Happy New Year: Looking back at 2007 and Ahead to 2008

Greetings oh avid reader!

Here we are, starting yet another new year. Often this is a time to reflect back on the previous year and look ahead to the coming months.

Seems to me that looking back is a bit of a waste of time — it’s hard to surge ahead when you’re gazing upon and basking in the past.

But a little reflection isn’t a bad thing, and it helps set the direction going forward.

Last January 2, I penned a post titled “2007 Blogolutions”. I had three things I listed that I wanted to do with the Phoenix Real Estate Guy blog:

1) Provide more local content. I think that could be labeled “done”. This blog will never be a “hyper-local” Phoenix area real estate blog — a blog consisting of nothing but Phoenix and Phoenix real estate information. Some argue that is the only way to a “successful” blog. Whatever. Phoenix Real Estate Guy has always been — and will always be — a somewhat eclectic mix of local, regional and national real estate things along with completely off-topic, sometimes seemingly random musings.

You see, I tend to write about whatever is on my mind. As a real estate professional, often real estate is on my mind. But as a father, husband and human being I do have other things clogging my brain. For me, the best way to empty my head is to let it spill out onto the keyboard. You’ve read (or at least had the opportunity to read) about my kids, my wife, even my $600 cat. I’ve written posts that made me (and at least some of you) laugh, and posts that made me cry.

These posts had little to do with real estate, but they have a lot to do with life. I pour my heart and soul into this silly blog sometimes. I won’t sugar coat anything, ever. What you see here is me — like it, love it or leave it. I’ve made lots a friends here (too many to list), and pissed a few people off too.

I think the mix here is pretty good. Others will no-doubt disagree. Will it change in 2008? Not drastically. This thing is constantly evolving, so who really knows what the next year holds. Guess you’ll just have to keep reading…

2) Post more frequently. Also done. 359 posts in calendar 2007, call it once a day. That’s about twice the 2006 posting rate. I thought some were good. Maybe even brilliant . Some were awful. I guess the best plan for 2008 would be to increase the brilliance and decrease the awful. Grand idea, execution of that idea remains to be seen.

3) Keep my blog roll updated. Not even close. I’ve been intending to update the blog roll for almost two and a half years. Maybe 2008 is the year (don’t hold your breath). My feed reader has grown from 60ish blogs at the beginning of the year to 338 as of today. My “Site of the Week” series swiftly turned into the “Site of the Whenever I Happen to Remember” series. I love highlighting new bloggers and will attempt to do better at that this year.

Overall, 2007 was a great year here at the Phoenix Real Estate Guy. Over 110,000 folks stopped by from all 50 states and 119 different countries (thanks to many of you for improving my geography!). These aren’t huge numbers. I read some blog today (a tech blog I believe) that had 8 million visits last year. But it’s not about the traffic. I blog to learn (mission definitely accomplished) and to share (mission hopefully accomplished).

We’ll take our 110K friends. 8% of you were nice enough (or sick enough) to visit more than 51 times. The 54% of you that found us via a search engine used 36,684 different search terms. That is one Long Tail of search. (Look for a post soon on search terms used here. It’s really quite fascinating to examine. Well, fascinating if you’re on the geekish side…)

Francy and I appreciate each and every person that stops by here, regardless of who, when and why. We hope you find what you’re looking for (let me know if you don’t!) and we hope you keep visiting. The “door” is always open.

We wish every one of our readers, their families and friends a happy, healthy, safe and prosperous new year. Thank you all so much for stopping by and sharing a little slice of our world.

[tags]2008, reflections[/tags]

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