My 2023 Year in Review

This is my year end review for the website to reflect on what I accomplished for the year. I do this post each year and I keep the previous years data.…so 5 years of progress !! Each year things are a bit different. I have already written 3 posts that summarize other aspects of the year:

My 10 Best Blog Posts of the Year

My Top 5 YouTube Videos from 2023

Maze of the Year Voting 2023 - Voting is still open !

And now the data for the year:

Weekly (Daily) Mazes posted:

2023: 52 - Mazes of the week - see all 52 in this video !

2022: 54 - Mazes of the week

2021: 640 - daily mazes with some Spanish language variations

2020: 366 - daily mazes

2019: 365 - daily mazes

I did do variations of many mazes this year, but typically only posted 1 version on the homepage. I’m happy with weekly mazes vs. daily.

Blog Posts:

2023: 192

2022: 132 (120 remain on the site)

2021: 291 (207 remain on the site)

2020: 102 (85 remain on the site)

2019: 26 (12 remain on the site)

I kept a good schedule for most of the year and plan to continue that into the future ! I have also deleted over 100 old posts to clean up my blog index and consolidate some of the topics.

Name Mazes Made

2023: 104

2022: 13

2021: 4

2020: 247

2019: 1,499

Since 2021 I have only been doing doing maze name requests when they were submitted, and not many were. Hopefully this is because I have many names covered already !

Books posted online:

2023: 0

2022: 2

2021: 12

2020: 8

2019: 19

With the change in site content there are no longer mazes available for books.

Books Published on Amazon:

2023: 0

2022: 0

2021: 13

2020: 0

2019: 0

I (still) have 3 additional books sitting on the shelf, ready for publication if I come up with a marketing plan.

Website Traffic growth:

2023: + 36% LY

2022: + 47% LY

2021: + 242% LY

2020: +1000% PL

2019: **

And the bigger you get the harder it is to grow even larger in the future. Unless SEO suddenly likes me (or doesn’t).

Different countries visiting the site:

2023: 169 - I changed how I track this and think the 100 below might have been inaccurate. Out of 195 or so depending on the list you look at.

2022: 100

2021: 100

2020: 99

2019: 20

YouTube Views:

2023: 2,245

2022: 303

2021: 264

The channel is not doing well. While I could stop making videos…nah. See my 2024 outlook for updates on this.

YouTube Subscribers:

2023: 17

2022: 6

2021: 3

Wow. Low. A percentage would make this look much better, but the raw numbers are more accurate.

RSS Subscribers to the blog:

Fluctuates during the year. Currently - 66% from peak this Summer and -15% LY (after a big rise). So I need to start writing about subjects that people enjoy again.

So that is my year in review. I learned a lot. I hope to continue growing the site, making more books, and of course posting some interesting mazes !!

Stop back in 2 days to read my plan for 2024 !

My 2022 Year in Review

This is my year end review for the website to reflect on what I accomplished for the year. In the past, I made a lot of mazes, but this year I focused on making less mazes and each being of higher quality. I do this post each year and I keep the previous years data.…so 4 years of progress !!

Weekly (Daily) Mazes posted:

54 in 2022 vs. 640 in 2021 vs. 366 in 2020 vs. 365 in 2019

This was the big change for the website. Daily Mazes became weekly mazes. I did one each week, with a few weeks containing variations. Basically a few more than 52.

Blog Posts:

132 vs. 291 vs. 102 vs. 26

I cut back on the number of posts. Each weekly maze has it’s own blog post, and I still do maze movie reviews. I also spent some quality time updating any post from previous years that still had a high amount of traffic.

Name Mazes Made

13 vs. 4 vs. 247 vs. 1,499

This was one of my first projects. You can read about how I chose the names if you are interested. So 2022 and 2021 meant only doing requests when they were submitted, and not many were. Maybe it is because I have covered all the important names already ?

Books posted online:

2 vs. 12 vs. 8 vs. 19

In my first 3 years of the site I created a lot of free downloadable content. By my count that was 39 books, some of which have been retired or improved. When you make hundreds of mazes a year this makes sense. This year - not so much, just a few Christmas books I had never published before.

