Four years. FOUR YEARS! That’s how long it’s been since I started Wonderfully Bookish. Back when it was a small infant. A tiny hobby that I didn’t think would really go anywhere.
Little did I know that four years later, I’d still be working hard on it and it would have given me tons of amazing opportunities. This little blog has shaped so much of my life, which sounds extreme, but it really has. Without it, I don’t think I’d be even half the bookworm I am today, which also means I might not have met a lot of the friends I have today, or have any of the really cool experiences.
Also, in that time, Wonderfully Bookish has expanded into a podcast and a YouTube channel. I’ve also started a second podcast with my friend Elle, and I’m also about to launch a new YA book club at my local Waterstones. I may be ridiculously busy, but now I can’t imagine not doing all of these things!
And as if I’m not already busy enough (alongside all of this I also work full-time and I’m in a musical theatre group that puts on two shows a year), I’m setting myself a challenge starting right now…
This is the first post as part of my blog birthday blogathon. Over the next four weeks, I’m going to be posting every single day, either here on my blog or on my YouTube channel. That’s four blog posts and three videos every week for four weeks, as well as posting podcast episodes for the Wonderfully Bookish podcast and the brand new Let’s Learn About podcast. (And, as I said, working full-time, rehearsing twice a week, and more.) Am I mad? Probably. But I love a challenge!
I’ll be wrapping up the challenge once it’s done, so if you miss any posts or videos, that wrap-up will include a huge list of them all so you can have a big catch-up.
I’m going to do a quick summary of my stats, as I’ve been doing for the past few years. (You can see my first birthday post here, and my third one here. I didn’t do a second birthday one, for some reason.)
My stats in 2018:
- 270 blog posts
- 220 WordPress followers
- 40,000 all-time views
- 18,000 unique visitors
- DA: 26
My stats now, in 2019:
- 330 blog posts
- 280 WordPress followers
- 60,000 all-time views
- 21,000 unique visitors
- DA: 17
They’re a little big all over the place, and they haven’t increased a huge amount in the past year, but honestly, I haven’t put a whole lot of focus on the blog this year. I’ve been so busy with so many things – one of the main things being joining the theatre group and being in my first show with them.
Also, you might notice my DA has gone down quite a bit… all thanks to a gigantic Moz update this year. Moz is the company that created DA as a metric to measure how websites measure up for search engines and how well they might rank, and this year, they overhauled their whole system, which meant most websites – especially bloggers – plummeted. But I don’t really pay attention to DA, so I’m not massively bothered!
My stats are something I’ve never been too obsessive over while blogging. Some people get so obsessed with them, looking at them daily and being sad when they see dips, but I don’t really look at them. However, seeing my stats compared like this makes me want to work really hard to see how much I can increase them for next year’s birthday post!
(That reminds me – I wonder what I’ll do for the big five year milestone next year? Hmmm…)
Before I leave and get on with this blogathon challenge, I have one more thing. If you don’t follow me on Twitter and/or Instagram (which I’d recommend 😉) you might have missed this, but this weekend, I announced a blog birthday giveaway! I’m giving away two of my favourite or most anticipated books of 2019/20. You can enter the giveaway here on Twitter and here on Instagram for an extra chance to win. There will be two winners, so get your entries in if you want a free book!
So, here we are. This post officially launches my fourth blog birthday blogathon! It’s going to be a bit of an insane month, but I’m looking forward to this little challenge. If you haven’t already, head over and subscribe to my YouTube channel so you don’t miss anything there.
Thanks for reading, and here’s to another wonderfully bookish year!
