Here are my top 10 blog posts per Google Analytics for the first half of 2020:
The first post garnered 2,365 views versus the second which rated 651 views and number 10 at 336 views. As you can see the focus for my readers remains for the most part antennas.
The Six Meter Dipole post remains at number one, a ranking it has maintained for the last few years. Given that feedback from my audience I pulled together a comprehensive post on six meter antennas. Published in early June, it managed to come in ranked tenth. It will be interesting to see where it’s ranked by the end of the year.
The Rover Video was published in mid-June and still managed to come in ninth, thanks in large part to a mention in the ARRL Contest Update Newsletter.
Blog Demographics
I read with interest Frank Howell’s article in the July/August 2020 issue of National Contest Journal titled Aging and Radiosport — Part 1. It begins to look at USA amateur radio operator demographics with considerable insight into the challenges of generating meaningful statistics with limited data.
I’ve written on the demographics of our hobby before at All Ages in Amateur Radio. My goal was to address the urgent call for more youth in amateur radio. I feel this call ignores our lifecycle and how we spend our time on school, career, and family in our middle years versus hobbies and special interests in our later years. I’m glad to see that the National Contest Journal is taking a serious look at this and look forward to part 2 of the article.
As an aside, I’m further absolutely delighted with the efforts at the ARRL in addressing younger hams. On the Air Magazine is magnificent in design, layout, photos, articles, along with the sound research they’ve done to direct their publishing efforts.
Back to my own blog, digging into Google Analytics information on gender and age, I’ve found that my blog mirrors the general findings on the amateur radio population. Here are the numbers, again per Google Analytics: Gender = 90% male; Age = 32% over 65, 27% age 55 to 64, 15% age 45 to 54.
Pages per session seems to show something a little different. But on further thought, maybe not. It’s probably saying that regardless of age, they’re finding a few pages of interest and moving on.
All users are — Short on Time. Long on Options. They need information now and have lots of eager websites ready to fulfill that need.
Acquisition of Viewers
From this information, it’s clear that the majority of users arrive on my website after a search of some sort. Probably right after typing in “six meter dipole.” The direct traffic no doubt comes from some of the mentions in ARRL newsletters. And the social media traffic quite possibly from my posts in Facebook groups and on Twitter.
Ongoing Thoughts and a Milestone
That’s a lot of data. I had not looked at the blog’s demographic information before and find it a fascinating reflection of what others are finding out about our hobby.
With the help of traffic data, it is nice to find out what’s important to readers and then attempt to provide more value through additional posts.
Even so, this blog is about “my ham radio adventures.” So, it will continue to focus on what I’m doing to extend my enjoyment of the hobby, which also includes writing about it.
I will further note a milestone of sorts. I crossed 400 blog posts on this website in June. This is number 403. Hope there has been some value provided across those posts that have provided fun to other ham radio adventures.
Thanks for reading. 73.
