Three Years Of Blogging!

Three years ago today I started my blog and never looked back. To be honest, I think this recent year has been the most interesting year so far. A lot of things happened. I completely changed the nature of my blog, and probably started releasing the largest variety of content I’ve ever made. Of course all of this is interesting to look at and think about

But first of all, I must thank everyone who has been reading my blog this year, it’s been kind of crazy when you think about it so thank you for being there!

This will be a mix of all my stats, previous goals, future goals and any future thoughts about how the blog is doing. So here we go!

The Stats as of 23rd Of December (Sorry I can’t write posts on the same day I release them)

What we can see here is that we’re basically doing the exact same. The difference for December being accounted by the fact that it’s the 23rd, based on the days so far I’m projected to get another 1,000ish views before the end of the year which is quite frankly, really amazing to me.

My most viewed post got double the views this year than last year. And top ten reasons why anime sucks got even more. Home page/ archives, which is arguably one of the most important pages to get views on also got slightly more. How to grind EXP in xenoblade also fell down, likely because over time it’s getting less relevant, even though I swear there was a remake coming out?

Interestingly, none of the new editions to this list came from this year as well. They were all from previous ones. I think that posts become more popular over time for some reason. My most viewed post that I released this year ended up being my post about Simmona Wang from the 30 days of Asian drama challenge with just over 100 views.

The first new edition is the Hantsu x trash three episodes review. Which is something I’m not happy with. It’s a really ecchi anime and not good. Or maybe I should be happy, because that’s exactly what the post is telling people!? Who knows? Actually looking at the charts, though Hantsu x trash doesn’t appear on last years stats showcase post, in the time between when that post was written and the year ending Hantsu x trash did indeed make it onto the list, and no it was written in 2017 so no points for 2018 either.

Do not pay for CR, it’s a scam also made an appearance, so that’s very nice as well.

So yeah, sadly enough everything seems pretty much the same to be honest. No new editions. Which means that the posts made in 2018 didn’t really pick up steam, and it’s still everything from 2017.

As for the referrers it doesn’t look so bad. Views from search engines rose by 10k. As well as that wordpress reader views decreased. I think this is likely that the number of posts released dropped dramatically, and my shift in content made it so that people who were following me were less likely to click from the referrer.

Youtube clicks increased dramatically. Every time I click on these I can never seem to find any actual links to my site though. So I can probably assume that it’s people leaving links and then those thinks get deleted? I’m not sure. If anybody knows about this please let me know!

The same is for Facebook. The initial reason why my Sakamoto post went viral was because of Facebook, so I’d really like to know how it happened!

Weirdly theirs a lot of google translate views. They mostly all link to the Sakamoto post. I think that translate can be used as a proxy if you enter links, so I guess that post is blocked in some countries or something?

Twitter is about the same but Reddit appearing is also really nice. Once again it’s really difficult to find these links. So as a person who doesn’t use Reddit I can only assume that links like this get deleted right? Not sure.

71 Twitter followers yes!

So here is the yearly posting activity. So let’s break it down and explain just what happened. January was so busy because I had a lot of posts backed up from the Christmas holidays. I was also able to release my book which meant that I had a free 12 days since I had written it already in the past.

There was also only two posts in February because of University, and then the reason for the increase in March was well, I don’t know. I have posts that I’m sure were written in the holidays, and also ones that I was sure was written in University. So maybe I just had more time, or started to really get interested in my blog again. The drop of views for February potentially being a motivation.

April had two things. The first is a holiday, but there still wasn’t that much released. That’s because of the really long post “This is not Tonegawa” that took me a while to write. Also I was probably just into other things more. Also interesting fact, it was my last proper anime post. Yeah, the vast majority of this year was still not anime, though I didn’t make the reveal until much later in the year.

The increase in July marks the point where I went home for the holidays and got back into writing again. That’s where I started the 30 days of Asian drama post. This continues into August where I decided to finally finish releasing my book (yes)

We pass by the post “The monks of Meres will release soon” which I released in September. And some posts were scheduled into University, but after starting again in September it got so busy that it was difficult to write anything. Only six posts were made in that time, don’t get me wrong I like them. But it still wasn’t a lot.

