What happened on desi Traveler Blog in 2016 ?

data Analysis for 2016 for desi Traveler Blog

In the last week of 2016 itself, my timeline was flooded with recap blog posts about 2016. But as always my Lazy desi self-said “What is the big hurry let 2016 pass, then I will do a recap”. But come 1^st January 2017 and the flood of posts about 2016 recap became a giant wave that totally drowned me. Somewhere my dD was telling me to do my own dP about 2016 so that my dRs can be flooded with my own version of dRP.  (BTW – dD- desi Dimag , dP = desi Post, dR = desi Readers, and dRP =desi Recap Post ).  Don’t blame me for all these abbreviations that I just invented but what to do ?, my timeline was also flooded with coded messages like – HNY –SB – KS J J . After overworking my dD I realized this stood for – Happy New Year, Stay Blessed – Kharag Singh (or some other full form of KS though first, my dD interpreted it as Kama Sutra).

So all those of my dRs who have not won in the dTCC  I once again wish you a HNY, and SB from dT ( No prizes for guessing what is dTCC- desi Traveler Calendar Contest ).

Anyways enough of small talk let us go ahead and write my dRP for 2016 or desi Recap Post for 2016. Just as I was getting motivated to write my dRP my dD told me

“ Dd all those who read dT, already know what you did in 2016 so why waste their and your time “

“Hmm, good point DdD” I told dD, “But what about those who do not read dD?”

“What about those?” pat came the reply from my dD, “When they don’t read your blog why would they bother about what happened on your desi Traveler blog in 2016? ”  (BTW – Dd = Dear desi, DdD = Dear desi Dimag ) …

Note to the readers- I know you are getting totally in a DTM type mood, but I promise this is the last of JASA in the post and we will go normal henceforth ( DTM – Dangal Type Mood, and JASA – Just Another Silly Acronym )

• Ok, Normal Mode on. Let us get serious about our first post of the year 2017.

All these discussions with myself, I finally decided that I want to write a post about 2016 but I was not sure what to write, so I decided to make this post in the Blog wale Baba Jee Series and focus on some numbers from your friendly neighborhood desi Traveler.

If you are not sure what is Blog Wale Baba Jee Series check these posts from my Blog Wale Baba Jee Series

1. How To Kill Your Travel Blog in 10 Steps

2. Comment Policy on desi Traveler Blog

Go ahead read them if you have not read them, you can read them again as that will refresh your memories.

So here is desi Traveler in numbers for Quality and management Guru W. Edwards Deming said – “ In God we trust; all others bring data.”  Since desi Traveler easily fits the description of “ All Others” let me share some numbers and graphs.  Mostly we will talk in Percentages but at some places, I will give absolute numbers also.

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Those of you do not believe that numbers are important for a blog to let me recollect my conversation with a prominent tech blogger friend who taught me a thing or two when I told him many years ago that I don’t care about numbers, I only want to write good blog posts that I enjoy writing. Here is his answer he gave to me==

“How about writing a post on the back of an envelope, fold it in two, and keep it under your pillow overnight, before reading it aloud to yourself next morning with some tea or coffee or lassi as the case may be? After all, you don’t care if anybody reads your blog or shares your blog on social media. After all, you only want to enjoy your own voice irrespective of the fact if it reaches anybody else or not”

What about quality? I asked him.  “Should quality not be a qualifier even to begin any discussion?” Was his reply. And while we talk about quality we forget real quality can only be measured in numbers and is not subject to individual opinion. (Check quote by Deming once again please ).

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Warning to the regular readers of desi Traveler – There is nothing travel related after this point so you may leave now, and I will not feel bad. Though you can read this recent post about A Visit To Dudhwa National Park since you are already here. Those of you interested in knowing a thing or two about my limited Googled Gyan about Blogging / Analytics please carry on, you have nothing to lose but your time.

First the growth in traffic on desi Traveler >>

2016 has been an OK  year with average traffic growth of 15 % year on year. The growth actually slowed down considerably in 2016 totally because I have been too lazy and wrote only 99 new blog posts in complete 2016 compared to 132 blog posts in 2015, 105 in 2014 and 148 blog posts in 2013 the first complete year after I moved to desi Traveler domain name and word press from the earlier BlogSpot version that I updated only Once in a Blue Moon. So in all sincerity  I became regular with this blog only in 2013, but, but let me add here that I still am a hobby Travel Blogger with no plans to become a Professional Travel Blogger, or writer anytime sooner or later. (Note for PRs: BTW this is not an invitation to send me requests for FREE Blog posts, I am a Hobby Travel Blogger, not a FREE Travel Blogger ). This blog started as a hobby and hopefully will remain a hobby, albeit a very SERIOUS hobby and a hobby is something which you end up spending time and money on things you enjoy. So if anybody is making a list of “Top Serious Hobby Travel Bloggers from India please consider me in the MBBS MD Category”. I will happily broadcast the Top Serious Hobby Travel Bloggers from India to the world with the same enthusiasm as if I have won the Fillum Fair & Bubbly Diwanchand – Uoonchee Dukan Feekey Pakwan, Flower Shower, Jodhpur Jalebi Bhandar, Sweet as Jalebee but looking for free work Global PR award for Travel Blogging, giving the list maker tons of organic publicity.

