2009 was one hell of a year.  Beginning with the Ice Storm we’ll never forget, which took me out of blogging for over a month, the loss of my job in March, which took me out of blogging for a month or so, the BlogHer conference in Chicago, which revitalized my blogging, IzeaFest in sunny Orlando Florida, with some of the greatest people on earth, which made me realize just how much I love blogging, my appearance on the Doterati “Blog Marketing Demystified” panel, of which I did really well, and the latest trouble my family and I have been facing up until just a week or so ago.

But through it all, you have been great and seemed to have stuck it out with me.  My Twitter follower numbers continued to rise, the number of visitors to my blog continued to rise, and a few other online endeavors came into existence.

Among all of this that has happened in what seems like only the blink of an eye, here are the 5 posts in which you all enjoyed the most, and the 5 biggest sources of my traffic for 2009.

My Top 5 Posts of 2009

  1. Skype – A More Powerful Social Networking Tool
  2. 8 Daily Tasks To Increase Blog Traffic
  3. The 5 Biggest Uses Of Google Wave
  4. Establishing A Sense Of Security On Your Blog
  5. 8 Ways To Make Your Blog Sticky

My Top 5 Traffic Sources Of 2009

  1. Direct Traffic
  2. StumbleUpon
  3. Twitter
  4. Google Images
  5. Yahoo (organic)

Google organic search was number 7 for traffic sources, if that tells you how the web is changing.

The traffic I got from referrals beat out all other traffic producing methods with a ranking of 61.83%.

This only proves that engaging in conversation and building your community is so much more important than worrying about how well you rank in the search engines (which only produced 9.52% of my traffic for all of 2009).

The Future Of My Blog

In 2008 I built my blog to a level unimaginable by most people in an extremely short time.  In 2009, with all of the life changes, I let the blog coast and slowly build a stronger community, rather than worrying about massive increases in visitors.

And in 2010 I plan on ramping it up once again, and hopefully making this a year to remember with both my blog, and my personal connections and workings with every one of you.


How are you going to make your blog great in 2010?

http://www.steven-sanders.com/skype-a-more-powerful-social-networking-tool/