#StandWithUkraine
Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko —  — Thoughts — blog, goal, milestone, traffic

Twenty four months blogging milestone

Ah, it’s been that long already. :) Yes, today marks second birthday of Rarst.net. I didn’t do minor milestone posts during second year so it kinda blinked past.

The more interesting it is to look back and do some obligatory number crunching.

Readership

Can’t say growth was as stable… And that there were much of a growth from month to month.

Yet… In second year there have been over two hundreds thousands visits to this blog.

second_year_visits

second_year_visits

Almost 1/3rd of a million total visits. Doesn’t compute. Seriously. To be able to brush this many people in life, even if briefly, is weird and interesting feeling.

Curiously more traffic does not make linear increase to community and interaction. Traffic is about site gaining age, content and authority.

Community is about meeting people that click with you. People that return to blog again and again. People that leave hundreds of extensive and valuable comments.

In second year some people left, some new faces appeared (and plenty of fresh lurkers I am sure), but it is as much pleasure to interact with you all! :)

Content

In posts most wanted there are plenty of usual suspect and some newcomers:

  1. Edit files on FTP with Notepad++ plugin (28892)
  2. Stream and share media with UPnP server/player setup (8691)
  3. Asus Express Gate – fast OS or useless toy? (8624)
  4. How to fix “Failed to install catalog files” error (7169)
  5. DrWeb LiveCD – free bootable antivirus (5814)
  6. Fixing Windows XP shutdown problems (5744)
  7. JPerf – graphical interface wrapper for Iperf (4965)
  8. How to calculate best BitTorrent settings (4377)
  9. Flashblock for Opera (3360)
  10. Read data from Excel in AutoIt (3280)

There had been considerably less posts in second year. I had went over one of reasons in this post and second reason is that most of that year was somewhat rocky for me offline.

Current forecast is one post every other day for nearest future and will see where to go from there. I know that daily or at lease near-daily posts worked well for a lot of regular readers. Well, I prefer to play with frequency rather than sacrifice quality and other aspects for quantity.

Traffic

  • 69.41% search engines;
  • 16.51% direct traffic;
  • 14.06% referring sites.

Search traffic is becoming more massive as site ages. Curious that there are more direct visits then referrals – says something about my networking skills. :)

Top referring sites:

  1. gHacks (5338)
  2. Freeware Genius (3048)
  3. Appnews (2732)
  4. StumbleUpon (1002)
  5. Freeware Junkie (663)
  6. stadt-bremerhaven.de (594)
  7. reddit (269)
  8. WhatsOnMyPC (240)
  9. BradBlogging (227)
  10. Twitter (201)

Martin, Samer and Rob are my heroes as usual (Rob managed to pull that off doing absolutely nothing, I respect such commitment ;) ! Top or not – I very much appreciate fellow bloggers who link to me and even more so people who spread the good word and deem my posts worth linking to on their favorite sites and forums.

Design

I kinda promised new theme by end of first year… Well, not done yet!

Seriously since I finished programming courses I was able to make some serious progress on it. I also feel more confident with WordPress so amount of custom functionality I want to implement had increased as well.

Yes, old theme is falling apart in places. It has little time left so bear with it.

And so no one screams vaporware here is small teaser of new look:

restatement_teaser

restatement_teaser

Monetizing

No changes. Blog’s income had increased with traffic, but so did my hosting bill after moving to LiquidWeb. Was worth it, but I still roughly break even on this.

Nothing is happening until new theme is done, so this is not any kind of priority for now.

Goals

Well, I bankrupted on goals from year ago, didn’t I? Actually no, I did reclaim some order in my life. Some bridges were if not burned but ruined horribly… Life goes on. More time for myself and friends, less bullshit I have to put up with across the board.

As for strategic stuff for this blog right now I desire nothing major. I just want to write posts I feel good about, tinker with internals, have occasional holy war in comments and more routine stuff. New theme is priority, rest will figure itself out later.

Overall

By the end of milestone post I am traditionally tired and sleep (ain’t I always). This was rocky year, the more accomplishment was to get blog through it.

Off to sleep, knowing I will awake to some warm comments from you waiting. Lurker or two coming out will be fitting for occasion. ;)

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12 Comments

  • Angelo R. #

    Congrats on hitting the 2 year milestone with your blog! Sorry to hear about all your RL troubles, but it sounds like you're working through them and that's always good! I think everyone's had those moments where they manage to burn most of their bridges but things do get better eventually. Good luck with everything!

  • Rarst #

    @Angelo Well troubles are more or less over by now. And they are far from what blog is about, thus I only mention such stuff rarely and briefly. Thank you for sticking around! :)

  • Gueb #

    "Lurker or two coming out will be fitting for occasion. ;)" I'll oblige. Congrats on the milestone. :) Been visiting for a long time thanks to your comments on gHacks. Hope the new theme isn't missing "cynical thoughts" in the logo. ;)

  • JeeMan #

    I have been visiting for the last year (year and a half?), and sometimes commenting. I really enjoy most of your posts, because it gives me another view on some stuff I already know - or I learn new stuff on something I did not know existed (i.e. the war about wordpress - that post really got me to think). Thanks a lot for interesting reading. Keep up the good work, and I'll keep on visiting. :)

  • Angelo R. #

    @Rarst No need to thank me. You keep putting out quality posts, I can't help but read them. I may not comment on everything, but rest assured I read through every one of your posts - which isn't something I do with every blogger.

  • Rarst #

    @Gueb Thank you! :) Luring lurkers out is bit of a sport. I am introvert and much of a lurker myself, so I know how much commitment comments from lurkers mean. Martin really cranked up pace lately, I hadn't commented as much there in recent months. And naturally "cynical thoughts" is there and only more prominent in new theme! @JeeMan I know most visitors are passing in search of quick fix and I am glad to help them. But it really really (really!) rocks to have visitors like you who find all (or at least most) of blog genuinely interesting and useful. Thanks! @Angelo Reading every post is another praise I value very highly and don't take for granted. :) I staggered a bit after I exhausted my pool of core software, but I think it only makes more interesting to research and write about new things (only not that much, newly discovered stuff takes considerably more time to evaluate).

  • rvdmast #

    rarst.net, along with 2 or 3 other sites, has been part of my "morning coffee" since jan. 2009. Keep the cynical thoughts coming!

  • Rarst #

    @rvdmast Will do and glad to have you! Hope that post every other day (for now) is still enough to qualify for morning coffee routine. :)

  • Saurabh #

    Congrats! Here's hoping for more insightful posts(and the new theme soon!)

  • Rarst #

    @Saurabh Thanks! Insight amount is not as easy, but theme I am working on. :)

  • Talk Binary #

    Congrats. I was at 14-15k visitors a month a couple of months ago and increasing but school ultimately kept me busy. Now that I've graduated from undergrad I expect to have more free time as a grad student since I'm not going to be working anymore. It's nice knowing that with goals, it can be done!

  • Rarst #

    @Talk Binary Congrats on graduating! :) I am done with programming courses myself and now have more free time. I won't really describe my current progress as goal-driven. More like persistence-driven. :) If you write something there are people who search for it out there. Do it for years and amount of what you wrote and people who find it can only increase.