My first post on this blog was published on May 14, 2017, about a month shy of seven years ago. Since that time, according to my WordPress stats, I’ve published 11,230 posts (not including this one). My blog has had almost 955,000 views from 265,000 visitors and has generated 315,000 likes and close to 130,000 comments.
And today I received the notification above that I have published at least one post a day for 2,500 consecutive days. Woo Hoo!
Our host for the weekly provocative question challenge is Jewish Young Professional, aka JYP. She pointed out that today’s JYProvocative Question is inspired by her own lack of inspiration.
I must admit that I’m almost never wanting for inspiration. Between prompts from other bloggers and what I read, see, and hear in the news and what is going on in my own life, there’s always plenty of fodder for my blog. And I feel compelled to write because I love to write.
There are times, however, when I wonder about having the discipline to post every day, in fact, multiple times a day. And recently, I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a slump.
I know a lot of fellow bloggers suggest that looking at ones stats for either inspiration or for discipline is a bad idea. But I can’t help it. Stats provide data to how many people are reading my post. And my stats have tanked.
I went for 62 consecutive months, from June 2018 to August 2023 with at least 10,000 views a month. But that streak ended in September 2023 and I’ve now gone for seven consecutive months with fewer than 10,000 views per month, including this month.
Im not sure what to make of this significant decline in monthly views. Is blogging generally on the decline or are my post less interesting or entertaining?
Well, whatever is behind the drop in views, likes, and comments, I’m still inspired to write and I’ve still got the discipline to keep posting.
At least for now.
I know I pay too much attention to my blog stats. But I can’t help it. And my blog’s stats for June 2023 were disheartening.
My 10,700 views for the month was the lowest number of monthly views my blog has received since it got just north of 10,000 in June 2018. And my average views per day this past month, at 356, was also my lowest views per day since June 2018, when I averaged 334.
But the stat that I found most remarkable is that, other than “Home Page/Archives,” not a single post during the entire month of June received 100 or more views. I had one post with 95 views, but the rest of my posts had fewer than 90 views each. I haven’t had a month in which none of my posts received 100 or more views since May 2018.
If I step back and look at my yearly stats, the picture doesn’t look any brighter. The 70,400 views for the first half of this year is less than 45% of my total views in 2022. And that means that I’d need to have a really big second half to at least match my total views for last year. That’s unlikely.
So what should I do armed with these disappointing stats? Should I change things up on my blog? Should I just resign myself to the fact that my blog peaked in 2019, and, mirroring the rest of my life, it’s all downhill from there? Or should I just keep on keeping on and stop looking at my damn stats.
For this week’s Sunday Poser, Sadje has asked…
How often you check your blog stats? Does it make a difference to you, if people are visiting your blog more or less?
Okay, I admit it. I check my stats throughout the day. Hey, they’re right there on my home page every time I open the app. As you can see from the graph above, my stats bounce up and down from day to day with what seems to be little rhyme or reason. Some days I publish more posts and get more views, but other days more posts yield fewer views. Go figure!
Does it make a difference to me if more or fewer people are reading my blog? Well, it won’t change what I write or how I write. But I will confess that it feeds my fragile ego when my number of views are higher than when they are lower.
There are two other sets of stats I look at, but generally only on a weekly basis. One is my iPhone’s screen time stats. It apparently shows me the number of hours per day that I spend looking at my iPhone’s screen. Here are last week’s stats:
That’s a lot of hours per day, isn’t it? Assuming I get eight hours sleep and 16 hours awake, I’m spending about 68% of my waking hours looking at my iPhone’s screen. And of that, 47% is on Jetpack (the WordPress iOS app).
The other iPhone stat I look at is my battery stat. I’m not sure what it measures, but it’s different than my screen time stats:
According to my battery usage stats, I average only 9 hours and 25 minutes looking at my iPhone’s screen, almost two fewer hours than I do according to my screen time stats. But in this case, 55% of my time is on the Jetpack app!
Bottom line, yeah, I’m a big time stat checker.
Hello. Did I write something, say something, or do something to offend you? Hey listen, I know it’s early. It’s a Sunday morning, and it’s your day off, your day of rest. I get it. But still.
I always check my stats when I wake up in the morning. How many of my fellow bloggers viewed my posts while I was sleeping? How many comments did my posts get that I need to read and respond to?
On a typical morning, when I look at my overnight stats at around 7 am, I have anywhere from 100 to sometimes as high as 200 views. And usually around 30 to 40 comments.
But this morning, when I opened my eyes and looked at my stats page at around 10 past 7, here’s what I saw:
Only 83 views. Only 13 comments. Did everyone on my side of the globe oversleep? Did all of you who live on the other side of the globe decide that today was the day to boycott my blog? Where are you?
Even now, two hours later, I’ve only received 112 views and 15 comments.
Don’t you love me anymore?
This, That, and the Other 