Happy 2nd Blogiversary to ME!!

I cannot believe that I am celebrating my 2nd blogiversary already!  Seems like just yesterday I posted my first post, and yet that was two-years-ago!  Crazy how time flies!  Thought it would be fun to take a look back at my last two years of blogging, how I have changed as a writer, fumbled my way through different sites, and learn tons about blogging…which eventually leading to changing my major!  Being the nerd that I am, I also wanted to throw in some benchmarking (statistics) for my own remembrance!

The Beginning: Two years ago, I started my blog on MySpace.  I wanted to learn how to ‘use’ MySpace, so I fumbled my way through.  Never did figure out MySpace, it just never made sense to me (probably the same way my mom doesn’t understand Facebook-lol).  With that being said, my stay on MySpace was short, I lasted 74 blog entries, before leaving MySpace for the big bad real blogging world of blogger!  (For the record, I still am not a MySpace fan!  I have become a Facebook-aholic, love my Facebook!).

1st Blogiversary: The next year, I posted a lot more, started to get more into it, my posts changed quite a bit.  I had a new site to discover and more fumbling to be done, while I learned basic html, added different gadgets to my site, and tried to stay true to who I was.  At my One Year Blogiversary I blogged 233 times (or 64% of the year)!   

2nd Blogiversary: Let’s see…this past year….I did less fumbling with blogger, I even started to feel quite confident with it!  I’ve learned some (I mean very basic)  HTML, that has helped me improve my blog.  I went from the basic blogger background to making my blog more unique and me!  In the beginning I was changing my blog a lot, while I tried to find “my blog”.  I have finally settled down, and have changed maybe three times in the past year – making big changes each time! 

The Last Year: As for benchmarking, let’s see, I haven’t even checked it out yet….I hope I have done better this year then last!!  Here we go….(be right back…wait right here! ha-ha)…..(okay back, did you miss me??  I warned you early I was a dork!)…. okay so I blogged 276 times this past year….holy cow for me, which is 76% of the year!! 

Benchmarking By the Numbers*

• Average 37 visits/day
• 1.77 Pages visited/visits (once they view my blog, how many separate parts of my blog do they visit on that visit)
• 73.47% bounce rate (bounce rate shows how many people clicked around to different spots on my blog…the lower the % means people are touring my blog and reading different spots).  I was told that for a blog anything lower than 75% is really good. 
• 2minutes, 57 seconds is the average time spent on my blog
• 59% of visitors never have visited before

I’m still very much a newbie at this.  Joining blogfrog has dramatically helped my blog.  I’ve made so many new friends, and learned new ways to blog and bring in a bigger audience!  It’s really fun to watch my blog grow!

The Next Year: I have big plans for the next year, well actually couple of months!  I feel that I have mastered blogger and want to try something new.  I’m gonna set-up my blog on Wordpress, and go for a more “professional” look!  I’ve learned a lot about it, and am excited! 

Why Wordpress, you might ask.  On Wordpress you own (100%) your blog and all the material on it.  With blogger, Google really owns it and at anytime they can shut it down…that really scares me!  I’d hate to lose all my memories!  I’m also excited to fumble through a new site and learn more HTML!  So look for that towards the end of the summer!  From what I understand it takes a lot of work to set-up, but I am ready and excited for the challenge!

Week 4 of Word Up, Yo! a new  word game hosted by Liz from A Belle, A Bean, & A Chicago Dog, KLZ from Taming Insanity and Natalie from Mommy of A Monster!  The word this week was FUMBLE, jump in, link-up and play along!!

 

 

*Benchmarking from Google Analytics ( from June 13 [first day of analyzing] -July 5, 2010)