Hi everyone, Happy New Year and all that. Thought I’d kick off with the usual feedback post on last year’s blog stats:
The blog passed a couple of milestones last year – since it started in 2008, it’s clocked up 2000 posts, 1.4 million words, and 10,000 comments (big thanks to everyone who takes the time to add 
theirs). Only a matter of time before the blog accidentally reproduces Hamlet (monkeys, typewriters ….)
Overall reader stats for 2016 were:
319,607 ‘unique visitors’ – not quite the same as ‘different readers’, as if you read the blog on your PC, laptop and mobile, that counts as 3 people. Within the year, the usual trend – a weekly cycle of low weekend reads, and summer and Christmas lulls (see graph). Those numbers are pretty much 
identical to 2015, which I’m happy with as I took a blog break when I was finishing the book in Jan/Feb, so only 214 posts in 2016, compared to 242 the previous year (equal to a 13% increase in hits per post).
Most-read Posts: these continue to surprise me – only two of the top 10 were new – who says blogging is ephemeral? Apart from a possible bias towards aid industry related topics, I can see very little pattern behind this list – polemics, geek-food, how-to guides and just plain random stuff – could someone please tell me why a 2009 post on climate change in South Africa is still getting 10,000 hits a year?
- How is climate change affecting South Africa? (a 2009 post – the oldest in the list).
- How much should Charity Bosses be paid? (from 2013)
- How to get a PhD in a year and still do the day job (from 2011)
- Religion and Development: what are the links? Why should we care? (from 2011, but weirdly, a new entrant to the list)
- Are women really 70% of the world’s poor? How do we know? (2010, also a new entrant)
- What are the limitations to a human rights based approach to development? (2014)
- The 2016 Multidimensional Poverty Index was launched yesterday. What does it say? (the highest ranking post from 2016)
- How does emigration affect countries-of-origin? Paul Collier kicks off a debate on migration (2014 post, appearing for first time – that has to be Brexit!)
- How do developing country decision makers rate aid donors? (2016)
- How to write a really good executive summary (2014 post)
Neither of the all time top FP2P posts made it this year – What Brits say v what they mean and The world’s top 100 economies: 53 countries, 34 cities and 13 corporations.
Where were the readers from? Same top 10 to last year, with South Africa moving up the rankings (probably that climate change post, again).
71% of readers used PCs and only 23% read it on their mobiles (5% used tablets). Does that mean the blog’s not very mobile-friendly?
If you can see any other patterns or useful lessons do let me know, and I always appreciate suggestions for improving the blog. It’s about time I ran a reader survey (last one was about five years ago) and had another think about addressing some of the enduring challenges/weaknesses of the blog – eg more debates, getting more posts from Southern authors. Watch this space.