One year of blogging - benefits and experiences

Happy birthday Pete Box of Analytics, this is the first anniversary post of my blog! One year old is learning to walk, step by step. I would like to know how you feel about the new name of the blog? At least I think it's better than previous "My work at Naviatech". Tell me your thoughts.

First of all I can say the year has gone quickly and it's been fun, but also hard when you have a company to run and two small kids. Thank you, my ladies, for putting up with me when the husband/dad is playing with his blog mostly on weekends. And thank you sys and Mr. Ed for reviewing my texts once in a while. Now it's time to look back and analyze what has happened in a year. There has been:

• 30 posts - 2,5 posts per month
• 26 comments - 50 % of my own
• visitors from 41 different countries
• over 2,000 visits and 1,200 visitors - average 5 visits per day

About metrics: I think page views and bounce rate are not good KPIs for these kind of blogs. Length of the posts has defenitely an impact on time spent on site. I really look forward to getting my hands on Google Analytics for Blogger.

I could try to find the visitor peaks by using the standard deviations but it doesn't make sense here because my blog has gained a little continuous growth of visitors. I did found out that these following posts have brought more than 25 visits per day:

• post about Kalle Heinonen
• my sister's video interview
• Vierityspalkki's post about web analytics where they mentioned me with a link to my blog
  
• post after WAW in Stockholm where Eric Peterson had a presentation
  

Where are my blog readers? Well, I'm not that good in geographics and English is not my native language (as you have probably noticed) so I have to confess that I don't know a country named "not set"...is it like free for bids or not named yet? : )

This blog started like a harmless test with no specific goals in mind. I have managed to share some information and experiences, but I would like to get more comments though (especially my Finnish friends who represent more than 80 % of the visitors). Please share your ideas with me and the content to other people as this blog is under Creative Commons licence.

Avinash Kaushik wrote one month ago a very good post about benefits of blogging. I agree every point. One of the biggest advertising agencies in Finland don't have a clue how to monetize blogging, butI have to say that one of the biggest benefits for me has been indirect sales. One big corporate hired me as a consultant and case SEA LIFE had something to do with their decision. And most of all, I have learned a lot while working with our customers, researching and creating stories.

Recently I have developed my blog by adding:

• rich content including photo gallery and video
• search functionality by Google custom search
• tags and keywords
• feeds

You can now sign up to my blog feeds and get the information about latest posts by email. Now I can get the stats by Feedburner and I humbly ask my blog fans...I mean my blog readers (Avinash Kaushik may have fans) who have already ordered the old version of feeds, to sign up again. It takes you only couple of seconds and you will have more feed options to choose (go to right top corner).

Here are my public goals for the next year:

• one post per week, not necessary long stories
• increase visits more than 100 %
• one comment per post (excluding mine)
• one hundred subscribers
• public speaking gigs (billable and non-billable)
  

Most of the comments I have received, so far, have been positive. I would really appreciate your honest feedback and certainly like to know what YOU think I should write about. Please comment this post or feel free to send me an email. And remember to stay tuned!