Yep, another year has passed and it feels like yesterday since I started my blog back in mid February 2009. Now, it’s time to take a look back on my 6th year of blogging while I share my thoughts about the future.
At first, it seems that I was having a pretty good year since I was breaking new records in traffic. Sadly, Google eventually caused the traffic to drop by over 60 percent due to them changing their search algorithms. I think this happened mostly due to duplicate content (namely the tag and archive pages) and low quality content that was published mostly during my first year of blogging.
While I had to do a lot of spring-cleaning by either deleting some of the low quality posts or de-index them, I realized how much my writing has improved throughout the years. In fact, word counts for posts I write nowadays usually range from 300 words to a 1000 words depending on the type of post. For series I can’t write about, I usually leave it for the end of the week. Aside from that, I’m currently happy with my posting rate
On the other hand, during my sixth year of blogging, I have noticed that the blogosphere was not nearly as active compared to the past. As mentioned in my post reflecting back on last year, pretty much a good chunk of the blogosphere has stopped blogging on Anime Nano. Of course that site does not represent the whole blogosphere since not everyone have his or her blogs syndicated on that site. Even so, I am still glad that there are still a lot of old bloggers with some new ones that continue to write about Anime despite social media and Youtube being popular.
What will the seventh year have in store? Since I have graduated and got my Master’s Degree after finishing my last semester in December, I’m facing the same challenges that every recent graduate face: finding full-time work. Once I start working, although I won’t nearly have as much free time, I will still continue and perhaps make posts 1 to 3 times a week, roughly the same pace I’m doing now. However, I will have some more money left over to spend on my hobby (minus any expenses and student loan payments), meaning that I won’t need to put advertisements on my blog (which hardly generates any revenue) nor I’m in a dire need a Patreon since it doesn’t cost that much to run this blog (if you are curious, it costs about $60 a year on hosting and $10 on domain renewal or about $5.80 a month). Of course, having a job of some sort will finally give me the opportunity to go to Anime conventions and do other things. As a whole, the future looks bright if things go well.
With that, I would like to thank all my subscribers, followers and visitors who supported me throughout these years. I hope you will continue to support my blog into the future.
応援してくれてありがとうございました。
Overall Statistics for the 6th year: 1543 posts, 3836 comments, 82 completed series.
Hmm. That is too bad about your content. I know aniblogging does take some effort and for search engines to downplay your content, well, kind of saddening.
Never heard about Anime Nano but I do know there are some good anime blogs still popping up every once in a while.
If your ok with it. I really recommend this new anime blogger who I just discovered yesterday-Takuto at Takuto’s Anime Cafe.
I really hope making the new transition in your life is not too difficult. Hope it goes well with finding full time work.
Got to love Google Panda for the fact that they have a near monopoly in the search engine market (and I won’t be surprised if others experience the same thing). The thing is that Google detects the tag, category and archive pages as duplicate content and slaps a penalty on the whole site. Of course, this is an easy fix as one needs to modify the SEO plugin settings and have Google ignore those pages. I guess time will tell to see if it finally recovers.
Also, I highly suggest any anime blogger to add their site to Anime Nano since it gives one’s blog some exposure.
Aside from that, thanks.
Congrats on 6 years~ And on getting your M.A. too! I hope you have better luck getting a decent job than I have. But since you know so much about computers and IT stuff, I’m sure you’ll be able to find one soon since those jobs are in high demand. If you’ve never had a job before, you can always start small by taking a low paying job first just to get experience for your resume. But if you can get a good full-time job right away (which a couple of my lucky friends have) that’s great too. Good luck!
Thanks… my job search is mainly focused on public sector jobs for the fact that most jobs in the industry jobs requires experience for certain technology that never got taught in any of the courses. The funny thing is that I was offered a summer job to do some programing, but I wasn’t able to do it due to my last minute decision to go to summer school (could have postpone it, but oh well).
In the mean time, I’m doing some programming, playing some games and brushing up on my Japanese self-study during the job search. Hopefully, it won’t take too long.
Congrats on 6 years Macho Man. Didn’t realize you were in it that long. Here’s to as many more years are you are capable. I’m too deep into blogging to switch to another form of sharing my views on stuff so I’m sticking to this format but I already addressed this a while back so no need to repeat myself.
Anyway best of luck in your future endeavors, both otaku and work related.
Congrats on 6 years and MA!!! Can’t wait to see what else you’ll bring to this blog. ^^/
I would like to thank everyone else for congratulating my success and hopefully my seventh year will be blight.