2018 was my first FULL year of blogging — it had some ups and downs. Below I provide the highlights of the posts, the readership, and our charitable donation for 2018 (10% of all blog revenue goes to charity!):
Blog Posts
I published 63 total posts — I averaged a little over one per week, though the preponderance of those were early in the year. The last two months I’ve had far less time to write — I published only once in December and twice in November.
Here are a few of my favorites:
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I've opened up an Amazon Storefront -- see a litle of what the Rogue Boys buy and a few of my curated recommendations.
I donate 10% of all revenue from this site to charity.
How Many People and Which People Should Die For Which Rights?
Why I Broke Up With My Financial Advisor
“What Am I?” Societies Labels Are Sowing Division — a guest post from Brandon at 30and0
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My Ivory Tower – I Loved You But Had To Stay Away — a guest post from VagabondMD, a radiologist, that kicked off a series of posts about life working in academic medicine
How Neon Underwear Taught My Son the Value of Money
The Financial Folly of the US Healthcare System Part II — a two-part series discussing the outrageous pricing/cost structure of our healthcare system
Pediatrician’s Corner: What’s With the Anti-Vaxxers? — I venture out to learn more about why some parents are against vaccines
What Do Entertainers and Athletes Owe Us? — I’m not exactly a social justice warrior, however I do think about such topics frequently
A Doctor And His Addiction — a little about me
Do All Cats Go To Heaven? — an existential discussion with a 4-year old
Following
Twitter: 8914 followers — I really enjoy Twitter. I may not be churning out a lot of blog posts, but if you’ve not followed me here you are missing out
Facebook: 192 followers
Instagram: 338 followers
Mailing list: 149 subscribers (subscribe here)
Readership
Thanks to a viral tweet, I not only gained thousands of Twitter followers, I had a single day with 16,142 pageviews, far and away the best in the history of the blog.
That single day drove a lot of traffic and social media interest that keeps on paying off — it had 22 MILLION engagements on Twitter alone, and led to increased attention elsewhere.
My total 2018 pageviews was 55,081, over 3x the views from 2017 — the blog was started in April 2017 however the # of posts was similar between the two years. My monthly readership tailed off after the viral tweet, but even without many posts at the end of the year I was still getting some traffic to the blog.
Twitter (21k), IG (1.5k), and FB (1.2k) were the 3 largest specific referrers to my blog. The wonderful Wall Street Physician was the largest single site referrer (135). I didn’t start using IG or FB at all until my viral tweet, but now try to crosspost my posts and occasional interesting tweets/thoughts to those platforms for those that prefer it.
I had visitors from 134 different countries. With that many countries there were many represented. The U.S., Canada, and UK were the biggest. There were some surprises with India having nearly 500, Mexico ~100, and quite a few countries with a handful here and there (1 from Palestine and many others). Interestingly, I had over 100 views from India in December. I have no family there — my extended family is in Pakistan, but I do not have much readership from there (hmm).
Revenue
The blog is not a huge money maker, but I’ve said that 10% of my revenue will go to charity. I let readers decide, and they chose Doctors Without Borders — a fantastic charity. The White Helmets and our local foodbank were tied for second. I will make smaller donations from our Donor Advised Fund to those charities.
The Future
Recently I have not had time to devote to the site, but it is not shutting down. As mentioned earlier, my writing has tailed off. I have literally dozens of drafts and ideas of things to write about, and even some other directions I would like to take this site.
I will likely take the month of January to work on some more blog posts, seeing if I can finally make headway on some other ideas, and try to keep the momentum going.
This site continues because I enjoy the writing and the interactions. I wish to continue generating some level of renue from the blog, and will continue to pursue ways to do it. Though it is far from being anywhere near as profitable as just working an extra shift in the emergency department, it’s a fun and engaging way to spend time that is somewhat separate from my regular job. It’s both a hobby and an outlet and I believe let’s me both express myself and grow.
So on to 2019 — I hope you had a wonderful 2018!
