50,000 views milestone, continuing my blogging journey
Tags: devjournal, yearinreview, writing, gratitude
Published: 2021-03-16 23:59:20

🎉 Last week I hit 50,000 total views! 🎉

🔥 And also 1000 total reactions! 🔥

🚀 And was awarded the Next.js badge! 🚀

**I'm buzzing.** I wanted to reach 50,000 total views by June this year but it's the start of March and I've already achieved it - I thought for sure that it would be a close call given the time it took to reach 20,000 views. The icing on the cake? [My latest post](https://dev.to/jameswallis/adding-a-blog-with-a-dev-to-backend-to-a-static-next-js-website-with-canonical-urls-1i9g) earned me the Next.js author of the week badge, which I've been eyeing for ages!

<img width="70%" style="width:70%" src="https://media.giphy.com/media/blSTtZehjAZ8I/giphy.gif">

Back in January, when I reached 20,000 I wrote [a milestone post](https://dev.to/jameswallis/20-000-views-milestone-what-i-ve-learnt-about-blogging-so-far-4laj) that discussed what I'd learnt about blogging so far. In this post, I'll reflect on it and will attempt to understand **how I've more than doubled my total views in a third of the time**.

## Reviewing [my 20,000 milestone post](https://dev.to/jameswallis/20-000-views-milestone-what-i-ve-learnt-about-blogging-so-far-4laj)
### What I'd learnt a few months into posting
In the last post, I created a list of things I'd learnt over the course of my first few months of blogging. Here are some of the points that I still believe are important:
* **Post titles matter.** I still believe this and carefully word titles trying to include "How to" or some type of call to action to entice the reader.
* **Keep posting.** I've acquired the 8-week posting streak badge and (think) I'm on track for the 16-week badge.
* **Don't be discouraged by a low amount of reactions.** While I'm now making posts that gain a considerable amount of attention (for me), I think about half of those that I've posted in the past few months have had ~10 reactions.
* **Post what you find interesting.** This is a good one! My most popular posts have been about rebuilding my website to use Dev.to as a CMS.

### What I planned to do next
At the end of the post, I came up with a plan to reach 50,000 views.

This is what I said...

> In the next six months, I'm aiming to reach 50,000 views. And, by the end of the year, I want to achieve 100,000 views.
To achieve this I will:
* Create more posts!
* Update old posts with new content and correcting tutorials where the underlying software has changed.
* Publicise my posts across the web and share them on Linkedin and other social sites. So far I haven't advertised them at all and rely on followers on dev.to, it's algorithm and Google rankings to gain views on my articles. *This would be beneficial to gain more views, but means advertising my writing to people that know me - so we'll see whether I actually do it or not.*

...and after some reflection, I can tell you that I haven't *really* done any of them. I've created more posts and updated a couple of tutorials with corrections. Yet, here I am hitting 50,000 views?

## So what have I done instead?
* **Been persistent.** Currently, I'm creating a post about once a week. This has helped me grow to ~700 followers, that's a lot of people to receive a notification each time I make a post. Additionally, I believe that it's helped me naturally improve the quality of my posts as I gain more experience.
* **Categorised my posts.** Over the past couple of months I've written three types of posts. Sticking to three formats has led to a smooth experience when I write a post as I have a format that I can follow for each type. If I want to, I will deviate from the formats, but they help to get me started.
    1. Portfolio items where I write about past projects (these show up on my website under the `/portfolio` path, [more info here](https://dev.to/jameswallis/i-completely-rewrote-my-personal-website-using-dev-to-as-a-cms-2pje)).
    2. "5 things to check out". I've written about [5 Next.js features](https://dev.to/jameswallis/5-built-in-next-js-features-you-absolutely-should-check-out-4k8e), [5 places to get pre-built Tailwind CSS components](https://dev.to/jameswallis/5-built-in-next-js-features-you-absolutely-should-check-out-4k8e). These posts are fun to write as I have to find 5 things to write about so I'm learning while I'm writing.
    3. Projects created with a post topic in mind. My two most popular posts have both been about [rewriting my website to use Dev.to as a CMS](https://dev.to/jameswallis/i-completely-rewrote-my-personal-website-using-dev-to-as-a-cms-2pje). While this project has made it ten times easier to add posts to my website (with the canonical URL pointing to my site), I knew before starting development that it would be interesting to write about - and that bet has paid off.
* **Varied my posts.** Posting every week can be exhausting. Some weeks I'll write a shorter post, like this one, and other weeks I'll set time aside to focus on a longer, tutorial style post.

## What's next?
🎯 100,000 views 🎯

Reaching 50,000 views isn't the end of my blogging journey. My next goals are to reach:
* 100,000 total views
* 2,000 total reactions
* 10,000 views on a single post
* The 16 week streak badge

To achieve this I will:
* Create more posts!
* Cross-post to other blogging sites like [Medium](https://medium.com/@james-wallis) and [Hashnode](https://hashnode.wallis.dev). *Both seem a lot slower than Dev.to to gain views on posts but I want to persist and add most of my articles there - we'll see how it works out!*
* Publicise my posts. I'll start with LinkedIn and then see how I get on. *I know I said this last time but I really should start to do this. I've been lucky enough to have been shared by the [Dev Community](https://twitter.com/ThePracticalDev/status/1369800742131884033?s=20) Twitter account so I really should do the same!*
     * I'm curious, how much success do you have on other blogging platforms like Medium and Hashnode? Do you use any others?

## Summary
I'm continuing to enjoy writing, posting and interacting with members of the Dev.to community. Though, I have to admit I'm excited to achieve the 16-week streak badge so I can have a little break - I wish there was a way to see if am on track.

Let me know what you think about my blogging experience and if you have any advice for me!

Where do you cross-post to?

Thanks for reading! Hope you're having a great 2021!

<img width="100%" style="width:100%" src="https://media.giphy.com/media/WZSCbqzHspAZA7gweg/giphy.gif">