Hi everyone! Happy New Year’s Eve! Today I thought I’d compile some of my top posts from 2017 and share how I did for my blog goals. I was curious the other day as to how my blog did in 2017, so here’s my 2017 recap post!

Not that I haven’t done enough recaps yet for the week, right?

So in terms of stats, at the time of writing this (a few hours before this is published) I received 25,031 total views and a total of 9,508 likes and 4,207 comments. I have 1,221 followers and a large majority of my viewers are from the United States. This is a huge increase from 2016 when I had a total view count of 1,762 and 147 in 2015 (I started my blog at the very, very end of November that year). My best month for views was July (3,660) while my lowest month was February (218). As you can see, I had a huge growth in the second half of the year which really surprised me! But that was when I started posting every week day so I imagine that’s why. Personally I noticed the large jump start in April and then leapt up each month to stabilize around September.

As for my top 10 posts, they are:

1. My Fall Fashion
2. My New YouTube Channel
3. Hobbies I want to learn
4. My Mental Health Story
5. Tag Me Tuesday – Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge
6. My Shoes Collection
7. MBA Back to School Haul
8. My Current Skin Care Routine
9. Thank You For 500 Followers
10. My Fourth of July OOTDs

And I thought I’d thank my top commenters too! Of course, I thank everyone who has ever commented, liked, read, spent any time at all on my blog. That means a lot already! And these 6 people (I can’t find a way to see more than the top 6) are so far the ones who have commented the most.

1. Amelia – I have absolutely adored your posts on all the cultural events you’ve done around Hull. I know the end of the year is coming but I’m sure you’ll still find amazing things to cover on your blog. For one, I loved talking about each of the Gallagher Girls books with you these past few months and remember to see Moana sometime!
2. Hunida – I’m so glad we have started chatting so often through our blogs! I love comparing beauty products with you. Plus you 100% get my sense of humor which is amazing because everyone else seems to completely miss my jokes but I can always count on you!
3. Angela – Darling Angela! Not only are you my fellow Hamilton fan, but also my fellow Community, Moana, Harry Potter fan – plus more I think but there’s so many we share! Also, thank you for explaining Christmas in the summer because now it does make sense! Before I totally could not wrap my head around it.
4. Jamie – I know I’ve told you so many times but I LOVED your Blog/Vlogmas! Everything from Kyrie’s ugly Christmas sweater to your last minute shopping vlog was so fun to read and watch. Plus your outfits are always #goals (that’s still a thing, right?) and I’m still trying to think of a way to get you to be my personal stylist!
5. Amielle – Somehow I wasn’t following your blog?? I totally thought I was so I don’t know what happened there! Now I’ve fixed it and I’ve caught up on a few of your posts. Your lovely comments always lift my day and I always love reading your comments!
6. Joy – Joy, I absolutely love your wonderful and kind comments on my blog. You’re always so supportive and you always tell me how much you enjoy my posts so that’s always super encouraging! I also love how much we have in common such as the make up brands we like and the movies like Coco!

Of course, there are so many other bloggers that I am equally thankful for as the above 6 but I’m terrified if I start listing them I’ll forget so I’m going to leave it at that. However, I think the rest of you know who you are!!!

And how did I do on my 2017 blog goals? Well let’s take a look!

1. I want to become more active in the blogging community. I don’t often comment on posts I read so I want to do that more, and I hope to make a few blogging friends.
   I totally nailed this one! Of course, I can always get better at commenting. In fact, during the semester I was constantly falling behind on reading posts, so in an effort to catch up quickly I would forgo writing comments. I want to get back to reading posts daily and commenting again but I think I did rather well the rest of the year and given the circumstances!
2. I want to continue to consistently post on my scheduled days.
   Yes! I don’t recall missing a day so if I did it was likely very, very minimal. I’m so happy I was able to keep this one.
3. I hope to keep up with my categories more evenly or even chose more specific areas of focus for my blog so I don’t feel like I have too many topics to write about.
   I feel like I need to go back and archive some topics and add new ones. I’ll have to revisit this one. Someday… What I do think I did well was writing about stuff that interested me when it interested me, rather than trying to hit all the topics I previously had.
4. I want to take better photos for my blog. I often do things in my life with the intention of getting photos to share later, but then I forget to take them and then I have nothing to post! I also want to stop recycling so many photos as well.
   I think I did get this done! I do still forget to take photos or don’t take that many sometimes but I am getting better at doing so and I love editing photos now so I’m happy with that.
5. I want to do more reviews and thought-provoking posts. I want to get away from the hauls and the same type of posts that I’ve gotten comfortable with.
   I have done a lot more reviews because of the musicals I’ve gone to but I’d meant that I wanted to do stuff like more product reviews. Guess I need to be more specific! I haven’t done hauls really because I don’t really shop a lot at once anymore. I don’t think I’ve done “thought-provoking” posts but I have gotten more comfortable adding more of my own thoughts so maybe that’s the same? Eh, I don’t remember what I meant by that so again, I need to work on getting more specific.

I am thinking of goals for 2018 so those will be up tomorrow! In the meantime, Happy New Years Eve! Let the countdown begin! (And for those of you already in the new year, I hope it’s treating you well!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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