Trip Report, January 1st, 2023
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| Photo by Pixabay |
Travelogue
This is the seventh month on the journey. December is always challenging from a time perspective. Early in the month there was time and I was able to get part 1 of post 9 out in How to Make a Text Adventure in Rust blog series. I also got a good start on part 2 of post 9. As the month wore on, however, holiday events and travel brought writing to a halt. Part 2 will come out in January.
BUT, despite these challenges, the blog did draw in record viewership this month. 100% of that success came from post 9. For this post, I publicized it on Reddit and Hacker News simultaneously. This strategy paid off better than any previous approach, and is the approach I'll be taking going forward given its success.
The screen shot here is a record of the month and shows two very interesting points. The first and most obvious is the peak on December 4th when the post went up. December 4th is the single highest viewership day the blog has managed to attain. More importantly though, is the long tail that spills out to about the 13th. That tail was driven by users moving from Post 9, back to the first post in the series. Eventually links to the first post are what drive that tail.
There is still work to do though as links though to successive pages drop off very quickly. I have some ideas for how to increase engagement on page content via more interactive code samples. Eventually, I'd like to see if I can host a WASM based interactive version of the game on each page so users can see how it is evolving with each post.
Future Plans
Being the first post in the new year, it is appropriate to review the past year and consider what goals are appropriate for '23.
I started work on the blog in May, and the first post came in June. By the end of the year the blog had 20 posts over 8 months for an average post rate of 2.5 posts / month. I achieved peak viewership in December with 724 Analytics page views. The blog is was hosted on blogger.com for all of '22 and used a semi-custom template. First (and only) revenue was in September. When offset by costs, the blog netted $1.52 in '22. Not a huge number, but my goals for the year were to start the blog and earn my first $1 online. (An achievement made possible by one very special contributor, to whom I will be forever grateful.)
For '23, I've set some further goals that will guide my activity for the year:
- 50+ posts total
- Run rate of >3 posts / month,
- Run rate of 1000+ analytics page views / month,
- $150 sponsorship or sales revenue,
- Self hosted (i.e. not on Blogger),
- First downloadable product,
- First unsolicited inbound link.
Achievements
The Numbers
A thank you to all the supporters past, present, and future who make these numbers possible.
| Month | Revenue | Expenses | Total Posts | Indexed | Blogger Page Views (BPV) | Analytics Page Views (APV) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December: | $0.00 | $0.00 | 20 | 18 | 2326 | 724 |
| November: | $0.00 | $0.00 | 18 | 13 | 884 | 161 |
| October: | $0.00 | $0.00 | 17 | 17 | 1402 | 286 |
| September: | $15.00 | $1.48 | 15 | 13 | 1606 | 311 |
| August: | $0.00 | $0.00 | 11 | 4 | 1189 | 258 |
| July: | $0.00 | $0.00 | 5 | 0 | 1067 | 18* (Partial month) |
| June: | $0.00 | $12.00 | 2 | 0 | 626* (Includes personal) | 0* (Not installed) |
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