I’m doing some end of year evaluation and taking stock of what worked and what didn’t this year, so I can finalize plans for 2013. Despite my recent “blog vacation” (and I thank you all for your patience and understanding; I needed it), the blog has show significant growth this year — pageviews up 125% from 47,000 to over 106,000. Unique visitors jumped over 200% from 20,000 to over 64,000. Total visits spiked from 31,000 to 81,000.

Half of my visitors are from the US. After that, it’s the UK, Canada, Australia, and then Germany, Netherlands, Spain and France, so not surprisingly, about 90% of the visits come from English-centric countries. 45% of you use Safari, another 25% use Chrome as your browser. Firefox is down to 4%, and Internet Explorer is 7%. Not too surprising to me half of you are Mac users, 25% are Windows, and 17% of visitors are now checking in via IOS — a reason why I think 2013 is a year all blogs, not just this one, need to come to grips with mobile. that’s especially challenging if you want to get your photos right. (Android is 2% and Windows Phone and Blackberry are both almost countable on two hands).

The top ten blog entries this year:

• Aperture vs Lightroom. It is, unfortunately, an easy call. (interestingly enough, the rumors of a new Aperture being announced after the first of the year are heating up. I’m curious to see what Apple has planned).
• Some Thoughts on Lightroom Keywords – I updated this and it was published on Naturescapes.net, so there’s definitely continued interest in this topic. 
• Changing of the Guard (and letting it down at the same time) – in which I talk about leaving Palm/HP for saner pastures. 
• Upgrading to Lightroom 4: reprocessing before and after: Some initial looks at the new LR4 processing engine. 9 months later, I still really like 98% of Lightroom. It’s been a good, solid release. 
• A bit more on Aperture vs. Lightroom
• Apple and NFC – why it’s not there
• Thinking different about the next Mac Pro (and the rest of Apple’s Desktop line)
• No, IOS is not a prison
• Dealing with Crap Apps in the Catalog

 Four photography articles, two on the WebOS fallout, one more or less about challenges I dealt with dealing with app catalog problems that were relevant to any platform, and three Apple-related pieces. The reality, though, is that while I can generate pageviews writing about Mama Fruit, very few of those pageviews are worth it — you get linked in from one of the Mac sites, and they pop in, glance at it and leave. Unless they stay around to troll. That’s why I typically decline wading in on those topics now; it just isn’t that interesting to me any more, and it isn’t useful in building my audience. So expect little of that next year, too. 

Those are small numbers compared to some blogs, but to me, they’re stunning. thank you. They are also an indication to me I need to continue trying to improve this place, both in terms of design and content. That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently.

2013 is going to see some changes here, but overall, fairly minor. It’s more a recommitment and a focus on improving quality and making pieces deeper and better thought out, even if it means posting less often. 

We will talk about 2013 soon. For right now, let’s leave it at — I’m pretty happy with 2012 here on the blog, and I’m working to make next year even better for everyone involved, including me.