# One Year of Blogging On the 31st of Aug 2020, I published my first ever blog post. It’s been a wild journey, full of ups and downs, but a very rewarding one. In this post, I will detail everything I’ve learned, show some numbers and plans for the next year to come. ## The Motivation I started blogging with two goals in mind: - to share things I find interesting - to improve my writing skills in English ### Sharing Interesting Stuff The definition of “interesting” is in the eye of beholder. What I find cool might not catch your attention, and some things will be considered boring. If it’s boring, why sharing? Had I held this mindset, I’d never get started. So I promised myself: I’d write what I considered interesting and if it helps other people, then great! If not, that’s fine! Adopting this demeanor was crucial to help me get started. Going from 0 to something requires more energy than keeping consistency. So once we overcome this initial barrier, it’s just a matter of putting a bit more energy from time to time. After producing the first few articles, I realized that what was interesting to me was also interesting to other people. Each “thank you” would put more gas into my motivation tank, so I kept going. ### Improving My Writing Skills You might have noticed that English is not my native language. In fact, my English is pretty much self-taught. I started learning it primarily to consume English content and never had the intention to produce anything. But... what is the point of learning a language and not being able to use it fully? Even though I could write shorter messages, e-mails and things like that, expressing complex ideas was a challenge to me. Writing is considerably harder than passive reading, and doing that in a second language is even harder. So I asked myself, “What can I do to improve my writing skills?”. The answer could not be more obvious: write more! ## The Downs - part. 1 I spent quite a long time trying to set up a blog platform. I chose [hugo](https://gohugo.io/) because it's fast and has many features, making it very flexible. The only problem is that this flexibility comes with a cost: it's a sea of distraction. I think I spent almost a month trying to tweak it, testing themes and whatnot. I then realized that I was focusing on the wrong thing. The focus should be on the content, not on the appearance. Luckily, I bumped by a tweet from @[Catalin Pit](@Catalinpit) recommending [hashnode](https://hashnode.com). It was exactly what I was looking for, I setup my blog in less than an hour and wrote my first article in a few days. ## The Downs - part. 2 This end of August was the end of summer in Europe and a second wave of Covid had been looming over. A new lockdown was imminent, and I’d have to stay inside as much as I could. Not only that, I also didn’t have to commute every day, which would consume about 1h of my day. With this “free time” available, I set a pretty impressive streak and wrote one article per week. My goal was to publish every Saturday morning. And did that until... I went back to Brazil for Christmas and I decided that I’d not touch a computer during that time. I had some signs of burnout and thought that would be the way to revert it. After the break, I returned to the UK and had little to no motivation of writing again. Maybe I was still burned out, I don’t know. The truth is that I wrote only 4 articles after the break and I used to write that many each month. I’m not sure if I can do 1 post a week ever again. My focus has shifted from quantity to quality. It’s not that my first few articles lacked quality, but keeping this standard requires too much time and energy. ## The Ups - The Stats Now it’s time for some interesting stuff: the stats! Up to this point, not considering this article, I’ve written 22 posts. Out of those, 5 of them brings most of the organic traffic. ### Traffic By Channel ![miguendes_visits.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1630332030067/ODoSRe4DM.png) In 1 year, people have viewed this blog around ~129K times, according to Google Analytics. This number might be higher if we consider that [tech-savvy people block GA](https://plausible.io/blog/google-analytics-adblockers-missing-data). Taking only organic search into account, 46% of the views come from search engines such as Google, Bing and Duck Duck Go. It’s actually not bad considering that I'm not an SEO expert. ### Organic Visits ![miguendes_organic.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1630332045084/sfBlnGdjN.png) In this chart, we can view the organic traffic every month. I started investing in SEO after subscribing to [Monica Lent's Blogging for Devs newsletter](https://bloggingfordevs.com/) by the end of 2020. The things I learned from it really paid off, as you can see in the graph! The views had been growing steady until July. The decline has presumably something to do with [Google’s release of an update to its core algorithm](https://www.tecmark.co.uk/blog/google-july-21-core-update). I experienced the same thing in December, and the traffic will perhaps recover like it did back them. ps: If you want to learn more about SEO, I definitely recommend [Monica's Blogging for Devs](https://bloggingfordevs.com/) and her new course [SEO for Devs](https://seofordevs.com/?rh_ref=6d97a59b) ### The Most Popular Ones - Top 5 Overall Here’s a list of my popular posts according to GA, and backed by [hashnode](https://hashnode.com) analytics. [73 Examples to Help You Master Python’s f-strings](https://miguendes.me/73-examples-to-help-you-master-pythons-f-strings) [The Best Way to Compare Two Dictionaries in Python](https://miguendes.me/the-best-way-to-compare-two-dictionaries-in-python) [5 Hidden Python Features You Probably Never Heard Of](https://miguendes.me/5-hidden-python-features-you-probably-never-heard-of) [How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot With Python. Part 1.](https://miguendes.me/how-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-with-python-part-1) [How to Use datetime.timedelta in Python With Examples](https://miguendes.me/how-to-use-datetimetimedelta-in-python-with-examples) ### The Most Searched Ones - Top 5 Overall And here's a list of my popular articles based on organic searches only. [The Best Way to Compare Two Dictionaries in Python](https://miguendes.me/the-best-way-to-compare-two-dictionaries-in-python) [How to Use datetime.timedelta in Python With Examples](https://miguendes.me/how-to-use-datetimetimedelta-in-python-with-examples) [How to Pass Multiple Arguments to a map Function in Python](https://miguendes.me/how-to-pass-multiple-arguments-to-a-map-function-in-python) [How to Check if an Exception Is Raised (or Not) With pytest](https://miguendes.me/how-to-check-if-an-exception-is-raised-or-not-with-pytest) [How to Use Fixtures as Arguments in pytest.mark.parametrize](https://miguendes.me/how-to-use-fixtures-as-arguments-in-pytestmarkparametrize) ## Plans for the Future I write mostly about Python and its ecosystem. I’ll probably continue writing about it but I’m also considering adding a bit more of Machine Learning to it. I’ve been working with ML for a good four years and I think I have some cool stuff to share. For now, my plan is to find a schedule that works for me and that allows me to keep consistent. I’m not sure if I can write one article per week, but one every two weeks seems very doable. Still, the focus will be always on quality first. ## Conclusion That’s it, folks! I hope you liked this post and see you next time! I'd like to thank the awesome @[Chris Bongers](@dailydevtips) for proofreading this article and suggest a few improvements, thanks mate!