Best of 2021 | Blogging Stats

Happy Wednesday, friends! It’s my last day of work until a long break—12 days off! I’m going to try my best not to work during this time off and focus on rest, books, family, and friends. That sounds like a really good plan.

For today’s “Best of 2021” post, I’m taking you through my blogging stats and posts from this year. It was a really good year for my blog. I feel like I’m getting more engagement than ever before, which is a little stunning because isn’t the personal blog dead? Hehehe. It feels good to know that there are plenty of people still blogging and plenty of people still reading this little blog of mine. I appreciate each and every one of you!

This post is broken into four sections: by the numbers (blog stats for the year), my top 5 blog posts of 2021, my all-time top blog posts, and some of my favorite blog posts I wrote this year.

By the Numbers

• 40,000 unique views
• 11,000 visitors
• 950 words per post on average
• 800 comments
• 139 posts
• 124 countries represented in my views (with the United States, Canada, and Poland being my top three)
• 6 new subscribers
• 2 blog breaks
• 1 NaBloPoMo

Countless words written, countless hours spent writing posts, countless emails exchanged with readers, countless love pouring from my soul. 

My Top 5 Blog Posts of 2021

(These are blog posts written in 2021, in order of popularity.)

1. What I’m Reading (5.17.21) – I am astonished that this random reading recap posted in May is my highest-viewed post written this year. It has almost 500 views! How… what… why. In that post, I reviewed The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah and When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole, which are two very buzzy books, so maybe people just landed on my blog by googling the book? What an odd little duck.
2. Monthly Recap | September 2021 – This was an average monthly recap post, but it’s the last post I published before I took a three-week blogging break unannounced, so I think it garnered so many views because it was at the top of my blog for three weeks straight.
3. Thirty-Four – My yearly birthday post always seems to be one of my most popular blog posts every year. I guess you guys like it when I talk about myself, eh? Hehe. This was a very special and vulnerable post for me. I was really scared to publish it, to truly come out as queer on my blog, but the response I got was so kind, so supportive, and so loving. I really shouldn’t have expected anything less from my readers—you guys are the greatest.
4. Everyday Moments of January – Like my monthly recap in September, I think this blog post did so well because it was the top post on my blog for a month, as I went on a month-long blogging break after posting it on February 1st.
5. Three Things Thursday (v. 4) – It’s always funny when a random blog post like this pops up with a ton of views at the end of the year. I love doing Three Things Thursday posts, and it seems like you guys like reading them. Noted!

All-Time Most Popular Blog Posts

My all-time most popular blog posts were the same as last year, although I got a ton of hits on the “10 Things I Like About Myself” post (nearly 2,000 views in 2021 alone!) from lots of google searches.

1. I’m 27 and Scared to Move Out (+463 views)
2. On Being a Socially Anxious Introvert (+15 views)
3. 10 Things I Like About Myself (+1,916 views)
4. “What is meant for me is already mine.” (+816 views)
5. Rules for Living with a Dachshund (+302 views)

Other Favorite Posts

1. Reflections After One Year – One year after Covid was declared a global pandemic, I wrote this post reflecting on all of the things I wanted to remember from such a strange time in our lives. I wrote this post thinking life would be back to normal (or whatever “normal” is now) by the end of 2021, but it most assuredly is not. Stupid variants.
2. All About Bathing – I loved writing this post and I loved reading all of the responses from you guys about your own bathing habits! The idea for this post came from an episode of The Girl Next Door Podcast. I love it when they discuss these regular, everyday parts of our lives that we all approach in entirely different ways.
3. Mays of Years Past – I got the inspiration for this post from Lisa, who wrote about the “Mays” of her life after going through some old photos. I loved the idea and it was so fun digging through my phone to look at what I was doing every May since 2014. I really want to continue this series and do one for each month!
4. How I’ve Grown as an Enneagram 9 – Anyone who has read my blog long enough knows that I live and breathe the Enneagram. I’m a 9 (the peacemaker) and understanding my type and how it affects the way I live and love and work have been instrumental in my life. I wrote this post about all the ways the Enneagram has changed me as a person and how I’m better able to harness my personality for the better.
5. To All The Phones I Ever Had – This was such a fun post to write! Don’t ask me how I remembered all of the damn phones I’ve ever had when I usually can’t remember what I had for dinner last night. I guess it’s the same way that I remember all of the words to obscure CCM songs from the 90s. I loved writing this post and all of the responses from you guys about your phone history.

I’ll be taking a brief hiatus from the blog to celebrate Christmas. I’ll be back on Monday with my end-of-year survey for 2021. Happy holidays, friends!