This takes us to now, where I’ll probably be writing much more since it’s Christmas.

I seem to have noticed a pattern. I mostly write a tonne in the holidays when I have the most time and then schedule them out later. It’s not a brilliant release schedule but still better than nothing. There isn’t a lot I can do about it besides plan better.

But I don’t really like planning anymore. If I have a post I like to get thoughts and opinions instantly instead of several weeks later. My opinions also often change quickly, as I have learned when a friend unexpectedly found my blog somehow.

So yeah, nothing I can do about it really, and unfortunately there doesn’t really seem like a good way to change this. I really like university, and honestly the blog always comes second to it. Which is fair enough in my opinion. Sorry guys.

This is not the exact correct stats. In 2019 I made a post called why I deleted 200 anime blog posts, which means that the stats for 2018 are significantly changed. Though the view counts are still the same it’s not quite right here.

What I like still though is that every year my average words per post is increasing. This is good to me as it means I’m taking my time to express more interesting ideas, and explaining things more. It shows me that my writing is going in a better direction, or at least my ideas for post or post quality. Length is not a dictator of quality, however I do not deliberately try and make my posts longer, it’s just that it’s an indication of how interesting I find that idea and how cool that idea is.

I’ve also had to fight multiple posts over 40k words in length this year, so yeah, that’s pretty nice to still be writing more.

Our total view count has nearly doubled since last years post. However it’s also interesting to see that the number of posts has decreased by 40. This means that we’ve maintained an increase in views despite the fewer amounts of posts to work with. I guess it goes to show just how awful those anime posts were!

Visitors more than doubled, which is also pretty nice.

Email followers decreased but we also had an increase of 81 followers. Which is really nice!

It’s probably not a lot relative to other blogs, but considering my blog is a confused mess of the strangest mix of content I understand. I don’t really see a gap in the market for an atheist/language learning blogger to be honest!

We also got a new day for the best views ever! Which is awesome, it’s always a nice feeling to beat your highest number of views. This one was 744 views, which is awesome, but I don’t think a major improvement. Oh well, can’t complain, 744 in a day is amazing!

Though we stayed practically the same, considering the circumstances of like nearly a quarter less posts, and completely changing content I’m not too disappointed with what’s happened. It’s great. I’m really happy that people are still interested in what I’m saying besides not being about anime! Which brings me too…

Comments on the blog this year

This year saw the deletion of over 200 blog posts, the anime database, which contained thoughts and opinions on every single anime that I had ever seen. Though I liked the idea I was really unhappy with the execution. All of the posts were rushed out, and written in just a couple of days, due to this each review was very short. As well as that most of the reviews weren’t even good, the best being the ones copy and pasted from my other anime review posts, and the words simply honestly saying that I couldn’t remember the anime very well, and it was ok.

It just made my blog look bad in my opinion. All of the posts were so bad and I just wasn’t happy with them. Anyone who clicked on my blog after reading that wouldn’t have had the impression that I wanted, so I’m glad it’s gone.

In terms to my stats, I didn’t really notice any changes. In fact there may have been an increase in views since my posts about deleting 200 blog posts turned out to be quite popular. Who knows?

This year I also changed my blog content quite dramatically. So how do I feel about anime now, the thing my blog used to be about. Well, I feel just the same. I’ve not watched any anime outside of anime society (which is something I’m forced to go to since I’m the secretary now) and the only anime I watched before that was in April, and I didn’t even finish it because I just found it kind of dull.

So yeah no regrets about anime so far. Though there are still shows I want to finish it’s not really made an impact on me. Most ones I start I cannot finish because I’m just not that interested.

When you have seen so little from other genres of media, it’s great to try them out as you haven’t seen everything it has to offer yet, so there is much more good stuff available.

I wouldn’t say that anime is bad or anything. Just I’m more interested in other things right now as I’ve seen so much of it already.

