2018 makes it 6 years that I’ve been keeping the blog. As I’ve done for each of the past five years, here’s a look back at the past year. We’re going to do the usual tour through traffic, number of posts, popular posts, performance to 2018 goals, and the goals for 2019.

For reference purposes, you can see the posts for of the previous years by clicking on any of the following years: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

Blog Traffic

Unlike 2017, where I passed 100K visitors since inception, I didn’t hit any major milestones this past year, but it was still a good year. I finished the year just shy of 150K sessions since starting, and broke 200K pageviews. Traffic also flattened out in 2018 after being on a steady decline from the beginning of 2016. Given my lack of focus on trying to generate traffic, I’m pretty happy with how it’s going.

I still find my traffic patterns very interesting. The post that drove all of my traffic in 2015 continued to drive the majority of my traffic in 2018. It was a post I wrote documenting my installation of DD-WRT firmware on a TP-LINK router. I suspect that the traffic from the post will eventually dwindle to zero, at which point my traffic may return to 2014 levels.

Here’s a closer look at the monthly traffic pattern for 2018, which was pretty consistent on a monthly basis. When comparing to 2017, traffic was down just over 10%.

Blog posts

My goal was to post 100 times in 2018, which is a goal I have every year. I had posted 36 times in 2017, which is the fewest posts I had done in a year. I vowed to do better in 2018. How did I do? I posted 24 times.

Yes, 24 times. 24.

In typical fashion, I got off to a good start. I posted 10 times by mid-February, which means that I posted 14 times the rest of the year. Like I said last year, I have got to do better in 2019. Quite honestly, it would be hard to do worse.

Blog posts: 2013-2018

2013	71
2014	73
2015	59
2016	57
2017	36
2018	24

2018 by month

January	7
February	3
March	1
April	2
May	2
June	0
July	0
August	3
September	1
October	0
November	2
December	3

Popular Posts

I always like seeing which posts that I wrote during the past year were the most popular, along with the posts that were most viewed the past year, and the most popular posts since starting.

Most viewed posts published in 2018

1. Book review: The Power of Positive Thinking
2. Book review: Ninja Selling – Subtle Skills, Big Results
3. Book review: Be Like Amazon – Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It
4. Book review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
5. Book review: Disruptors, Discounters, and Doubters
6. Book review: Scrum – The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
7. Book review: Boys in the Boat
8. Fear the Beard
9. My 2018 Reading List
10. The Masters: An Experience Like No Other

Most viewed posts in 2018

1. Installing DD-WRT on the TP-LINK TL-WR841N
2. Upgrading WampServer from version 2.2 to version 3.0
3. Amazon EC2: Upgrading from PHP 5.3 to PHP 5.6
4. Pacific Coast Bike Route – Ventura to Carpinteria
5. Upgrading to HTTPS with WordPress, Amazon EC2, Let’s Exncrypt and Cloudflare
6. Book review: His Needs, Her Needs
7. Bike ride No. 4 – Marvin Braude Bike Trail
8. Book review: Positioning – The Battle For Your Mind
9. Book review: The Power of Positive Thinking
10. The Tree Life of Trail: Hiking the Hollywood Hills

Most viewed posts since starting blog

1. Installing DD-WRT on the TP-LINK TL-WR841N
2. Pacific Coast Bike Route – Ventura to Carpinteria
3. Upgrading WampServer from version 2.2 to version 3.0
4. The Tree of Life Trail: Hiking the Hollywood Hills
5. Bike ride No. 4 – Marvin Braude Bike Trail
6. Bike ride No. 3 – Pacific Coast Bike Route, Ventura County
7. Amazon EC2: Upgrading from PHP 5.3 to PHP 5.6
8. Bike ride No. 2 – Ventura to Ojai
9. The Hollyridge Trail: Hiking the Hollywood Hills, pt. 2
10. Book review: The Atlantis Plague

2018 Goal Results

Just like 2017, 2018 wasn’t a good year for hitting blog goals

1. 100 posts
   Not even 25% of the way there. Strike One.
2. Catch up on all my book reviews
   Fell further behind. Strike Two.
3. Grow startup lessons
   Strike Three.
4. Consider a new section
   Didn’t even go there.
5. Freshen up the place
   No. progress.

Like last year, I’m not going to beat myself up over missed goals (even though I should). I do this for fun, so I’m not going to stress over it. For me, the fact that I’ve kept the blog active for six years is the biggest accomplishment that trumps all goals.

2019 Goals

With that said, here are the goals for next year. I’m going to keep them simple.

1. 100 posts
   If I say it enough times, it’s bound to happen one of these years.
2. Catch up on the book reviews
   This will be a focus for the early part of the year

---

And that’s it. Two goals for 2019. This is my fun place, so I’m not going to make this work. I’ll do my best to hit the two goals above, which should be motivation enough to keep the blog going for another year – Year 7!