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20,000+ Visitors in 2014 – Not Bad For A Little Personal Blog! :)

By Technology, The Web2 Comments
jetpack-2014-numbers

Jetpack Annual Report 2014 – Crunchy Numbers

 The numbers are in and according to my WordPress Jetpack Annual Report in 2014 I had 20,000 views of my blog. Not bad for a little personal blog! Click the image left to see the screenshot. Any image in this post can be clicked for full size.

My hosting provider Vidahost (who you can learn more about here) provide AWStats software. According to AWStats I’ve had (see image below):

  • 58, 101 unique visitors to my blog in 2014.
  • Who have visited 149,103 times in 2014.
  • And have resulted in over a million hits in 2014.
antonysimpson.com-awstats-2014

AWStats from Hosting Provider Vidahost.

The WordPress Jetpack Annual Report reports that my biggest referrers in 2014 were from social media sites Facebook and Twitter:


jetpack-2014-finding

Jetpack Annual Report 2014 – How did they find you?

jetpack-2014-attractions

Jetpack Annual Report 2014 – Attractions

 The WordPress Jetpack Annual Report indicate that my five most popular posts in 2014 were:
jetpack-2014-posting-patterns

Jetpack Annual Report 2014 – My Posting Patterns

 I’ve really grown my blog in the last few years, with Reviews of books, films and technology seeming to make the big difference to increasing the number of visitors. But what keeps my visitors returning seems to be blogging about my personal life. Below is the result of a readers survey undertaken in 2014. It that shows that readers enjoy the current content I create and would like more of everything. It shows that 80% of readers surveyed said that they would like more personal blog posts:


type-of-posts-readers-survey-2014

Readers were asked: What sort of blog posts would you like to see more of?

I think these statistics are great. In the next year and beyond I hope to continue to grow my loyal blog readership.

The blog costs money to host and takes up a considerable chunk of my time. So if you have a product or service that you’d like to advertise on the blog, please don’t hesitate to Contact me. Your advert could reach 20,000+ unique visitors a year.

Blog soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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Friday 2 January 2015

Talk Talk’s Incompetence and Terrible Customer Service

By Technology, The WebNo Comments
talk-talk-logo Talk Talk are incompetent and terrible at Customer Service. This is a summary of what I’ve learned from trying to place a new order with them.

My switch over date was supposed to be Monday 27th October 2014, with the router to arrive before and the Engineer to come on the day. No router arrived. No Engineer arrived. I complained to Talk Talk on their premium phone number, by email and by Twitter. I spoke to a Talk Talk Manager on the phone whose English I could barely understand and who could barely understand me. After 72 hours she still couldn’t tell me what the issue was with my order or what had happened with it. I called my old provider to arrange a further month of broadband and they told me that Talk Talk hadn’t even contacted them to let them know that they would be taking over the line.

Feeling irritated at this point, I told the Talk Talk Manager to cancel my order but apparently she couldn’t. I canceled my direct debit and told her this. I told her that I had emailed Talk Talk to confirm in writing my demand that they cancel the order. I informed her that I have a legal right to cancel the order, as the cooling off period is 14 days from commencement of the service being provided. And I still haven’t received any service from Talk Talk.

The whole point of switching to Talk Talk was to save money. Talk Talk’s incompetency and frankly terrible customer service has cost me £150. This £150 comes from: time off work speaking/emailing/tweeting them, time off work for the engineer visit, many phone calls to their premium line phone number and an extra two months broadband with my old provider (which has cost more as is a rolling contract).

I have now signed up to Plus Net for the same monthly price. So far, so good. They have done everything they said they would and have kept me informed throughout the process. The switch over date is today and all has gone well.

Mini-Rant Over,

Antony

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Friday 14 November 2014

My Writing Process for The Good Teen

By CreativityNo Comments
the-good-teen-plot-line

The Good Teen Plot Line

 I recently self-published The Good Teen, a modern-day telling of The Good Samaritan parable, with a hint of magic. I want to tell you a bit about my writing process for this short story.

