Time for a wrap up of 2017. I’m sorry, it’s pretty much an obligatory blog post. Besides being the year that I’ve watched, with macabre interest, as my country implodes from the top down it’s been a good time blog-wise.
I started the website in November of 2016, so it’s roughly a year old. I’ve spent zero pennies on marketing of any kind, and focused on blog-hops and building relationships instead. That means super slow growth and also super low stress levels. (If slow is not the way you would want to grow your blog, then this will not be a very helpful post for you.)
From 12 (count ’em, twelve) whole visitors in November and December of 2016 I’ve gone to 1,700 visitors in 2017 and from zero followers to 45, which makes me pretty warm and toasty inside. I can’t believe there are forty five whole people who wanted to click the follow button, but it’s an amazing feeling to think that all of you did.
I’d love to track every single one of you down and say thank you but don’t worry, WordPress doesn’t show me the IP address of visitors and anyway that would be creepy. So please accept this digital, unspecific, non-denominational Pusheen thanks from me to you:
Books Published in 2017: Zero
Manuscripts accepted in 2017: One, which will be put out by eXtasy Books as an eBook only, sometime in 2018 once they have finished wielding the mighty Axe of Editing. I will definitely be keeping you updated on that.
Agents who accepted my begging letter in 2017: Also zero.
The querying voyage on the good ship That Wind is the Sound of Your Ego Deflating has not been an unqualified success, but it is still sailing and not sunk. Onward to 2018, where there be more monsters.
Giles poking 2018 for you, just for fun.
Our Top Five Posts of 2017:
14 Parenting Sites/Magazines that Will Pay You to Write for Them
2017 Slang Dictionary for Writers
10 Brutally Honest Dinner Ideas to Fit Any Crappy Mood
Writing a Query Letter: Part 2
All of them except for the 2017 Slang Dictionary were promoted pieces, by which I mean that I linked them to blog hops or shares or whatever I could find that would take them, and spent some time showing them off where I could (Facebook, Instagram, Insecure Writer’s Support Group, etc.)
I guess the take away lesson here is that small blogs would do well to find bigger sites to piggyback off of. The slang post is popular on its own, and I have no idea why? If I understood anything about SEO it would be comforting, but I don’t. I still consider wireless internet to be magic.
My own favorite of the articles picked up by other sites this year:
Millenial Mom Says, ‘Screw The Mortgage’, Buys Avocado Toast for SammichesPsychMeds.com and yes, that was as fun to write as the title suggests.
If you’d like to read other silliness, the articles closest to my heart are all collected in one Books Rock My World post because I love them, had a ton of fun writing them, and Ana is the very first person online who gave me a chance to write for her.
Just for kicks, here are a few of the actual search terms that led people to my website (WordPress does show me that). They regularly make me laugh, which is nice.
- shower organiser pole super white (*by which I assume someone was doing some home organizing and got sidetracked into learning how to write, revise, and query a fiction novel, as we all do.*)
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2017 lingo
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2017 slangs
- sort flag attachments fromsort endssort subjects (*and the same to you, buddy*)
- query letter with big grammatical words (*Yes. So much yes to this. I need to write a post with this exact title.*)
- “yeah for sure” is positive or negative?
- stephen king pun (*there is ALWAYS time for a Stephen King pun.*)
- list 5 types of query
So there you have it. What internet users are searching for, and therefore want to read. The internet is a capricious and slightly senile god.
Cheers to 2018, and the hope that it will be full of happiness, many silly blog posts, and a published book.
Featured image via stocksnap.io and Maria Shanina.