One year ago today I started this blog with a post about
Financial Commitment Sunday at my church. At the same time I was contemplating a purchase of some
radios and guns. Well, I got some radios (
IC-7000 and
UV-3R), but I never did get the AR or the Glock. And now I've been leaning towards the M&P9.
When I was writing that entry, I was thinking that I would blog for a year and then see if I wanted to keep doing it. I plan on continuing the blog, but I feel less pressure now. I've had various undocumented goals - three posts a day, so many a week, etc. None of which I've consistently met. I blog when I feel like it - which is fairly frequently. I had envisioned longer, more thoughtful posts (like
Linoge and others), but it turns out that I'm closer to being a linker. As far as the personality of my blog, it was going to be some guns, ham radio, technical, commentary on society, etc. It turns out I was going to post quite a bit about a little radio and the page views would go up dramatically.
As you will see in the stats below, some how this became a Baofeng UV-3R blog. It all started with a simple post about a
Yaesu VX-3R knock-off.
As of late yesterday, the blog had 112,231 page views for its first year. I've made 856 posts in that time.
The single largest referring URL was
Say Uncle - primarily for the
Ninjas in my House post with 1,850 views.
However, the single most visited post is the
Baofeng UV-3R software instructions at about 7,000 views.
The single most visited page is the
Baofeng UV-3R summary at almost 11,500 view for the year
Google.com is the largest referring site at about 12,500 pointers to the blog. If I add in the referrals from Google in Germany (2,500), the UK (2,200), Italy (2,100), Netherlands (1,200), Spain (600), and Canada (400), then Google is responsible for 21,500 views. Most of the hits from Google are from searches for the UV-3R.
Feedburner tells me I have a few RSS subscribers. Google Analytics tell me that I have lots of people who get here by way of the Baofeng searches and they click through to another post between (roughly) 30% to 60% of the time depending on the particular starting page. People average 2.93 pages and 3.15 minutes per visit.
So, where do I go from here?
More of the same I suspect. The UV-3R has been a great learning experience for me - both as a ham radio and as a blogger. I've got too many interests and not enough time. I think you've see that here... radios, running, tablets, guns, prepping, computers, reading, etc. Toss in a wife and an almost three year old - time is my limiting factor for sure. The
Radio Amateurs Code reminds hams that playing with the radio is a hobby and that the ham should be balanced - never letting it interfere with "duties owed family, job, school or community." I might add church to that, but it still sums up where I am.
Let's see what the next 365 days bring. Some goals... pass the Extra Class exam, keep running - maybe a marathon, earn a WAS award, pay off my student loan, finally pick up that plastic pistol, and blog a little.
Thanks for reading.