Books Published on Amazon:

0 vs. 0 vs. 3 (13 versions) vs. 0

I published my first 3 books on Amazon. I have 3 additional books sitting on the shelf, ready for publication if I come up with a marketing plan.

Website Traffic growth:

+47% vs LY, 2021: 242% vs LY, +1000%+ the PY

Hoping for even more growth in 2023 ! Each year growth gets a bit smaller as I grow the site.

Different countries visiting the site:

100 vs. 100 vs. 99 vs. 20

I think that the countries are actually higher than 100, but the analytics dashboard stops there ? Largest growth came from Jamaica, Chile, Lithuania, Saudi Arabia and Hungary.

Requests for Maze use:

About the same to slightly higher

YouTube Videos Created and watched:

Zero created, but views were up to LY by about 50%.

YouTube Subscribers:

Up. 2X LY technically.

RSS Subscribers to the blog:

Fluctuates during the year. Currently flat to LY.

Books Sold on Amazon:

Slightly down

So that is my year in review. I learned a lot. I hope to continue growing the site, making more books, and of course posting some interesting mazes !!

My 2021 Year in Review

I wanted to write a year end review for the website to reflect on what I accomplished for the year. Yes, I made a lot of mazes, but I did more than that, expanding what I did and how I did it. This post might just be for me, but I am happy to take you along on the journey. Enjoy. And since I did this exact post the year before…why not show 3 years !!

Daily Mazes posted:

640 in 2021 vs. 366 in 2020 vs. 365 in 2019

I was up against a leap year from 2021 so I was destined to be at 365…until I decided on April 1st to create the Spanish Language section of the site (Laberintos) which added 275 additional mazes. Some of these had no changes but I am not going to count individual translations.

Blog Posts:

291 vs. 102 vs. 26

Some of my most popular content is still from 2020. In 2021 I tried some new things to improve my SEO and that included deleting large sections of the website and creating 100 blog posts, each featuring a best maze from 2018-2020. This did not work. But I did blog significantly more than LY and that did work, My goal was 3 times a week or 156 posts and even after dropping the 100 maze project I crushed that number,

Name Mazes Made

4 vs. 247 vs. 1,499

The SEO on this section of the site dropped off significantly this year. You can read about how I chose the names HERE. So 2021 meant only doing requests when they were submitted, and not many were, although this may become a project for 2022…maybe…

Books posted online:

12 vs. 8 vs. 19

In the 2 years prior to this one I created a lot of free downloadable content. By my count that was 27 books, some of which have been retired or improved. For 2021 while I started off with a few monthly books, I got away from this to focus on other content. Somehow I still managed to make 12 books !

Books Published on Amazon:

0 vs. 3 (13 versions) vs. 0

I published my first 3 books on Amazon. And with a bit of help I translated 2 of them into 3 additional languages. I also have one of the few Kindle maze books available since Arrow mazes are solved with your finger/eyes and not a writing utensil. My books did not sell very well so I have 3 additional books sitting on the shelf, ready for publication if I come up with a marketing plan.

Website Traffic growth:

242% vs LY, +1000%+ the PY

The website traffic grew year over year by 242% and it has the potential to grow by the same in the future as I learn more about image SEO. I am also looking at changing the future content of the site to attract different people.

Different countries visiting the site:

100 vs. 99 vs. 20

Well this was a weird category that I really wanted to grow in 2021…and I did technically grow it. But I lost 11 countries along the way (none with high traffic in 2020) while gaining 12 new countries. My largest new country was Barbados, followed by Guatemala. Thank you ! While I thought my largest growth would come from Spanish speaking countries (it did not), it was instead from Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Vietnam and Singapore.

Requests for Maze use:

About the same to slightly higher

YouTube Videos Created and watched:

Zero created, but views were up !

YouTube Subscribers:

Up.

RSS Subscribers to the blog:

Up +18. Has bounced around during the year…

Books Sold on Amazon:

Slightly down

So that is my year in review. I learned a lot. I hope to continue growing the site, making more books, and of course posting some interesting mazes !!

