posted a year ago, only to discover that the post on the 28th of July of last year announced the change to Practical Hacks. You can view that post by clicking here: LifeApps has moved…
To my readers, thank you. I hope the site has helped you in some way. Thanks for being here, and for reading this. I appreciate your support more than you’ll ever know.
July 28th, 2009 at 9:44 AM
Wondering if you could publish some statistics about your blog (if you want to share them). It would be interesting to see the progression of interest/followers/readers over time.
I think that many of us consider writing a blog on an infrequent basis. I don’t have the time to write every day much less multiple posts every day to really grow an insanely active & popular blog. I just like to write every now and then and wonder how following develops for a low-profile blog that is well written and interesting like Practical Hacks.
[Reply]
Kevin Reply:
July 28th, 2009 at 5:57 PM
Michael,
Thanks for your kind words about the site. I don’t really check stats all that often, but I do look at the number of subscribers and my Alexa ranking daily…
Here are some simple stats comparing one month and 4 months from last year, with more recent periods of the same length:
September 2008 June 2009 Change
7,075 Visitors 19,418 174.5%
8,309 Visits 22,964 176.4%
14,600 Page Views 35,264 141.5%
1.76 Pages/Visit 1.54 -12.5%
71.6% Bounce Rate 79.6% 11.2%
1:59 Time on Site 1:17 -35.3%
9/1/ – 12/31/08 3/1 – 6/30/09 Change
44,698 Visitors 53,536 19.8%
51,875 Visits 67,453 30.0%
90,546 Page Views 110,727 22.3%
1.75 Pages/Visit 1.64 -6.3%
69.8% Bounce Rate 77.7% 11.2%
1:42 Time on Site 1:38 -3.9%
September 28, 2008 July 28, 2009
6 Subscribers 372 6100.0%
The data is jumbled together here; I hope you can make sense of it.
In addition, I compared the number of subscribers from late in September of last year to the number today. (I still disappointed in this number, but looking at last September’s number, I’m surprised I didn’t just give up and take up bowling.)
So… bottom line, the site gets some traffic, but not a ton. It solidly ranks in the top 150K sites per Alexa, and it occasionally dips into the top 100K. What’s more gratifying to me are the emails and comments I get from readers; without those, there’d be little point in continuing.
A request: if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the site, please share it with them; I’d really appreciate it.
[Reply]
July 28th, 2009 at 6:53 PM
Congrats on your 1 year anniversary!
I enjoy your blog and check it every day. (I should use RSS I know, but I just enjoy checking it manually each day.)
You have many interesting articles, but I’ve especially gotten some great info from the travel related ones. Your reviews rock! Very thorough and “Practical”.
Keep up the good work. And thanks for taking all of the time involved.
[Reply]
Kevin Reply:
July 28th, 2009 at 8:13 PM
Steve,
Thanks – you’ve made my day! RSS or otherwise, I’m glad you’re here. Thank you!
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