This brings us to our next important milestone. In 2016 desi Traveler received visitors from a total of 157 Countries and territories around the world. While the maximum visitors are from Mera Bharat Mahan the top 10 countries by sending visitors to desi Traveler are

1. India
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Singapore
5. Malaysia
6. Canada
7. United Arab Emirates
8. Australia
9. Germany
10. Russia 

But I also noticed names like Hong Kong, Mongolia, Serbia, Trinidad & Tobago, South Africa, New Zealand, St. Vincent & Grenadines, French Polynesia,  Côte d’Ivoire, Japan, Korea, Belgium, Sweden and many others that I have never even known existed.  Like my dear friend celebrity food blogger and writer from Portugal Nelson Carvalheiro says   “ So Much World, So Little Lifetime “

Coming back to data, though we received traffic from 157 countries and territories the top 10 countries actually make for 96.51 % of traffic received and top 20 Countries make for 97.98 % of traffic.  The rest of 137 countries contribute only about 2 % of total traffic. But it feels so nice to think that somebody sitting in Macedonia or Uruguay or Macau SAR China was searching for something and big uncle G thought it worthy of their time to send them to desi Traveler.

Now that we have invoked my big Uncle G or Google as everybody calls him to let us talk about sources of traffic. For desi Traveler blog Google remains the biggest source of traffic with Facebook a distant second. I am actually seriously thinking why I spend so much time there. But in Facebook’s defense, it is still a great platform to gets likes on the posts but those likes are not always converting to traffic on the blog. So, in my opinion, Facebook engagement should be seen and evaluated for its own merit and not as a substantial source of blog traffic.

 Some of the other very small but mentionable sources of traffic were my subscribers on various social media like Twitter, WordPress, Feedburner etc. My traffic from Indiblogger has remained steady even though my activity there has gone down almost 90 %. That shows the strength of Indiblogger as a platform and for community engagement with other bloggers, Indiblogger remains my favorite platform. All other blogging aggregator platforms combined did not contribute traffic worth even mentioning here. But since we are talking about blogging aggregators and platform what is worth mentioning here is that Blogmint has opened new avenues for bloggers to monetize their blog  and Blogmint is something you should consider joining if you plan to monetize your blog ( provided you have numbers 😛 )

After inbound traffic let me talk a bit about Outbound clicks from desi Traveler blog.

If you are wondering what are Outbound Clicks then it is the number of people who clicked on various links shared on desi Traveler blog and landed on other sites. This could be the advertisers, other bloggers who were linked back on desi Traveler, people who commented on desi Traveler and somebody clicked on their comment and landed on their site from desi Traveler. In total, more than 26,000 outbound clicks were made on desi Traveler blog (This number includes only clicks directly from desi Traveler blog, not the links I shared on Twitter, Facebook etc.).  Why is this number of outbound clicks important?

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Outbound clicks are useful for advertisers and Sponsors as this means people are not only reading about them on desi Traveler but also desi Traveler is sending traffic to their site. This also shows that readers on desi Traveler are inquisitive who want to explore other sites mentioned on desi Traveler and browse through many pages and are not just casual visitors.

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Just the posts about Thailand gave outbound clicks of more than 500 and the majority of them landing in various Thai Tourism related pages that I have linked back to. After all Amazing Thailand is one of my favorite travel destination and the first place outside India I visited with Wife Jee.

Some of the top global brands worked in 2016 for sponsored posts

• British Airways

• Lufthansa 

• Asus Mobile

• Oppo Mobile

• Huawei Mobile

• Vivo Mobile

• Audi 

• Toyota Motors

• Maruti

• Indonesia Tourism

• UP Tourism

• Changi Airport

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But more than what I worked with sponsors and advertisers in 2016, I would like to remember 2016 as the year when I grew as a traveler and a blogger. I had the courage and conviction to say “NO” to assignments and travel that did not respect my time or effort as a traveler and blogger ( even if a Hobby one ) Thanks a lot dear for inviting me, but thanks a lot 🙂 . On professional front I went ahead and took a leap of faith with another exciting start-up.

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Now let us talk about a few failures for desi Traveler. 🙁 🙁 🙁

My number one Achilles Heel remains Instagram. Though last year I wrote a post about Taking Baby Steps with Instagram. Instagram remains the stone in my shoe. First, the account was compromised and then it was invaded by thousands of bot followers as I clicked on some of the spam comments on some posts promising Thousands of followers.  It was a painful journey to restore the account and remove bot followers one by one manually. I have spent countless nights clicking each and every bot follower and blocking it. The only silver lining in the cloud is that the average likes on a post on desi Traveler Instagram feed have increased 3 folds in 2016 and we are up from an average of only 25 likes per post to 75 likes per post.  Big Shot Instagrammers will sure laugh at it but I think the worst is over and 2017 should be the year when I should reclaim some of the lost ground on Instagram.

Whatever happened to desi Travel Digest: ??

Well, I tried my best to keep this feature live for many months but due to various reasons (Sloth getting the pole position among them), I could not continue the same. But the good thing was I did share some of the blogs for the first time here on desi Travel digest and also invited some of the relatively newer bloggers to curate the desi Travel digest.  I experimented with various formats of desi Travel Digest like me curating the same, inviting other bloggers to curate the same and also doing collaborative posts like  – Indian Travel Bloggers Chasing the Monsoon and  My Pooja Memories but ultimately I could not  sustain the desi Travel digest, though I am hopeful that I will be able to bring it back in 2017 in a better Avatar. If you are a blogger who would like to curate/contribute to desi Travel digest then please ping me using the Contact Us form and I will get back to you.

BTW you can also see a synopsis of this post here:

Over I would say 2016 was an OK kind of year, something that may not be remembered but something that I will also not try to forget.  Let us see what 2017  has in store for your friendly neighborhood desi Traveler.

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