It’s slightly alarming that January 2012 is already behind us. It doesn’t seem like a whole month ago that I was hurriedly rushing to complete my 2011 roundup post before the clocks struck midnight on New Year’s Eve. The timing of the post was presumably lost on any readers from anywhere other than the Greenwich Meridian who didn’t realise it went live at about ten minutes to midnight. It was my own fault, I had started writing the post four weeks earlier but hadn’t got round to finishing it.
Writing a post that put all of 2011 into perspective made me realise the benefit of writing a reflective post once in a while. I have written a few previously, but those were missives on my foray into blogging in general, and were located on my now lagging personal blog. So, with that in mind, I want to start writing up monthly reports into how I feel I’m getting on with the ethos of Creative Splurges. Which, quite obviously, is what this post is. Or will be, once I’ve finished this waffling preamble.
January has been a weird month for Creative Splurges. I had picked myself up a bit in December after having a depressingly quiet November and October, but I wasn’t expecting January to be like it was. For starters, it was my busiest month in terms of posts. Ever. I published 14 posts in January, easily beating the previous record of 10 (I like stats, this will become apparent shortly). Compared to how the month started, however, 14 is almost a low number – for the first week, I was averaging a post a day – but this is the advantage of a couple of weeks off work for the holidays, and not something I can sustain long-term with the sort of posts I like to publish here (that is, ones with lots of words and quite a few pictures).
On the subject of daily posting, Creative Splurges spinoff the Daily Photo is doing pretty well; it has achieved a post a day throughout January, and almost all of these posts have achieved at least one ‘like’ from fellow bloggers. I’ve been mixing up the images with a mixture of old and new posts, which seems to be working. The blog had over 350 hits in January, which isn’t bad by any means, and has eleven subscribers (I’ve started February experimenting with post times to see if this brings in more readers, but the evidence from today alone suggests it makes no difference).
Creative Splurges has had a good months for hits too – 538 for January, a record high for a single calendar month. This was helped a little by the publishing of a few posts with galleries, which tends to lead to more hits per post. The total hits for this blog over its entire 12-and-a-half month life is now achingly close to 3,000.
Quite unexpectedly, the number of subscribers to this blog has almost tripled since the start of the year. I started January with a lowly eight subscribers; that number is now twenty-one. I’m at a loss to explain the increase, but it is very welcome (that stat at the left by the subscription signup that says ‘join x other subscribers’ also includes my Twitter followers and likers of the Facebook page, which has apparently hit a round 50 between all three).
I’d like to think that the increase in followers is due to an increase in quality of my posts, but that may be wishful thinking. Certainly, credit is due to both Jon Tobey and Scott Marshall for directing some of their own followers in my direction.
There has been a shift in how I process my work; it can be seen in most obviously in the Sights and Sounds of London Town post that I have begun experimenting in making images look more ‘artistic’ and using post-processing techniques to enhance the concept of the image (or, possibly more often, using said techniques to create a concept for the image and prevent it from being just another dull photo).
I’ve also been spending some time with the Creative Splurges Facebook page. I’ve so far persuaded three people to hit the ‘Like’ button, which is a start, but really isn’t all that impressive. I’ve started posting some unique content there, in the form of links that readers of this blog would find interesting and a few exclusive ‘outtake’ images, and even a few ‘spoilers’ of posts to come. I quite enjoy updating it, but the poor thing does need a little more love from people, so I would be grateful if you could head on over there and ‘Like’ it at least a little.
That was about it for January. I have a few photos I took that didn’t make it into a post in January, so February will be benefitting from those ones, and I’m still constantly on the lookout for new and interesting subjects. Hopefully the weather will improve a little too, my shutter finger nearly froze solid last week.
Thanks, as ever, for reading this blog. Your time spent here is very much appreciated.
Rob
Creative Splurges 