52 Weeks – Week 38: New To You

New to me? This blog!

As I noted in my very first post, I had signed up for Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge three years in a row. The first two years I did absolutely nothing. This year, I rose to the challenge and, like I said at the start, third time’s the charm.

While the challenge doesn’t require a blog, I had been thinking about creating a genealogy blog for several years. The challenge’s goal of encouraging people to write about their family history fit into some of my other genealogical goals.

Like many genealogists, over the decades I’ve amassed quite a bit of family history. I had written bits and pieces about it in all sorts of forms and places. I kept thinking that if it was (largely) consolidated in one place, it would go far towards the process of consolidating it into something I might turn into a family history book or similar.

Although I wanted to participate and share amongst others interested in genealogy, I really didn’t care if this blog got a lot of traffic. I have no need for prominence or search engine optimization. There are already a gazillion excellent genealogy blogs out there and I’m not looking to compete or create a niche amongst them. I don’t really go out of my way to promote this blog. I haven’t even really told many people in my family about it. I’ve told one of my sisters, who is an archivist and who kindly humors me when I share my family history interest with her. I’ve also told one of my brothers about it, because he genuinely seems to take an interest in this stuff. At most, every week I’ll post the latest entry on Generations Café, the Facebook group Amy Johnson Crow created for the 52 Ancestors Challenge and to the Twitter account, Deck of Ancestors, that I created as a companion to this blog. So while I am very happy when I see that people are visiting and commenting, in many ways this blog is primarily for me.

All in all, I’m happy that I finally found the wherewithal to undertake the 52 Ancestors Challenge and create this blog. It has helped me discover what I have researched in great detail and where I have significant gaps in my research – particularly for some things I had thought I had done years ago. I’ve found that one of the difficulties in the challenge is finding new things to write about. Sometimes, the topic just doesn’t speak to me. Other times, I find that something I’ve written about in the past fits into any number of subsequent weekly themes. In fact, I’ve discovered that sometimes I’ve unwittingly written about the same thing twice. However, what I am most pleased about is the fact that I’ve now kept with it for three-quarters of the year. Week 52 is no longer that far away!

Then there are the numbers. I have a cousin who is one of a trio who do a prominent Doctor Who podcast. Each week when new episodes are airing, one of the three loves to go over the numbers, parsing the ratings and other stats of the latest episode. So before concluding this week’s post, I thought that I might do something similar, and look at my numbers for once.

I see that in the 258 days since I started this blog, I’ve had over 1,800 views and almost 1,200 unique visitors. That’s pretty picayune for serious bloggers, but I am amazed that it is even that high. My most visited post is from Week Five, “Branching Out”. No surprise, most of my traffic comes from Facebook and Twitter, usually after I post there with the latest week’s post. I’ve also noticed significant upticks when Amy has chosen to highlight my post in her weekly email. I’m so honored to have been selected!

Another stat that should come as no surprise to me is that most visitors are from the United States, with almost 1,100 unique visits from that country. I have had over 400 visitors from my own country, Canada, with the United Kingdom coming in third with just over 150 visitors. However, I was surprised to see that I’ve had visitors from Pakistan, Ecuador, Sweden, South Korea, Denmark, Brazil, and Nepal. Amazing!

As the primary purpose of undertaking this blog was to get myself to write more about my family history after decades of researching and compiling information, I’d say that I have been succeeding in achieving that goal. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to visit!