2011 By The Numbers: Billie with an I.E.

"Boys sleep against each other on a street in Krakow, Poland on a Saturday morning in the Summer of 2009."

Last night as I was out celebrating New Year’s Eve with friends in downtown Baltimore, an e-mail came through to my iPhone. The subject: “Your 2011 Year In Blogging.” I follow my blog’s statistics and traffic regularly, so I thought nothing of it at the time. I looked through the e-mail today, though, and came across some facts about Billie With An I.E. that I found interesting. 

Here’s the passage that first caught my eye:

“The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 23,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. In 2011, there were 140 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 216 posts. There were 441 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1gb. That’s about a picture per day. The busiest day of the year was October 20th with 1,239 views. The most popular post that day was ‘Goalie.'”

I’m always aware of how many page views I’ve acquired to date, but I’ve never thought about the number 23,000 in terms of actual people occupying actual spaces. 

I also learned that the top Google searches that led viewers to my blog, aside from “Billie with an I.E.,” were “Biljana Sesevich” and “Vera Zvonareva.” Sesevich, pictured here, is a Serbian supermodel and wife of Serbian professional tennis player, Janko Tipsarevic. Zvonareva, a native of Russia, is the attractive tennis player who is currently ranked seventh in the world. Here is my photo of her. So, the lesson is clear: posting pictures of beautiful women is a sure way to boost one’s page views.

Finally, I learned that this blog drew viewers from the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, Italy, Serbia, France, Germany, South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Japan, The Philippines, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand. I think that’s pretty neat. 

This image really has no relevance to this post, but it’s one I’ve always liked. Something tells me that after a long night of drinking in Krakow, Poland, these guys weren’t readily checking into the blog. 

As always, thank you to all for your readership and comments. Continue to check in for more posts in 2012! Happy New Year!