Stop back on Thursday for my 2022 website outlook. There will be changes to the site coming on January 1 !

My 2020 Year in Review

I wanted to write a year end review for the website to reflect on what I accomplished for the year. Yes, I made a lot of mazes, but I did more than that, expanding what I did and how I did it. This post might just be for me, but I am happy to take you along on the journey. Enjoy.

Daily Mazes posted:

366 in 2020 vs. 365 in 2019

Well the number is somewhere near this. Some days I did post more than one to commemorate something happening in the news or to celebrate a holiday. Either way for the last 2 years I have posted a new maze each and every day. And this year, thanks to the leap year we got an extra one ! Yea us !

Blog Posts:

102 vs. 26

I took a break in the Summer from posting blog content to work on my How To Make a Maze content. When I completed them I was able to post 40 different maze construction step by step instructions and an overview post. They were posted starting daily October 1. That really added significantly to my content. I followed those up with how to draw a labyrinth instructions. Overall, a great year for my blogging !

Name Mazes Made

247 vs. 1,499

Well, they can’t all be winners ! I spent a huge amount of time in 2019 researching the most popular names in the US, then the world and making mazes from them. You can read about how I chose the names HERE. I had a lot of fun, but felt I needed to branch out into other projects. I figured out I had over 70% of all Americans covered, and most likely similar high percentages of Western names. So 2020 meant only doing requests when they were submitted, until I wrote the draft of this and started back up !

Books posted online:

8 vs. 19

In 2020 my monthly daily maze themes allowed me to create monthly themed books from their content. It allowed me to practice making book covers, collating mazes, pagination, creating solution pages, converting images to different file types, and even more. Now in 2019 I made many books to create some interesting content for the site. But, making a book each month is great practice for…..

Books Published on Amazon:

3 (13 versions) vs. 0

I published my first 3 books on Amazon. And with a bit of help I translated 2 of them into 3 additional languages. Then I realized that Arrow Maze Books do not need to be printed (no pencil needed!) , but then I had to figure out how to correctly make what is essentially a picture book for Kindle. Well it took awhile, but I now understand how to do it, giving me 4 more Kindle versions of my Arrow Maze Book. So 3 books, 13 versions ! I have to say, all the practice throughout the year definitely help make these books better !!!

Website Traffic growth:

+1000%+

The website traffic grew year over year by more than 1000% and it has the potential to grow by the same in the future as I learn more about image SEO. There is plenty of content on how to improve your written SEO with key words, and great content etc. But not much at all on how to improve your Image SEO. This is basically an image website - that is how people stumble upon it. Then if I do find it, how does it relate to my website builder template (the answer is not well). So I am running blind a bit here, but optimistic for the future.

Different countries visiting the site:

99 vs. 20

Without getting in the weeds on the analytics of the site, I believe the maze images are multilingual friendly. I also published books into 4 languages on worldwide Amazon sites. I have multiple sections of the site and blog posts that are focused on other languages than English. Well, depending on where you look the number of countries in the world is around 195, so I hit half of them in 2020 ! Definitely have a goal to raise this number in 2021 ! (as I keep hoping for a new country to hit 100 these last days of December…nope…….again…nope)

Requests for Maze use:

YouTube Videos Created and watched:

YouTube Subscribers:

RSS Subscribers to the blog:

Books Sold on Amazon:

Up higher by infinity

I had multiple requests this year to use my mazes in classrooms, in a newspaper, and for use in creating some new digital mazes. I like to collaborate and was excited for each of these opportunities ! I also did a few basic videos for some of the blog posts to better explain how to make mazes/labyrinths. They are private on YouTube, but I still managed to get my first subscriber ! And finally I have a group of people who subscribe to this blog and might be reading this right now ! Hi ! All these are small numbers, but they were 0 last year, so each has grown.

So that is my year in review. I learned a lot. I hope to continue growing the site, making more books, and of course posting at least one new maze each and every day !

And because this is the internet, we can travel into the future and see what happens:

MY 2021 YEAR IN REVIEW

MY 2022 YEAR IN REVIEW