Well, 2013 is drawing to a close, and je parle américain has had another great year. The blog has now had over 100,000 views (102,413 to be precise), of which over half (51,541) were in 2013. Not bad, huh? The blog’s busiest week ever was the one ending October 6, with 2,270 views, and almost half of those views came on October 1, the blog’s busiest day ever. With 894 views, that was over 5 times my daily average. It seems that most of that traffic was fueled by the entire population of the United Kingdom researching — of all things — the religieuse pastry! I have no idea why that was the case, but I’m certainly not complaining.
It’s hard to believe that je parle américain is beginning its third year, but here we are. When I started this project two summers ago, I never imagined it would turn into what it’s become. It was supposed to be a therapeutic but fun way to get myself out of mild funk I was in back then. I was bored — listless — and I just needed something productive to do. It’s evolved into a platform for railing against French bureaucracy, a soapbox for advocating for social change, a classroom for lecturing about history and language, a stage for dramatizing vignettes from my daily life with my husband and even a virtual press for publishing my first ever creative writing in French!
Well, 2012 is drawing to a close, and je parle américain has had a great year: almost 51,000 views all-time, of which over 43,000 were in 2012. Lately, we’ve been blowing the roof off this place, with big increases in viewership month after month: 4,052 views in October … 5,727 views in November … and 7,080 views in December (with a few hours still left). That’s a 75% increase over October’s numbers!
7,080 views in December: That’s a 75% increase over October, representing 14% of total views since the blog started!
Over at WordPress.com, the statistics helper monkeys prepared a pretty interesting 2012 annual report for je parle américain, and I’d like to share it with you. Continue reading 2012: Year in Review
It’s hard to believe that je parle américain is celebrating its first birthday today. It seems like just yesterday (to me, at least) that I posted the headline that read “Big change of focus underway … if Julie Powell can do it, so can I.” Two days later, I published my first ever blogpost: “So what’s this all about?” where I announced that what had been the website for my stalled “English language consultancy” would henceforth be the online diary of this American in Paris, where I would recount for your entertainment my experiences as an expatriate in the City of Light.
The French Bureaucratic Migraine
Well, since then, I’ve recounted a lot for you. I’ve complained quite a bit, of course; I’m pretty good at that. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to have bothered you much (with one or two notable exceptions). In fact, it seems that I get my biggest spikes in readership when I complain about, oh, I don’t know … the perpetual headache of French bureaucracy … or getting mistreated by Parisian waitstaff on the Fourth of July … or how filthy my neighborhood is. I want you to know, dear readers, that I sincerely appreciate your support and commiseration. When the burden of expatriate life gets you down, there’s nothing like a pat on the back from compatriots back across the ocean to make you feel better, or from fellow expats here in France to make you feel less alone.
Three months ago, I launched je parle américain in its current form: an online diary of my life as an American expatriate in France. Since then, I’ve published 47 posts, of which 27 are what I’d call substantial pieces. (The rest were short observations or posts sharing videos or photos.) I’ve written about everything from my immigration woes to how to make good pancakes at home, from how I met the love of my life to the history of “not” in French. To mark the “quarter-birthday” of je parle américain, here are a few interesting observations gleaned from the blog’s stash of stats, as well as links to my top ten posts by traffic and by commentary. Oh, and don’t stop reading before the end, because I’ve included a catalog of the top ten strangest search strings that have brought Internet surfers to my blog. Continue reading 3 months and 3,000 views
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