The Journey to 1 Million Page Views
Two years ago, on May 20, 2010, I decided I would join the blogging world.
Kelsey had already started Snappy Casual but at the time neither blog was very intentional. Regardless, May 20 is the official anniversary of the first published post on Words of Williams.
So here we are, ready to celebrate this website and relive the highlights, milestones and accomplishments from the past two years, and share our vision for the future (check out last year's celebration here). There may even be a bonus at the end of this post. :)
This could get lengthy, so hang on...
Highlights
If you've been with us from the beginning, this will be a recap of some of our best content, and if you haven't, then here are some posts you may have never seen before.
Here is a breakdown of our top 20 posts of all-time, based on Wordpress site stats. (These posts don't include any of our Fairytale series.)
Insights From the Top 20
- 'Gender reveal' and 'iphone emoji' are popular search terms, and Google ranked our posts very high, which is why we see those three posts in the top five. We have seen a significant amount of new traffic from those posts over the past few months. If you found us by googling those terms, raise your hand (leave a comment).
- Because the term 'gender reveal' has brought us a great number of new readers, it's logical that those searching the term are either parents or soon-to-be parents, thus making a good majority of our popular posts about pregnancy and parenthood.
- Most of the list is comprised of newer posts, which means that because the site has grown, we have more readers now than we did in the past. However, I think it speaks to the timeless value of some of the posts that were written near the beginning that have continued to top the charts such as: Our Bedtime Story, The Williamses' House Rules and Our Morning Routine.
Popular Series
It's always fun when you set out to write one blog post and it turns into a series. The fairytale series was supposed to be one long post and it turned into more than 16 posts and is something we will continue to add to on a yearly basis. Here's a short list of the series we have written.
eBook
On Groundhog Day we launched our first eBook. Your Family Playbook was a vision of mine that I finally got around to making a reality in February. It's a comprehensive workbook that helps us plan our year as a family. It unites us, rejuvinates us and focuses us on the things that matter most.
The Numbers
We published 397 posts in the past two years, totaling more than 167, 600 words and more than 3,600 comments. The comments really do mean the most to us. Engaging with you all is what really makes this whole thing worthwhile. When you leave a comment, it strengthens each post and adds great value to the other readers.
Since the launch of wordsofwilliams.com in March 2011, we have received more than 1 million page views. That's a pretty exciting number if you ask me!
Here is a look as some other stats over the past 15 months:
Milestones
We have been blessed for sure to be featured on a handful of other websites. Because you have told us, we know that some of our loyal readers have stumbled upon this site because of these posts. Thank you, again, so much to those who have featured us, and to everyone for reading.
- Designing an Intentional Marriage
- [Sponsor Post] meet words of williams (intentionally preparing for a baby)
- i wish i wrote it: How a Baby Affects Our Marriage (re-post)
- Eric and Kelsey {from Words of Williams} Talk About Budget Committee Meetings
What the Future Holds
We won't have a crystal ball to see into the future, but we believe that God has big plans for this little blog. And we are faithfully committing to put in the work to continue to grow and improve over the next year. We're excited to see what happens.
We have realized after having a baby that time is precious, and it gave us a new perspective on what's really important in life. So, in an effort to be more intentional, we will be making a few changes:
- No more 'Over the Weekend': We love sharing our lives with you, but the stress we've put on ourselves to crank out a post on Sunday night recapping our weekend events is just too cumbersome. Instead, become our friends on Facebook (Eric | Kelsey). Like Words of Williams on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter (Eric | Kelsey). Follow us on Instagram (@wordsofwilliams | @kelseywilliams). We will post about our lives (weekdays and weekends) on there. It will essentially be the same as an Over the Weekend post, just live! So be our friend or follow us to get the dirt on our lives.
- Redesign: Yeah!!! Our friend Joa is working on a blog redesign, and once the release of Standard Theme 3 is out, we hope to have our friend Jason help us implement the design.
- Focused content: Our passion is around blogging about our family life. While this can be a broad topic, we hope to dive into real-life issues that we are struggling with, sharing our solutions and hopefully challenging you all to live your family life with more intention. This means we are going to try hard to keep the content coming in about four categories and keep the other posts to a minimum.
- Store launch: We've created an Amazon store with some helpful resources that we love--mostly books and DVDs that we find inspirational, motivational, educational and more. This will be living and breathing and be updated as we find other helpful tools to share with you all.
- Advertising: We've done some research around how much we should be charging for advertising based on the amount of traffic we are getting. We've essentially been giving our advertising away up until this point, and we are OK with that. We appreciate the partnerships we've had. The bad news is that rates are going up in June. The good news is, we are offering 50% off ad space for the month of June! If you are interested, email me for rates. At 50% off, the best spots will go fast.
Giveaway
And now for the really fun part! We want to celebrate our two years of blogging with a fun giveaway. This is our biggest giveaway yet!
Enter below to win a Kindle Touch, a $25 TOMS gift card, or a $25 Amazon.com gift card. (FYI, Kelsey won the Kindle in another online giveaway, but it has never been used because we both have iPads.) a Rafflecopter giveaway