In terms of what I switched too, let’s talk about my language learning content.

I made 14 posts this year, which isn’t a lot, but I thought they were all unique and individual and interesting. I liked them. If I want to brand myself as a language blog then its probably a good idea to have more posts out. I have one which I know I need to write next so that will be coming soon, I’d like to keep up with the language posts, as it means I will still be keeping up with learning my language!

In terms of atheist content, there was only 16 posts, which is less than what I was expecting. I thought I had written much more. Perhaps that’s because the engagement on those atheist posts are really amazing. I love the conversations on there and it’s really great to talk to so many people about it.

Definitely atheist content is more accessible, as it could be relevant to everyone. If your agnostic, it’s good to hear any argument for one side or the other, if your atheist it can give a good place to read things you’d never thought about or have conversations with other people, and if your a theist then it can help challenge your views. So it makes sense that it’s more accessible, not everyone can relate to learning Chinese.

Perhaps because of this engagement I’m more likely to write about atheism because it’s more fun to do, and I guess it feels more useful as it ultimately reaches more people.

Essentially, now that I’ve made the change, and started blogging about things I’m much more interested in, it’s now more fun to me. And other people seem to like it as well. So I’m honestly really happy with it.

Goals from last year

1. Still be blogging consistently one year from now

Well, define consistently? I’ve been quite on and off this year. But there have been patches of a lot of posts, and also patches with not a lot of posts. Overall though I think just keeping up with blogging and maintaining the blog is good enough. So this one gets a pass.

2. Have a catalogue of top 10 recommendation style of posts to get more people into anime.

No I did not do this. In fact I could technically have done the opposite by deleting the adb. I’m not too concerned by this one. It’s not that I failed, it’s that my motivation and goals changed to something else.

3. Release all of “The Broken Tournament” and self-publish it.

I released it all on my blog but did not self publish it. In my opinion it’s not good enough to self-publish so I’m not too concerned by not doing it.

4. Release “The Stone of the Conqueror”

Yes I did this! The whole book is available on my blog

5. Finish writing “The Monks of Meres”

This was not actually done. A large portion of it is already written, about 2/3rds but I’m at a point of partially a creative block and also unsure if the track I’m currently on is the way I want to finish writing the last third of the story. It’s not so simple. But I do hope I can work on it more!

I do currently have exam revision as well however, which means that the time I have to write it could be pushed back as far as after second semester.

It is a book that I consider important to finish. So I really want to. But yeah, it’s big, and complicated, and I want it to be as best as possible, which means I should really take my time.

6. Write the Barefoot Gen post the film deserves!

No I didn’t do this either because my blog stopped being about anime, and writing the post is just difficult. Like it’s hard to write anything besides “it’s just sad”, I also would feel that if I were to write the post I would need to do a lot of research too, which is a bad thing, time consuming, and not something I’m that interested to do anymore.

So I guess this goal was a failure.

7. Write more posts about the industry.

Again, not done for obvious reasons. The anime industry isn’t really that interesting anyway, and if anything, just kind of really sad.

8. More high effort posts and research projects.

Kind of yes? I did make some but not too many. I guess that means I did it?

Goals for next year

1. Still be blogging by this time next year
2. Blog what I want to blog about, don’t force myself into only talking about one thing again
3. Pass HSK3, and be thinking about HSK4 (language progression target)
4. Make posts on holy books – complete an entire series writing about every chapter of a holy book. That could be one that I’ve already started, or a different one
5. Complete large posts/projects specifically about the new topics I’ve chosen to blog about – language learning and atheism
6. Finish Writing the Monks of Meres and release it on this blog, self publish if good enough

Ending

Thank you everyone for reading the yearly review of my blog. It’s been a great year and I thank everyone who has even read any of my posts over this time! It’s been a strange year, but really fun and cool. It’s changed a lot, but I like it.

Though I’m writing this on Christmas eve now, I hope everyone had a great Christmas, or day if you don’t celebrate Christmas, and a happy new year!