The idea came from my childhood. Being brought up as a Christian we were told the The Good Samaritan parable. It’s a story that has stayed with me and one that I wanted to retell with my own twist. So I wrote/drew out the plot on flipchart (Left: My flipchart for The Good Teen, click on image for full size).

I like to develop my ideas, plots, sub-plots, settings, characters, pacing and description on flipchart as it’s faster than typing and allows me more creative freedom. The creative freedom to draw pictures, arrows and anything else I want to.

I originally decided to publish The Good Teen as a christmas story for my readers. Hoping to start an annual tradition. But then I saw a call for submission on the BBC Writers Room website for the BBC Radio4 Opening Lines programme and decided to write, edit and submit The Good Teen.

I had already written a To Do List for The Good Teen (below) and changed the timescales to meet the submission deadline.

the-good-teen-to-do-list

The Good Teen To Do List

The editing process, as always, was maddening. I had to cut to the word count limit, which meant some scenes were either cut, not written or combined.

Unfortunately, The Good Teen was not long listed by the BBC. So I decided to self-publish it online. You can download The Good Teen on it’s page. It’s a free download, with a Twitter Tweet or Facebook Like in exchange for the download link.

Write soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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Sunday 8 June 2014

A Week Without Facebook & Twitter

By Life, Technology, The Web2 Comments

I banned myself from Facebook and Twitter for a week. I felt like social media was taking up too much of my time and that it was too accessible (being available on my phone, tablet, through the internet, etc.). I used the week to reevaluate my relationship with social media: how I use it, how often I use it and what I use it for. What I learned about myself, Facebook and Twitter was fascinating.

Antony-Simpson-Writer My Relationship with Social Media
The week off social media has caused me to realise a few things:

1. Facebook & Twitter are the main sites I visit on the web.

2. I hate incorrect information on the social media sites along with hateful comments/status’/groups. As an example, my friends were sharing a group called KGT (Kill Gays Today) on Facebook, with good intentions. They were sharing it to encourage people to report it, so that it would get banned. But having seen a few of these hateful groups shared recently, I honestly just don’t want to see another. Ever.

3. I check social media, while doing other things at the same time. This means that social media wasn’t taking up as much time as I thought – and – that giving them up didn’t give me a load of free time back.

4. Checking social media distracts me from activities were I need a high level of concentration, such as writing. So I did benefit for a whole week of not being distracted while writing.

5. I had to stop myself throughout the week from habitually checking Facebook & Twitter, which made me realise that I use them daily.

6. I found myself making excuses to myself to check them and then forcing myself not to, behaviours common with a developing addiction.

7. I found out that I do like seeing what people are up to without having to speak to them.

8. I love unique content people create and share on Facebook & Twitter, but sometimes I just wish there was more of it.

facebook-logo Facebook’s Sneaky Tricks
Facebook used sneaky tricks to try and make me go on it. First in a week it gave me 30+ notifications, all cleverly worded to make me feel like I was missing out. I had posted a status update saying I wouldn’t be on for the week; yet friends continued to message me, tag me, etc. This caused me to question how many of my friend’s actually see my status updates? I realised that I felt more identifiable on Facebook, so was more likely to be cautious about what I post/share on there.
twitter-logo Twitter’s Lack of Appeal
I have to admit that I barely noticed not using Twitter. I only received 3 notifications all week. My pet hates on Twitter are: the 140 character limit, the shameless self promotion by some, the lack of pictures/photos and the bad filtering of my home page feed. I actually realised I could live without Twitter in my life, if it wasn’t for the number of Publisher’s Publicists on there.

Giving up Facebook and Twitter has made me more aware of social media’s limitations and the temptation to overindulge. I love the unique content people make and share; so I shall be the change I want to see. Later on in the year I’ll be sharing/tweeting some of my short stories I’ve been writing, and continue to share my journalism articles with you all.

Blog soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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Saturday 5 April 2014
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