With a couple of hours remaining to 2019, I though I would write an review of my latest year blogging and reveal any new plans for the future. First, I continue to love anime and have found an even greater love of writing. So much so that plan on writing a book this year (2020). I have no idea what I will be writing about yet, but it will likely be centered around anime. However, I realized that I have the same fears of writing a book that I had with writing this blog, acceptance. Or a fear of failure. Will anyone read it? Would anyone care what I have to say? Will it be any good? I don’t have answers to any of these questions, but I do know that when deciding to start this blog. Just do it. If I can present my argument and/or opinions clearly, my audience will find me. I remember the early days of this blog, back in 2013, when a post would get almost no views.
It was a little embarrassing, but I pushed through it, focusing on what I was saying not whether I had a large audience. Speaking of which, 2019 fell just short of topping 2018 in terms of views. 71,530 views verses 68,266. I’m not disappointed in the decline, but I think it was largely due to my error. I foolishly decided to change my permalinks (removing the date), which resulted in a lot of broken links. This choice cost me hundreds of views a week. The number of viewers was almost 6,000 for the month of October 2019 then it dropped to less than 2,000 in November and December 2019. Lesson learned, don’t change permalinks recklessly. My goal of adding video games and news (on anime/games) to this site failed. It’s was too inconsistent and it’s more difficult to review video games than anime or manga. I also wanted to post everyday, while I did manage to increase the number of posts from 102 to 369, I couldn’t manage to post everyday for even one month.
It didn’t help that my blogging declined tremendously between the end of November and beginning of December. This was due to working overnight for USPS (Post Office) that made me too tired to blog. Unfortunately, the permalink debacle will likely mean that next year will see this blog’s views decline ever further. Regardless, I’ll take that as a challenge. According to stats and insights from WordPress, my all-time post is now 627, with 256,656 views and 186,630 visitors. My total number of posts, comments, likes and overall words increased over last year. Speaking of comments, my top commenters where:
- Roderick J “Jay” Friz (105)
- dreager1 (67)
- Redgeek (60)
- raistlin0903 (55)
- The Otaku Judge (30)
- ospreyshire (26)
What I plan for the future of this blog
- More commenting: I’m terrible at commenting on other blogs. I always feel badly (just not bad enough to change). However, this year I will make a more serious attempt to do better.
- Write more essays: My first essay, “Why are shonen anime characters so stupid?” was well received, so I hope to write more.
- Make more lists: List are the some of the most liked and commented on post I write. In 2020 I plan on writing much more.
- Review classic anime: I want to review anime from before I started the this blog. Anime like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo are among the top of my lists.
- More comic book reviews: I rediscovered my love of American comics this year. I will be review more of them this coming year.
- Review manga vols. instead of individual chapters: I have a terrible habit of not reviewing all chapters of a manga series. It’s not the end of the world but I hate that I’m incomplete. I decided that reviewing vols is probably easier and I more likely to consistently do it. Furthermore, It will allow me more time to write the reviews.
- Complete anime seasons: while reviewing my blog posts over the years, I realized that I only managed to complete two full seasons of any anime I reviewed. Cop Craft and The Promised Neverland and that was likely due to both of them only having like 12 episodes. Sometimes I stop reviewing because I dropped the series. I will make it clear when I drop a series in the future.
- Finally, Review more movies: Anime movies can be difficult to get a hold of quickly so I have a difficult time reviewing them when they are released. Most of the movies I review will probably be a year behind, but I want to do more of them.
Anyway this post is getting long. So any ideas on what I might what to write my book about? Any tips for getting more views? How about what type of post you think I might want to consider adding. Regardless, I would like to thank all readers and commenters for you support. I appreciate you all. Hopefully, 2020 will be better for all of us. Happy New Year!
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