Our Year in Numbers: Blog Stats and Fun Facts

Fire up your laser pointers and Bunsen burners — it’s time for our annual look at the numbers behind the blog. Every year we break down what this site looks like in stats: some surprising, some silly, some serious, and all of it a snapshot of what our little corner of the web has been up to.

Before the straight-up stats, here are a few fun bloggy facts we thought you’d enjoy.

• Fun Bloggy Fact #1: Our monthly hosting cost for the site (to keep it fast and stable) is higher than our mortgage payment.
• Fun Bloggy Fact #2: We’ve written over 2,311 posts in the past five years. At an average of 2.5 hours per post (writing, uploading and editing photos), that’s about 5,777.5 hours spent writing — the equivalent of more than 240 continuous days without sleep.
• Fun Bloggy Fact #3: Internet rumors about us have run the gamut — from pregnancy rumors about Sherry to the odd claim that we’re Mormon. For the record: we’re not, and no, Sherry isn’t pregnant. The rumors are always a strange source of amusement.
• Fun Bloggy Fact #4: The total value of giveaways we’ve hosted over the past five years tops $55,000. In the last two months alone we gave away more than $15,000 in prizes — more than in the first two years combined.
• Fun Bloggy Fact #5: Blogging is the longest job either of us has held when you count the full five years we’ve been doing it.
• Fun Bloggy Fact #6: Tori Spelling once called us to discuss producing a TV show — true story. She was kind, and hilariously, there was a goat and a chicken in the background. We’re just too awkward and happy behind our laptops to pursue TV fame.
• Fun Bloggy Fact #7: Last month the site recorded 5.5 million page views, and our all-time total is over 143 million page views — which is wild when we still write like we’re talking to ten people.

Now for the straight-up numbers. We’ve included a few comparative figures from last year where helpful.

Key Blog Metrics and Personal Stats

• 1,043,621 — Total comments left by readers to date. That’s nearly double last year’s 570,314 and shows a huge increase in engagement over the past 12 months.
• 76,825 — Comment replies we’ve posted ourselves, almost double last year’s 38,754.
• Pamen — The default name our daughter Clara gives to any bear, doll, or person when asked. Her second favorite is Aemon. We have no idea where either name came from.
• 4 — The longest stretch of days we went without posting in the last 1,827 days (five years), despite having a baby, an earthquake, and a hurricane along the way.
• 3 — Average number of Home Depot trips per week.

• 143 — Published posts to date on our sister site Young House Life.
• 21 — Months we’ve lived in our current house.
• 27 — Clara’s weight in pounds, up from 21 lbs last year. Tall and lean like her dad.
• 8 — Burger the dog’s weight in pounds, slightly down from 8.5 lbs last year.
• 198 — Total weekly giveaways we’ve hosted since launching them in November 2008.
• 35 — Average number of posts per month.
• 4 — Number of soda-themed shirts John owns (Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Pepsi, and a Coke shirt added this year).
• 303 — Instagram photos posted to date.

• 1,800 — Average number of words per post. We’re talkative.
• 14,400 — Average number of words written per week.
• 629 — Projects linked on our Projects page (we still have around 40 more to add to that gallery).
• 70 — Clara’s photo project total: 52 weekly images, 17 monthly photos, and 1 birthday-card picture.
• 933,962 — Pinterest followers. This number still feels surreal.
• 1 — The number of ears left on Clara’s Olivia doll for her dollhouse (a tragic mystery we don’t discuss much).

Wrapping Up

There you have it — the year in numbers from our blog and a few personal tallies. We enjoy tracking small routines (like trips to Home Depot or John’s soda shirt collection) because they paint a real picture of life behind the posts. Do you count quirky things like this for your family or blog? We’d love to hear what odd stats you track.

Update: We frequently get questions about how we started blogging, grew our traffic, and turned it into full-time work. We’ve shared the details in a post about how to start a blog, how to grow traffic, and how blogging can become a full-time job.