The end of the year is always a time for reflection and also for looking forward to the year ahead. I could do an honest assessment of my spiritual journey or an update on the Neilly family or what is happening at Dawson Community Church. However, I feel that it is a good time to try to assess where we are in the Day Share journey. I put together my first blog away back in September 2019. At that time, my ambitions were very limited. I had in mind that, in the church at Maddiston, some dear Christian friends were suffering from loneliness and finding it difficult to attend church services as regularly as they used to. I felt the Lord was guiding me to share a short message from the Bible which I would send by email to a small number on my list. And so Day Share began with a blog entitled, "The Tongue." Here are the first two paragraphs
James, the writer of the letter towards the end of the New Testament, was a straight talker. He did not beat about the bush. When he talked about the deadly effects of our talk, he spoke with devastating frankness
No human being can tame the tongue
The tongue is a fire - it can set a whole forest ablaze by a small fire
It sets on fire the whole course of life
It is a restless evil
It is full of deadly poison
It stains the whole body
It sets on fire the whole course of life [James 3: 5-8 ESV]
James is certainly pulling no punches. Is this a bit over the top? From my own experience, I would have to wholeheartedly concur with James. How often have I blurted out something which I instantly regretted? How many times have I engaged in malicious gossip or character assassination? When humour is involved, the tongue can be even more hurtful. I have witnessed a person being the butt of jokes at his or her expense and everyone having a good laugh apart from the unfortunate victim. This form of bullying is a common occurrence in schools. It is also a feature of the workplace. Surely such a thing never happens in our churches!
This was the first of the regular blogs which I wrote on a variety of topics. The early blogs tended to be a bit random but soon themes or areas of study emerged including Isaiah, John's Gospel, John's First Letter, Advent, Parables in Luke's Gospel, Fruit of the Spirit, Psalms, Colossians, Bible Women and David's Early Years. It was in March 2021 that I decided to set up the website following advice from my younger daughter, Fiona. By this stage I had published 277 blogs and I had distributed these by email and via a WhatsApp group. I had no idea of how many people were reading these blogs but I received requests for back numbers and this proved complicated with the technology I was using. I also found it difficult to reference earlier blogs. I had been experimenting with the use of video and I had received positive feedback from simple recordings of Anne Smith playing older style hymns with the lyrics presented on a scenic background displaying the beauty of God's creation.
Here is a list of the early Day Share blogs.
And so the Day Share website was launched in March 2021. This was a leap of faith as I had no previous experience of website design and construction. To date there has been no professional input despite the frequent offers of assistance from unknown individuals representing potentially dubious website design companies across the globe. Since then a total of 670 blogs have been published. They started off every second day (despite the name Day Share) but, due to time pressures, the blogs are now published three times per week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
How many people have read these blogs? The website maintains records of those reading the blogs so I should be able to give you a simple answer to that question. However, I need to offer some explanation and make some excuses. Although the computer sends me reports of viewing figures etc. , I tend to ignore them until I want to find out this and I have discovered that the website will only provide me with data for the past year. That gives some idea of the coverage from the website and the total number of people who have viewed the blogs over the last year.
Day Share Statistics for Year ending 21st December 2024.
Date | Post Views | Unique Visitors | Comments | Likes | Shares | |
December 2024 | 381 | 160 | 0 | 8 | 2 | |
November 2024 | 625 | 223 | 1 | 9 | 3 | |
October 2024 | 625 | 218 | 0 | 24 | 7 | |
September 2024 | 504 | 175 | 0 | 13 | 24 | |
August 2024 | 508 | 203 | 0 | 5 | 20 | |
July 2024 | 753 | 232 | 1 | 15 | 16 | |
June 2024 | 716 | 256 | 0 | 13 | 17 | |
May 2024 | 654 | 199 | 0 | 20 | 18 | |
April 2024 | 815 | 259 | 0 | 8 | 24 | |
March 2024 | 1005 | 323 | 2 | 29 | 27 | |
February 2024 | 770 | 222 | 3 | 8 | 22 | |
January 2024 | 1063 | 314 | 5 | 4 | 24 | |
December 2023 | 366 | 139 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
I might need to explain some of this. Post Views - this is the total number of views for all the posts in that month. Some people only read one post while others go from one post to another. Every time they open up a blog, this is recorded in that figure. Unique Visitors This is the number of different individuals that visited the site but a visitor is considered unique when they connect from a different browser or device (IP address). Please note that this cannot be simply added together to make the total number of unique visitors for the year. There is a core of readers who are recorded each time or each month.
I can also reveal where the viewers / readers are located. The website has a wide coverage but the strongest and most consistent support comes from my local area.
All the places marked in blue had someone going on the website but for the most part this was only a casual engagement.
I also know that most people read the blog on their mobile phones. This survey is for the month of December 2024 but it fits in with the general pattern. The vast majority of people access the Day Share blogs on their mobile phone and only a small number use their computer or their Ipad or other tablet. I need to bear this in mind because the site is designed on a desktop computer with a large screen and it looks very different on a mobile phone. Thankfully, the website gives me the facility of viewing how a page will look on a mobile but not on a tablet. There are some surprises.
Device Type | Page Views | Site Sessions | Unique Visitors |
Summary | 363 | 249 | 102 |
Mobile | 264 | 199 | 80 |
Desktop | 74 | 32 | 13 |
Tablet | 25 | 18 | 9 |
And the average age tends to be the baby boomer generation - that is people in the 65+ age group. I get this information from Facebook which provides an age profile of those who read the Day Share blogs on Facebook
There are big variations in the popularity of some blogs as can be seen from this following graphic showing the site sessions each day over the year 2024
It has little to do with the amount of preparation time or the content because most people make their decision on whether or not to read the blog from the title and the accompanying picture.
Here are the top ten most popular blogs in the year 2024
What do you make of all of this? What do I make of it? Hopefully, I will try to avoid any form of obsession with viewing figures but at the same time be grateful that people are reading these blogs. I hope that this will prompt some folk to pray for this work. Some blogs are more popular than others. The 'bread and butter' Biblical exegesis is less popular. The testimonies and stories of faith tend to produce an increase in site sessions and increase the number of people reading the blog. But God has allowed me to share the thoughts I have been enjoying in my wee study in Lionthorn, Falkirk with a fairly wide audience and it is our prayer that God's Word will be effective in producing fruit in the lives of those who read. From my brief look at the statistics, it is clear that those who read the blogs sent to them by email or WhatsApp are likely to spend longer reading than those who have seen the blog on Facebook. So some cynic might say, why do you bother hosting a website?
I am sending this out without further comment but if you want to make any observations, please feel free to comment (if you have subscribed as a member or send me an email to dayshare153@gmail,com . There is no commercial necessity to have high viewing figures. A small-scale Christian publisher indicated that an individual needed to demonstrate a following in excess of 1,000 before they could be considered for publication. The Day Share website runs on a shoestring budget and my wife is happy to support it. I am grateful to Janie for her patience in allowing me to spend so much time in my study. She is unwavering in her loyalty to this service for the Lord. I am grateful to my dear Christians who contribute to the blogs especially to Sandy Roger, Beth Easton and Johan Schep (whom I have never met in person). I am thankful to those who have been loyal to the Day Share despite the fact that it is a very crowded market and some similar websites are more professional in their production.
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