Two year blog anniversary

I have just passed my two year blog anniversary.  And what a year its been!  Just over two years ago I started my blog; Alpine Lifestyle and Performance (ALP).  Last year I wrote a blog post celebrating my first year (one year blog anniversary) and I pledged to do this annually. Although this year, most celebrations are on hold so this year I am going to refer to my blog anniversary post as a summary! 

I have to say, I learnt more in my first year than I have in my second year.  I am still on a huge learning curve, but my second year of blogging has mostly been spent in 2020, and let’s face it, actions (or lack of) in 2020 need no excuses.  How many people would like to press a reset button on 2020 or just swiftly move into 2021! 

My top 5 blogs

I now have a total of 33 blogs on my site. This means that I have only added 12 blogs in the past year and I have not achieved my goal of writing two blogs per month. But 2020 has been a year like no other and to be honest, I have lost my blogging mojo over the past few months.  Writing my two year blog anniversary post is the first time that I’ve sat down to type in a long time.  I am hoping that writing this gives me the motivation that I need to pull out more content.  I have many topics in mind and I never struggle to find something to write about.  All I need to do is put pen to paper (so to speak). 

However, I continue to focus on quality content and I am fairly happy that I managed an average of one blog per month; especially as many of them are technical and can take hours and hours to write.  I spend a lot of time making sure my performance blogs contain a sound evidence base with the most up to date research available. Therefore I was surprised to learn again that as per my first year, my lifestyle blogs are still more popular than my performance blogs. Although I know that the performance blogs are a great resource, it appears that alpine lifestyle is of more interest to my readers! 

So, according to google analytics, my five most popular blogs are:

1. 7 of the best ways to reflect on yourself

Amazingly, in the last 12 months alone 8384 people have visited this blogpost! I find it incredible that this number of people have found my site and read what I have to say!  

2. 10 big differences between school in France and the UK

In the past 12 months 2849 people have visited this post. 

3. 10 Reasons living in the mountains is awesome

4. How to help children cope when a parent works away

5. 7 easy ways to empower self-motivation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traffic

I try not to become too fixated on the stats that show on Google analytics, however I do find it fascinating to see visitor numbers, to note which are the most popular blogs and to learn about reader demographics. 

Sex

63 % of my readers are female and 37 % are male.

Geography

Most of my readers are currently based in UK (23 %) with the United States just slightly behind (21%). Interestingly, 20 % of my readers come from the Philippines.  Next in line is France with 7 % of readers. India, Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland and Cananda also have a lot of hits.  It is still fantastic to see that my blog reaches so far and has a wide-ranging international audience.  

Readers Age 

In terms of readers age, 32 % of my readers fall into the 18-24 years age category.  Another 32 % fall in to the 25 – 34 years age category, 25 % into the 35 – 44 years, 12 % in the 45 – 54 years and 9 % into the 55 – 64 years age group. I am pleased to see that ALP seems to appeal to a wide range of ages, although I am slightly surprised to see the lack of older readers because I thought that  my Grandad checked in from time to time!  Having said this, I don’t think I had the ‘demographics’ section on google analytics set up correctly until recently, so this may not be a fair representation of the whole year.  

Website Visitors

The most exciting news is that my current average active users is now 1.5k visitors a month. For big successful bloggers, 1.5k mostly visitors probably wouldn’t be anything to celebrate, the opposite in fact!  But I am not a full time blogger. This is just little me learning my way around the cyber world.  Therefore the fact that 1.5k people visit my website each month is incredible!  My goal last year was to break the 1000 mark. Despite the fact I didn’t manage to write as many blogs as I had hoped, I have still achieved this! I am blown away that so many people find Alpine Lifestyle and Performance.  So, for next year I would like to double this! In fact, why stop here! I am going to aim high and try and break the 5k mark! 

Earnings

Zero! Zilch! Rien! 

I had continued as an Amazon Associate, however a couple of months ago I received an email to say that my account was being terminated because I was not in compliance with their operation agreement.  This basically means, somewhere along the line I had not properly disclosed that I was an Amazon Associate (in other words I earnt a (very) small commission when people clicked through my website to Amazon).  

I think this was a big turning point in my decline in motivation. Whilst my blog is not financially driven, (my first year I made a grand total of £24.40) it was a nice incentive.  I have not yet contacted Amazon to find out exactly what I did to breech their rules, however this is on my to do list! So for now, I am going to continue with ALP as a hobby and creative outlet.  I hope it continues to grow and develop and I will look into monetising it further down the line.

I still have my website hosted through Site Ground who I would highly recommend for anyone starting out in the blogging world.  They were very patient with me during the set up period and provide a great assistance service.

Lessons learned

Writing a blog anniversary post really helps me to reflect on what I have achieved so far, as well as what I would like to learn and improve upon. I am still figuring out a lot of blogging terminology. I still have a long way to go in terms of editing, managing content and promoting my blog. However, I think that the biggest lesson that I have learnt this year is not to put too much pressure on myself.  2020 has been a year of learning that plans have to be flexible, ideas sometimes have to be put on hold and time frames are not always rigid.  

Plans and goals

The main aim that I currently have is to rekindle my motivation to write. I want to keep learning and providing content that is useful and informative. As I mentioned earlier, I have a lot of ideas in my head.  However, I need to do a lot more brainstorming and brain dumping (this is the art of emptying the ideas in my head onto paper).

I will pledge to continue to write an annual blog anniversary review.  It is a great way to reflect on the previous goals that I have set and the progress that I have made. 

Is there anything that you would like me to write about?  I’d love to hear from you and I really do value your feedback.

If you have read this far and if you’ve read other blogposts, thank you very much for all your support. It genuinely makes me smile every time I recieve an email or a message or feedback about my site.  This is especially true when I learn that a topic that I’ve written about has made a positive impact on someone. 

Please do follow me on facebook and instagram to be kept up to date with our latest blogs, news and reviews.  I would love more followers to help grow my website traffic so please do share these social media accounts with friends who may be interested in Alpine Lifestyle and Performance.  Thank you so much for visiting, commenting and all your support.

This post may contain affiliate links which means that if you click through to a product or service and then buy it, I receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you.