I will admit.  I’m kind of a stats freak.  I like keeping track of things and seeing changes happen.  Even though that is something I like though, I’m not into blogging for the numbers.  Still, to me, numbers are cool.

With that said,  as I continue my series on “Looking Back, Looking Forward“, this post flows out of what I wrote at the beginning this year:

I plan on posting more frequently here at UnfoldingNeurons.com – I think there is room for more Canadian Tech and Ministry bloggers out there.

What happened:

In 2009 I wrote and published 123 posts.  In 2010 I wrote and published only 46 posts.  So I guess I failed in this task.  Here’s some other 2010 stats (I told you I like numbers!):

• The month I published the most posts in last year was February.
• Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday tied for the days of the week that I most often published a post.
• In 2010, all my posts were commented on 95 times.  Of course, the majority of comments were made on any posts I made related to my Organize Series plugin.
• In 2010, my top 8 commenters were tied  with 2 comments each (not a lot of interaction on my blog!).  They were: marc, David, tom, E.D. Lindquist, Soul Pundit, Sid Wood, Dan, and Heather
• The Top 10 most commented Posts were:
  • Quick Organize Series Update: 5 comments
  • Evolution of Organize Series: 4 comments
  • Something I’ve been struggling with: 4 comments
  • which has the greater impact?: 4 comments
  • Early Adopter Disease: 3 comments
  • It’s 2010 – Here’s to a New Year!: 2 comments
  • Doodle Psychology #1: 2 comments
  • Desktop Application from Web URL’s via Google Chrome: 2 comments
  • How is Mobile Technology Changing the church and the Non-Profit Sector?: 1 comments
  • Organize Series Video Tutorial: 1 comments
• The Top 10 viewed posts in order from most to least (not including any Organize Series related posts – that is a given). It’s interesting that out of this list, only one of them was written in 2010 (Google Chrome article):
  • Catalyst Day Two – Dave Ramsey, “The Momentum Theorem”
  • CMS vs. Blog…no you don’t need Pepto Bismol
  • Making some noise: HP Printer problems…
  • Who is the Greatest Saint?
  • Hamachi : Stay Connected – a VPN solution.
  • How I Keep Track of Printed Articles [EverNote Usage]
  • Five non-religious arguments for marriage over living together
  • Catalyst Day One – Rob Bell
  • Desktop Application from Web URL’s via Google Chrome
  • Catalyst Day One – Francis Chan
• In 2009, Unfolding Neurons received 35,322 page views. In 2010 there were 21,162. I know that a HUGE factor in this decrease was my decision to move all my Organize Series WordPress plugin related stuff to it’s own site.  For me this works better because then the statistics here will be a better reflection of the true audience reading the blog.  I suspect there will be more decrease in the coming months but once it stabilizes I’ll have a better idea of the true numbers.
• I began 2010 with 42 subscribers to my blog feed.  I begin 2011 with 84 subscribers.  The subscriber count has been up and down this past year but there was a few times where this blog broke the 100 barrier.  It’s interesting but I’ve actually noticed my average subscriber count go UP after the Organize Series move.  This was what I hoped for and expected as a result of moving a lot of the irrelevant posts to most of my audience off this blog.

It was interesting that even though the number of posts I wrote went down, the number of people subscribing to my feed went up.  Further, once Organize Series moved to it’s own site – the average number of people subscribing went up even more.  Still don’t quite know what this means, except perhaps, the people are subscribing because they are seeing less Organize Series related stuff (which has a narrow target audience) and more different types of posts.

Let me say this.  While I could, I’m not out to build an audience with UnfoldingNeurons.com (even thought it may seem like it).  I’m really blogging because it helps to “unfold” my mind and hopefully I can share my journey with others (and learn from them too) along the way.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the interaction and WELCOME it.  But my goal isn’t to see a meteoric rise in numbers.  If it was, I’d probably push a little bit more to get more posts published.  As it is, I’m writing when I’ve got something to say, and the time to get it written.   Maybe someday I’ll become a little bit more focused and will have the goal of reaching more people with this blog (resulting in more posts being published) but this is what seems to work best for me right now.

One more thing, I mentioned last year that I think there’s more room for Canadian Tech and Ministry bloggers out there.  I’m always keeping my eyes open for them,  do any of you have suggestions of blogs/sites to check out?

Also, have you thought about why you blog?  Are you in it to build an audience, for the fun, or like me to just have an outlet for unloading some of the stuff you think about?  OR a bit of all of that?

Oh and one more thing, do you think numbers are cool? 😉