Journey Jottings blog

celebrates 2 years

A great opportunity to take a walk down memory lane and revisit travel topics we’ve talked about.

We’ve covered fun travelling tales, including yours via the monthly themed Facebook Travelling Tales, as well as sharing some of mine in Tales of a Traveller.

I’ve also illustrated ways to use your Australia Map Journal including the creation of an annual Year at a Glance summary sheet.

I’ve asked What travel means to you? And Do you have a Medical Case of Wanderlust?

All scattered with Australia travel photographs of  Australian flora, fauna and landscape.

Anniversaries mark the end of one cycle, and herald the start of another.

Cycles re-volve while we e-volve ~ Even trying to stay static things change so while its inevitable we’re in a different spot today to where we stood this time last year, its encouraging that the path we’ve wandered has reflected positively with a burgeoning readership.

Statistics

My gut instinct tells me all I need to know, but for those who can’t see or feel that, here are some diagrams to illustrate the direction this blog is heading. (With facts and figures out of the way I’ll then review the great content we’ve covered )

The Subscribers diagram above shows the last two years of subscriptions to the blog ~ The left half illustrates a fairly flat first year, after which there’s been a steady rise over the course of this second year -

The visitors have doubled

Last year there was a 30% bounce rate but this year only 25% have taken a quick peak and run, which is good to hear as 75% of visitors to the site are new.

Our Alexa ranking has improved -

This time last year (2010) our site was ranked at

• Alexa    2, 101, 752 in the world and
• Alexa         125, 054 in Australia.

Now, our Alexa ranking (May 2011) is:

• Alexa   234, 353 in the world and
• Alexa         3, 063 in Australia

Which, reflects the increase in RSS and email subscribers, as well as new visitors – (Is coming down from two million to two hundred thousand a 90% improvement?)

In the first year, I put up 150 posts, including a series of extracts from an 1878 journal by a man sailing aboard a clipper from England to Australia to start a fresh life ~ I wanted to illustrate how jotting a few things down on our journeys transcends time and reading his daily entries are entertaining even 130 years later ~ maybe more so?

This year we made 80 posts, focusing on the following travel topics:

 

Facebook Tales

Highlighting *your* holiday adventures is fun ~

Fun for both the teller of the tale and the listener.

I love short, non-fluffy reminders of travelling adventures so in July 2010 we started featuring your tales -

Around the middle of each month we put up a theme, so there’s a couple of weeks to add your tale to our Facebook Page Wall before I collate them, with images, and put up a monthly post here on our blog ~ Facebook allow only 420 char in a comment so the maximum length is pre-determined to a quick and easy to post short and sweet length.

Jot a few memories and share your tale!

Your contributions have been fantastic -

These are the tales we’ve themed so far (click on the link to read more!):

• Favourite Travelling Tales in two parts

• Crazy, Stupid and Scary Travelling Tales (in two parts)

• Fathers Travelling Tales (inspired by Father’s Day)

• Music Travelling Tales (heard on the road, or music you’d never leave home without)
• Christmas Travelling Tales – where in the world have you spent Christmas?

• Food, Glorious Food ~ Food tales from the road

• Romantic Travelling Tales ~ Wherefore art thou? (inspired by Valentine’s Day)

• Works of Art in Public Spaces from around the world

• Celebrations, Festivals and Carnivals (inspired by Easter)

And next week we’re putting up your tales about:

• Mystery or Surprise Travelling Tales ~ Do you have a tale to tell of being whisked away to a surprise location, or venturing off the trail to some un-researched mystery destination? Add it to our Facebook Page for inclusion NOW

Tales of a Traveller

Travelling tales about on the road scenarios

I shared a few of my own travelling tales ~ Posting:

• Break ups on the Road and
• Serendipitous Encounters on the Road -

Its amazing how many travelling folk bump into people they know from a previous time in their lives when away in far flung crevices of the globe! Numerous travellers left comments recounting their experience of this phenomena.

Bust Ups, not  surprisingly, wasn’t such a popular topic to remind people about

 

Year at a Glance series

Win:Win ~ Journey Jottings News & ‘How to’ Use our Map Journals combined

This series evolved to satisfy a combination of two needs ~

1. I’m the worst when it comes to acknowledging what I’ve achieved or accomplished ~ I set myself a task, complete it and before drawing breath I’m onto the next thing with no recognition or pat on the back for what’s been completed so…
2. Using a Map Journal, I vowed at the end of each month I’d record ONE highlight from the previous four weeks.

This means that I’ll have Journey Jottings 2011 year at a glance simply summarized on a single sheet, which is fun for me, whilst illustrating a fun application of a Map Journal for something other than travel

 

How To Use your Map Journal

A series of posts to show you how to get the most out of your Map Journals

Categorized in the ‘Journalling Ideas’ section, these posts even included some videos.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAvtHx1V0A4[/youtube]

I also produced one monster post of

101 Ways to Use your Map Journal

in November, which being a signature post like

My 3 Best Kept Travel Secrets,

I added to the Menu Bar along the top of the blog here to make it easier to find

I’m planning on writing more posts about ‘How To’ as there are so many fun ways to quickly and simply express your trips with assorted pen colours, types and textures, creating different lines, symbols and diagrams that don’t require artistic skill – and are far less bothersome than writing up a travel tome each night

 

Travel Topics

Here I covered general discussion points about travel ~ Like…

• Do you have a Medical Case of Wanderlust?
• What does Travel Mean to You?
• If Digital Became a Dinosaur, Do you Have a Back-Up Plan?
• Twitter ~ Are You all of a Flutter? Or, Still sitting on your Perch?

Photo Postcards

Australian landscape, flora and fauna

Our lives are so full of the written word many of my posts relating to Australia’s bush, rainforest and beaches are photo centric.

As thoughts start to wander towards the weekend,  I instigated a Photo Friday post highlighting a photograph of some beautiful Australian scene ~

 

Looking forward…

So where to in the future?

How have you enjoyed the last 80 posts? What were your favourites?

Are we on the right track? What did we glaringly miss?

What would you like to see? Have you a burning issue you’d like me to cover?

 

Would you like to be kept informed as new posts are published?

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And I look forward to seeing you here for our 3rd year