The Year 2014 part 4: Evolution of the Blog

A blog is in certain ways an extension of one`s personality.  Through the written word, you love to share your feels, your intrests, your frustrations to the world, and even though you might not know those that read it, in a way it is a ventilation.

Now, of course blogs focus only on a certain aspect of a person, and for me this has always been a way to share my intrests in a certain hobby.

In 2015, the 28th of February to be precise, the blog will be celebrating it`s 5th anniversary, and it has been a journey in large detailing my transition from wargamer to Lego builder if I look back at it.  Sure, the inserts of other side intrests like my love for anime, geeky books and the likes are all included on these pages, but in general those have been the alpha and omega of this little corner of the internet so far.

Now, thanks to Facebook and Google+ mostly, this blog has now had a 218k+ visits, a substantial raise compared to last year.  That and the fact that Lego is a more widespread niche then wargaming was, also means the average readings of a post have more then doubled, from 37 last year on average to 108 on average this year.  And that is because the non-Lego related posts tend to pull down the average a bit.

Like this one prabably will ;-)

Now, this is also visible in the new top posts.  For 2 years running, this table in my toolset has been dominated by the Aftermath reports of Salute 2012 and Crisis 2012 respectively taking the 1 and 2 spot in the top 10, followed by those of the other years.

But the Lego insert has shaken up this table heavily.  The current and absolute number one is the preview post of last year, detailing which Lego sets where bound to come out in 2014`s first half, while the 2015 spoiler post is only a dozen views away now of knocking the Crisis report out of the top 3.

The Inspirational Star Wars you see in the top 10 is a bit of late action, this post seems to rocket as google engines hit it when people look for `Lego Star Wars 2015`, probably due to the announcement of the new movie next year, as the post started rising since then.

Brick Mania Limburg 2014 is the first Lego show convention report sneaking into the top 10, so on that part the wargame shows tend to attract more viewers, while the Lego posts seem to be more consistent over the general lines. 

Berichten Item Pageviews Lego 2014... the first spoilers 13 nov. 2013 2162 Salute 2012 - The Aftermath 22 apr. 2012, 10 opmerkingen 1960 Crisis 2012: The Aftermath 3 nov. 2012, 10 opmerkingen 1400 Lego 2015... the spoilers 11 okt. 2014 1391 Lego The Hobbit sets revealed 14 aug. 2014 1213 Crisis 2013: The Aftermath 2 nov. 2013, 3 opmerkingen 1095 Salute 2011 - The Aftermath 17 apr. 2011, 4 opmerkingen 963 Inspirational Lego: Star Wars 16 sep. 2014 927 Crisis 2011: the aftermath 5 nov. 2011, 10 opmerkingen 919 Brick Mania Limburg 2014 31 aug. 2014 780
Another thing I will be trying to do in 2015 though, is a more consistent sequence of regular posts, instead of tossing them in left or right, resulting sometimes in `all or nothing` days. For 2015, I plan to have a sort of a schedule, in which `The Plan`, which is about my adventures in some MMO, currently Minifigures Online, are weekly chronicled, will remain on it`s saturday slot.  I`m going to do the `Build xxx` post at a rate of one a week, probably on the thursday slot.  And finally, the Inspirational Lego will be getting a regular monday slot now on, and numbered to prevent dual titling issues.  But since I do my tour of most cool builds usually during the weekend, that would mean they are still fresh in the mind to talk about :-) So that`s it for the oversight of this bloggy page for 2014.  Next wednesday, I`ll be back for the final part of the look back, as I`ll be actually looking forward in the new year and talk about the goals I`m setting for myself for 2015... on a geeky level!