2012 Blog Year In Review

2012 was a great year for My Own Advisor blog thanks to every dedicated reader, the casual reader, anyone who took a few seconds to comment on my site and all the blogs who referred to and linked to My Own Advisor.  You made it an enjoyable year to be online.

This was my first full year of self-hosting after launching my domain in May 2011.  Although I had a few hiccups with my host provider now and then it was a pretty smooth operational year overall.  Thanks to Bluehost for keeping me up and running 24/7 and providing excellent customer service when I needed it.  I would highly recommend them to anyone.

2012 Blog Traffic

Since moving my blog from Blogger to WordPress platform and self-hosting, traffic to My Own Advisor increased over 2011, and thanks to you for that.

In 2012:

• Visits to were steady, averaging between 12,000 and 14,000 per month.
• Pageviews were consistent, averaging from 21,000 up to 24,000 per month.
• Almost 50% of all site traffic is courtesy of new visitors.  I hope you keep coming back.
• Most of my visitors are from North America, but folks are following from around the world.  I had visitors from all parts of Europe, many parts of African and Asia.  Readership is also growing in Australia.  Aussie-Aussie-Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!
• Almost 20% of my traffic is coming from mobile hardware, tablets and smartphones.  Nice to see you taking me along.
• About 50% of my traffic is coming from organic searches, folks I assume, stumbling upon My Own Advisor.  Thousands of visits per month are due to direct traffic and feeds.  Finally, thanks to many of my favourite blogs, personal finance and investing sites and forums more traffic is coming this way every day.  Special recognition goes out to:

Million Dollar Journey

Dividend Ninja

Canadian Money Forum

Michael James on Money

The Passive Income Earner

Boomer & Echo

The Dividend Guy Blog

Andrew Hallam

Canadian Couch Potato

Dividend Monk

Modest Money

Canadian Capitalist

Young & Thrifty

Simply Investing

Thanks to the folks above and many other websites for supporting My Own Advisor in 2012.  You know who you are and I interact with you frequently on social media.

Looking Ahead

For 2013, like interest rates and stock markets, I really have no idea what’s in store for My Own Advisor.  I have a list of personal finance and investing goals I’m kicking around but in terms of this site, I don’t really have any specific goals in mind.  Maybe I should?  To come to think of it more, these would be great milestones if they were achieved:

• Consistently average over 20,000 site visits per month.
• Hit 30,000 pageviews per month.
• Surpass 1,500 subscribers.
• Surpass over 2,000 Twitter followers.
• Redesign the site.

The last bullet I’ve been toying around with for some time and I might get some professional help to do it.  We’ll see.  On one hand, I would like to learn how to do this myself, learn more code and be very much in control over everything.  The downside, this takes time, some willingness to practice and also make some mistakes.  I’m OK with the latter but the former, time, might be hard to find.  If I decide to redesign the site, I will let you know when I do 🙂

In closing, it’s been great to see the blog get some more exposure, amongst my peers, in the media and internationally through more feeds and subscriptions.  I look forward to wherever it may take me next year.

In 2013, I encourage you to keep following my investing journey, interact with me, share my posts and stories with everyone but maybe most importantly, leave a comment about all things personal finance and investing, or really, anything else when the mood strikes.  We can all learn from each other.

Thanks for a rewarding year in 2012.  Stay tuned for a couple more posts in 2012 and a whole bunch of good stuff in 2013!