Don't Back Down Year in Review: 2007: Don't Back Down

As the year winds down, it's time to look at what has gone by and what we might expect in the year ahead. I'm pretty bad at looking at things monthly, but maybe I can keep up with it once a year. We'll see how it goes. At least I won't have to worry about it for another year.

Business is Booming

I've been absolutely slammed at my job, where I mostly do Movable Type Consulting (though I also do other things as well), and so I haven't had as much time to post this year as I have in years past. I also spent a few months seeing what would happen if I didn't post at all. The answer is that it didn't seem to matter a whole lot. A hair under 180 posts this year (nearly half of what I had been averaging previously).

Those of you who stuck it out by not unsubscribing from the RSS feed are troopers, and I appreciate it. But the traffic of the web site didn't go down significantly over the summer months, and neither did the advertising revenue. If anything, it may have done better. Since somewhere around 90% of the site's traffic comes from search engine traffic, this isn't really much of a surprise.

Most Popular: 2007

Unfortunately, the top posts of the year weren't terribly popular in the scheme of things. It's relatively easy to find the best posts over a given period by using Google Analytics, but what I found was that only one of the top 100 posts was from this year. I guess since most of the site's traffic comes from search engines, I'm going to have to do better at writing search-worthy traffic in order to keep that content going in the future. In any case, here's this year's top ten list, in reverse order.

Does anyone else notice a theme with these entries?

Most Popular: All Time

It would be remiss if I were to let the list go with only entries from this year - especially since even the most popular post from that list didn't come close to the worst of the others. Either I used to write much better, or I used to write about things that more people found interesting. I guess one of the things that I'll have to work on in the next year is figuring out the answer to that question. In the meantime, here is the list of the top ten most popular entries of the past year, no matter when they were written.

Astute readers will notice that there are actually eleven entries in this second list. That's because there are two items from the Treasure Hunters Challenge series, and it just didn't seem fair to other posts, so I figured I would throw another one in there to even things up a bit.

What Does it Mean

Why is it that the recent posts are less popular than the old ones?

You could argue that it takes longer for items to get popular at the search engine, but usually after a few days, an entry will do well in search results (or it won't). After some time, the entry will then start fading again. The Angler Fish, for instance, has been as high as the second result on Google, and I've seen it as low as the fifth page. It currently sits in the middle of the second page. So I don't think that's strictly the answer.

My personal feeling is that it may have something to do with what is put into the posts. The second list of items were, for the most part, done just for the heck of it. I felt like writing so I wrote. The first list, however, may have had more of a sense of urgency, simply because I've been busier than I have in a long time, and I may not have been able to take the time to really craft the writing in a way that I would like.

If I was an artist - and I am certainly not an artist, since I have little creative talent - the first list would be akin to working to pay the bills and the second would be more like creating simply for the joy of it. That is, unfortunately, not to say that I can pay the bills based off of the blog, but it's about as close as I can get. What do you think?

About the Income

I don't think I'll mention the specifics of income, because that's just not my style. My dad told me a long time ago that you just don't do that. I know that Chow does it, and that's fine. I don't think any less of him. It's impressive. Maybe I would change my mind if that was me. Probably not, but maybe. That doesn't mean I won't share some details - I just won't share specific numbers.

The final numbers aren't quite in yet, but I can tell you that I have most of them. I first monetized the site in September of 2006. So comparing the last quarter of 2006 to the last quarter of 2007 (four months) shows that the income rose by about 18% while traffic has remained fairly steady.

Put in perspective, for those of you who are bad at math - if I made $1.00 in 2006, I would have made $1.18 in 2007 during that same quarter. Increase the numbers as you see fit - $10.00 in 2006 would be $11.80 in 2007; $100.00, $118.00; $1000.00, $1180.00; and so on.

That's not too shabby, and I hope it continues. While others have seen exponential (and astronomical) increases, I'm perfectly content with consistent, sustainable increases.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope to see more of you in 2008. Bring a friend.