Whilst 2019 is officially here, I’m still looking back at 2018. Here at Toy Photographers we love to do some analysis on our photos, so as part of that this year, I thought I would take a look back at the blog as a whole for 2018. The following is what I discovered.
Top five blog posts
Kinder toy in an egg box
It’s always interesting taking a look at what your top performing pages are on a website. The top page on our site is the home page, no surprises there. But looking at the top five blog posts from the year is a different story – it’s very surprising in fact!
- The toys of Kinder Surprise – (1,399 page views)
- Ship in a bottle (1,337 page views)
- Spider holster review and giveaway (1,145 page views)
- Another series 18 contest (972 page views)
- Series 18 Collectible Minifigures Review (892 page views)
I’m not quite sure why the Kinder Surprise post is top, but it seems to have gone down ‘surprisingly’ well. Shelly’s post about the LEGO Ship in the Bottle set came in a close second. With some absolutely stunning photographs in there, why not take a second look at that post! Third and fourth place goes to contest posts, so obviously you guys like those! In fifth place is Brett’s look at the wonderful LEGO Series 18 minifigures. And oh look, another contest in there!
Types of post
Over the year we had a total of 349 posts! That’s one pretty much everyday! Of course, posting this much means we had several themes become apparent across the year. During 2018 we had:
- 51 Six Image Narratives
- 43 podcast posts
- 39 review posts
- 36 ‘How-to’ posts
- 31 posts on toy safaris and other events
We’re looking to continue bringing you Six Image Narratives, and to increase the amount of tutorials and tips and tricks in 2019, so it will be interesting to see how this all changes next year!
Types of toys
Kitten rescue.
For this data I was reliant on authors having added appropriate tags to their posts. This isn’t always done, but from what I could work out, here’s the breakdown of toys for 2018:
- Posts tagged with LEGO (126)
- Posts tagged with Disney (6)
- Posts tagged with Funko (3)
- Posts tagged with Playmobil (3)
- Posts tagged with Re-Ment (2)
- Posts tagged with Figma (1)
- Posts tagged with Hot Toys (1)
- Posts tagged with Mythic Legions (1)
- Posts tagged with Preiser (1)
We are all still sharing a lot of LEGO from the looks of this list! It’s not a surprise, as we do love those little minifigures and bricks! However variety is the spice of life and I am going to be looking to branch out of my LEGO zone this year. I do have a wide variety of other toys to play with so it’s looking hopeful! Those Porgs I got for Christmas are already hounding me for more photos! And of course, we all hope to see more of Brett’s new 1:6 scale SigFig!
Author counts
We started the year out with four main members of the editorial team: Shelly, Brett, James and myself. By the end of the year, we also had Dave regularly contributing to the blog with his wonderful sense of humour! Our post counts for the year look something like this:
Most prolific author award goes to…
In 2019 James, Shelly, Brett and myself will be publishing a little less, and we will have some new voices for you to hear! I can’t wait to see what the blog looks like next year with all the new input!
Key stats
Moving away from the content of the blog, I took a look at our Google Analytics for the year (OK, well up to December 27th, when I wrote this!) We had a brilliant year and it was on the up in terms of usage, across the board!
- 27,418 users (up 32% on 2017)
- 108, 229 page views (up 55% on 2017)
- 53,473 sessions (up 31% on 2017)
Devices used
The majority of our readers check out the blog on a mobile device, although there is still a significant proportion of you reading on a desktop!
Mobile users to the front!
Where our readers are from
Our final bit of interesting analytics is all about where our readers are. We pretty much knew that America would take the top spot, but the range of other countries is really good! We really are a worldwide blog! Is your country on the list?
Play spot the country with out top ten reader locations!
I hope that didn’t bore you too much! And indeed, I hope it interested you, particularly if you are a bit of a data nerd like me! I’ll be back in a fortnight with a new post, all about the project I’ve decided to do this year! Stay tuned!
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Interesting post. I went back and look at the top 5 posts and it looks like I missed a couple from the beginning of the year. I also found the statistics interesting…
Thanks Molly! Yes, digging through the archives is always a great way to spend a little time! 😀
Lizzi – this is an interesting posting. Kind of surprising what the top posts where. I wonder if they are really that popular or its because they had all year to gain views? Analytics are so confusing! But I love those key stats! Its nice to see our overall numbers have all increased! Go team!!
My goal this year is to get all of the writers to tag toy brands better. That way we will get a better snapshot of the different toys we represent. I wonder how much is LEGO and how much have we moved towards action figures? I for one will be sticking with my first love, but I respect and admire those who move in new directions. I still believe we can learn from each other and from the new challenges that diverse toys bring to the table.
I look forward to revisiting these numbers at the end of 2019! Thanks Lizzi for running the numbers!
Thanks Shelly. That’s a good point about length of time a post is up affecting the stats. Maybe next time I should take a look at how posts perform month on month as well!
Yay for good tagging! 😀
Hi Lizzi,
this Post is veeeery interesting! I love to see all the countries your readers where from. And next time I‘ll tag toy brands :))) Thanks a lot for these analytics ??
Thank you Astrid! The country breakdown is super cool! We have so many readers! 🙂
Interesting analytics Lizzi and I do enjoy them numbers! I must put a mental note to add a toyline tag to my future posts as I’m keen for a truer indicator of the variety of toys used by the community.
Looking forward to spreading word on the blog to more countries too!
Thank you Janan! I think it will be really interesting to see the toy brands at the end of 2019! I’ll definitely be looking at what brands show up this year!