Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! Today marks the first birthday of Digital Farm. How exciting!
Some interesting facts about the blog:
- The site has had around 6500 pornographic and online casino selling spam comments. Most of them blocked by good old faithful Aksimet
- The site has had 29 105 unique visitors, and the amount of monthly visitors is increasing just about every month.
- And a massive 260 982 page impressions
- Most the site visitors are of course from South Africa. Yet there are also a lot of visitors from England and the United States. There are also a fair amount from Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and India.
- The most popular keywords, on average each month, are “Nikon d50 vs. Canon eos 350d“, “350d”, “Mark Forrester”, and even occasionally “Growing Weed“
- The “Nikon d50 vs. Canon eos 350d” debate was also one of the most commented on articles with some amazingly helpful comments from some readers
- The Digital Farm has greatly increased the website visitors to my company website, proving the theory that blogging can help your business grow!
- I’ve generated company sales through this blog
- I’ve even been offered a job thanks to this blog!
- This site has won awards. “Best Technology Blog“, and runner up for “Best Designed Blog” at this year’s South African Blog Awards.
During the year the postings got tiring though, and I wasn’t quite convinced I could continue to maintain the site being as it was. Daily postings on regurgitated gadget gossip was becoming a little to frequent in the blogosphere.
Therefore over the course of this year the Digital Farm has moulded into something completely different to what it started out as! What started as a technology blog, boasting articles on the latest gizmos and gadgets, along with some tech discussion, now is simply the creative outlet of a website designer. Something which I think is definitely a better reflection of who I am.
Now enough about that. Don’t be a lurker! Leave a little birthday message for my young blog. Make him feel warm and fuzzy inside, just for one day of the year.
I'm a half English, half South African, digital designer, photography lover & co-founder of WooThemes.com. This site is my dedicated creative outlet.
Manfred
12. Oct, 2006
Hi Mark,
congratulations on a great 1st year in cyberspace. Your comment on how the nature of a blog evolves is certainly true: what starts out with certain intentions and goals is guided by many influences. My biggest frustration at times is the lack of interaction from visitors, one of the things that makes a blog what it is: something for the community. So at least I’ve left a comment here…it’s all too easy to devolve into a lurker ;-)
Good luck for the next few years!
Manfred
Rocket
12. Oct, 2006
Snappy Birthday
JBagley
12. Oct, 2006
Rock on Mark… ;)
Colin
12. Oct, 2006
Happy Birthday Digital Farm.
Martin
12. Oct, 2006
Yeah baby!
I think the “creative outlet” approach is much better, it makes it a lot easier to post, and a bit of variety is always entertaining for your readers!
Here’s to another year…
Big Steve
13. Oct, 2006
Congrats! Mark in a forest! I’ll put in a good word for u at google!
Lil' Brother
13. Oct, 2006
Happy birthday to the farm.. friday the 13th.. unlucky ;)
Keep it up bru..!
The Granny Wrangler
16. Oct, 2006
Happy birthday to you, happy biirthday tooo yoou, happy biiiiiiiirthdaaay deeear maaaaak and digitaaal faaaaaarm. Haaappy biiiiirthday tooooooooooo yooooooooooooooou!!
Di
16. Oct, 2006
Happy Blogday! Just remember you spell Shepherd with an h…
Lots of love,
xxx