It’s Time For a Little Celebration

Last Updated on March 28, 2013

I accomplished something in February here at Patrick’s Place that I had only accomplished one other time in this blog’s 9-year history: I managed to publish something every single day of the month. The only other time I achieved such an undertaking was December of 2008.

It’s surprising to me because my unwritten goal was always to try to publish something every day. But I have always employed a more important rule: on days where I honestly couldn’t come up with something I considered either informative or entertaining, I’d rather skip that day.

I went through all nine years of the blog and counted up the days each month that I didn’t publish something: the average number of days I didn’t publish in most months would probably be about 6 or so. My least productive month was late in the blog’s first year: October of 2004. There have been five months by my count in which I only missed a single day; apparently as I kept doing it, I kept finding more to say!

The concept of “topic buckets” that I’ve written about previously seems to have done quite a trick: not only did I find it easier to publish every day, but I found myself more focused on specific topics week by week. Mack Collier, the moderator of the weekly Blogchat over Twitter, proposed the idea of “topic buckets,” and when I revealed that I was having success with the notion, he asked the all important question: what did my stats show?

Last week, I gave a projection of what I suspected they might look like by the time the month was over. My projection wasn’t necessarily scientifically accurate: I chose December as the “before” month because a post in January about a friend of mine who passed away suddenly created an inordinately high amount of traffic that month. I then took the first two weeks of February, determined a daily average of visits and page views, then projected that same rate out to 31 days so that the two months would compare more easily. It was the best way I could determine to make it make sense.

Here’s the projection I came up with:

“Unless I see a major drop in the second half of the month, which I haven’t seen so far, I anticipate a 29% increase in visits and a 26% increase in page views since I moved toward the topic buckets idea.”

That was then. We’re now into March, which means I have February’s actual numbers to work with. And because February was only 28 days rather than December’s 31, I have three fewer days to work with.

May I have a drumroll, please?

So here goes: in February compared to December, I saw a 31.7% increase in visits, almost three points higher than my projection, and a 22.8% increase in page views, about three points lower than I projected. Still, I’m delighted to see more people coming by, and I’m happy to know that this little idea, which has made life easier for me behind the scenes also seems to be having a genuine, measurable effect on my traffic, too.

(I only wish I had cake and ice cream to pass out!)

Your Turn:
We all have something to celebrate as bloggers: What’s the biggest thing you’re celebrating over at your blog these days?