The first post in this blog was made on December 12, 2013 - just over two years ago. Since then, this site has accumulated over 200,000 page views. I am not dissatisfied with this result.
At this point, one may be expected to say something like "I had no idea what this blog would become", but I don't think that's quite true for me. Even before I began, I knew many of the topics I wanted to cover. I still have a very long backlog of thing that I want to talk about, things that I've been thinking over for a long time. I honestly think I could run this blog for the rest of my life and not run out of topics. At times, my interest level and the time I have available may wax and wane, but I feel like could go on writing indefinitely about these topics. I will have period where I cut back a bit, or other periods of intense writing. But I do plan on continuing to write, God willing.
On the other hand, in matters beyond the actual text of the posts, I certainly did not know what I was doing when I started the blog. I feel like I still don't, really. I wonder about things like best layout and the best way to reach new readers. I don't actually have any good answers to these questions, although I know that they must exist. Such is the lot of small-scale bloggers like myself.
Especially because of my cluelessness, I consider myself especially blessed that I actually got a hit article out within a couple months of starting my blog - My pair of articles on Disney's "Frozen" are by far the most viewed posts, and still drive a great deal of traffic to my site. I'm not sure how I feel about that - after all, they were supposed to be "off-topic" posts. But I'm glad that people are enjoying them and that they're leading people to read my writings.
Other popular posts are clustered around these "Frozen" articles. So, the 'Gospel according to Frozen' and 'Gospel according to Tangled' articles are popular, for which I'm glad - these are posts that I'm proud of, posts that get at the truth at the heart of the Gospel. Other posts benefit from simply being close to the "Frozen" posts, such as the post on why there's so few Christians among scientists.
Other entry points to the sites are dwarfed by the "Frozen" posts, but they're still important to me; I want to have multiple streams of traffic. Some of the more popular entry points include my fractal generator, and my post on the two envelopes problem. I worked for a long time on that fractal generator, and its relative popularity is somewhat expected, but I'm surprised by how much traffic I'm getting through the two envelopes problem, for which I'm glad. I may have to add a follow-up to that post for an additional boost.
Furthermore, these two posts along with my other statistical/mathematical works on the blog have probably played no small roll in me getting a new job, for which I'm thankful.
My long series - such as the series on science as evidence for Christianity or interpreting the Genesis creation story get a steady stream of readers. It's especially gratifying to see the middle posts of these series get hits, showing that people read through the whole thing. These series include some posts that involve the most effort on my part, and they're among the ones that I most wish people would read.
So, that is the state of the blog at this point: probably over-reliant on the "Frozen" posts, but with a good number of other solid things going for it. A number of my posts are on the second or third page of their Google search results, and I feel like they just need a little bit more of a push. I still have many great things planned for the site.
I'm very thankful to all of you - my readers. Thanks for being a part of this work of mine for the past two years, and as I said, I plan to continue writing for this blog as long as God allows me to.
You may next want to read:
The Gospel: the central message of Christianity
The role of evidence in the Christian faith
Another post, from the table of contents
"Came for Frozen, stayed for theology" would be my story. I didn't know about your blog until I found it linked on TVTropes. And hey, I'm not sorry to read stuff about Frozen or Tangled... but that's not all I'm here for.
ReplyDeleteYup. I think your story is pretty typical, and I think I like the idea of people discovering the blog that way. I'd very much like to replicate something like what I've achieved with "Frozen" in some new field. Ah well, as long as I keep trying, something like it will happen again.
DeleteThanks for reading the things I have to say!