19/20 annual review

This is a review of my first year of blogging. I posted my first blog post on Saturday 4th May 2019. My goal was to post one new article, once a week, for one year. I posted my final article, for the year, last week on Saturday 2nd May 2020. So the question is:

how did I do?

Writing

In theory, to meet my goal, I should have posted 53 articles in that first year. I posted 50. I had a few near misses during the year where I almost didn’t post. The period during which I missed the 3 articles was COVID lockdown.

The main thing I realised, to post articles regularly, is to build a writing habit. During the year, I would use my daily commute to work and home again as my time to write. On my mobile phone. Whilst trying not to walk into lampposts or fall into any manholes.

In writing my 50 articles, I wrote approximately 63,000 words. That is a mean average of 1,260 words per article. Which takes around 4mins and 48 seconds to read.

I read articles on medium.com. If I see the article takes less than or equal to 5 minutes to read, I will read it straight away. Anything over 5 minutes and I need to think twice before I start to read it. Do I have enough time right now to read this article? Staying within the 5-minute zone will increase the likelihood of being read.

During the year, I realised I needed some sort of proofreader. Some way of checking my articles were free of spelling and grammar mistakes. As well as being easy to read. I came across Grammarly and Hemmingwayapp. I learnt to draft my articles. Then put them through Grammarly and Hemmingwayapp for editing. You start to pick up a style. Shorter sentences. The use of hyphens for certain words. Keeping the language simple and understandable. Your writing receives grades from Grammarly and Hemmingwayapp. You can then tell if you are improving or not.

Blogging Platforms and Social Media

When I set up my blog, I chose to use Squarespace as my platform. A lot of people recommend using WordPress. WordPress is free to set up initially and much more customisable. Squarespace is more expensive and less customisable. So why would I choose Squarespace? To be honest, there were too many decisions to make for me to set up a WordPress blog. I went into analysis paralysis. I spent more time trying to set up the site then actually getting on and writing the articles. Squarespace took care of a lot of things for me and gave me fewer decisions to make. I could just get on and write.

There is some interesting analytics that come with Squarespace. Geographically, readers are based mainly in the UK and the USA. A few in Ireland, Philippines and Australia. Most popular articles are:

1. Arthur Boorman (77 views)

2. how much change can we tolerate? (52 views)

3. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth (47 views)

My first few articles, I only posted on my website (www.paul-davy.co.uk). I shared my website with friends and family. A few signed up to receive the weekly article via email automatically. 16 in total. Which hasn’t changed all year.

Later on, I started to share my articles through my accounts on Facebook and LinkedIn. These then reached a much wider audience. I tend to post a week behind on LinkedIn and Facebook. The thinking was that those who sign up to my website newsletter should receive my newest work first.

LinkedIn, the most viewed articles are:

1. Mexican Fisherman (461 views)

2. How much change can we tolerate? (442 views)

3. We.Need.You. (351 views)

Most engagement (sum of likes and comments):

1. We.Need.You (10)

2. Does our perspective dictate our opportunities? (6)

3. Eulogy (5)

Facebook, most viewed:

1. Wizard of Oz (48)

2. Changing your Environment (48)

3. Eulogy (44)

Most engagement:

1. What is it worth? (16)

2. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth (14)

1. Are you a warrior saint or poet? (14)

1. Changing your environment (14)

Then I found a community of writers on Medium.com. For $5 a month you could consume as much content as you like. You can also write content and share for free. If a community of writers like your writing, then perhaps you can be sure that you are doing a good job. Also, if you do well, you can make money from writing on medium. If readers like your article, they can clap for that article. The more claps you get, the more money you get. In March 2020 these were the Medium.com earning statistics:

• $5,099.90 — the highest amount earned for a single story

• $17,126.40 — the highest amount earned by a single author

• 6.9% — the percentage of active writers who earned over $100

Currently, I have only posted 36 of my 50 articles on Medium.com. The last article I posted was on 29 January 2020. I would schedule 4-5 articles to post in advance. Somewhere along the line, I have let this slide though. As Medium.com has over 60 million active users, perhaps I should keep my articles up to date.

Goals and the next year

My original goal was to publish a new article, once a week, for a year. I am going to set myself the same goal for the next year. The main challenge is not to break the chain. Fundamentally, I need to build time into my day to write. To build a daily writing habit.

Grammarly helps me edit my spelling and grammar. It also gives me a performance score against prescribed targets. Grammarly also has a premium version. It’s not the cheapest in the world, but I am wondering whether to invest to see whether it is worth it.

Before I started my blog, I had been writing for two years. Writing the content for an online course. The course would be roughly 30 lectures long. In the two years, I had written the first 14 lectures. I am thinking that I need to finish that course.

I need to be regularly posting my content on Medium.com. It may be my greatest opportunity to build an audience. To find what content people are interested in. To gain feedback from other writers.

Here is to the next 52 articles.

Footnotes

Average reading speed on medium.com is 265 words per minute (https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214991667-Read-time)

Grammarly (https://www.grammarly.com/)

Hemmingwayapp (http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)

Article about medium earnings (https://medium.com/blogging-guide/how-much-money-can-you-make-writing-for-medium-a3cf0c9c7533)

 

Medium user stats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(website))