I started this blog many years ago. It pre-dates at least two of my children, and possibly all three - back in the days when I had time to spare, time to write and time to think of interesting topics to write about. Nowadays, it's a very different story, and I discovered that my last blog post was back in June. I used to aim for one blog article per month, so that's two full months with no digital output here (I have another blog and a YouTube channel, and they keep me busy too).
I remember those first few months, though, trying to generate some traffic for the blog (and for another one I've started more recently, and which has seen a traffic jump in the last few days).
Was my tracking code working? Was I going to be able to see which pages were getting any traffic, and where they were coming from? What was the search term (yes, this goes back to those wonderful days when Google would actually tell you your visitors' search keywords)?
I had weeks and weeks of zero traffic, except for me checking my pages. Then I discovered my first genuine user - who wasn't me - actually visiting my website. Yes, it was a hard-coded HTML website and I had dutifully copied and pasted my tag code into each page... did it work? Yes, and I could prove it: traffic wasn't zero.
So, if you're in the point (and some people are) of building out a blog, website or other online presence - or if you can remember the days when you did - remember the day that traffic wasn't zero. We all implemented the tag code at some point; or sent the first marketing email, and it's always a moment of relief when that traffic starts to appear.
Small beginnings: this is the session graph for the first ten months of 2010, for this blog. It's not filtered, and it suggests that I was visiting it occasionally to check that posts had uploaded correctly! Sometimes, it's okay to celebrate that something isn't zero any more.
And, although you didn't ask, here's the same period January-October 2020, which quietly proves that my traffic increases (through September) when I don't write new articles. Who knew?
