Blog, Blog, Blogging Away

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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 :) )

BlogStatsMay09_11

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 :)

2010Stats_red

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.

Alexa_May2011_500

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!):

Karajini ~ Pilbara (Photo by NeilsPhotography)

Photo by Curtis Morton-Lowerlighter

Rick Stacey and the Shelter Box that he will pull across New Zealand

Christmas in PARIS by Sally Foley Lewis

photo by Kaylene Higgs

Guinea Pig for Dinner

Romance_GFrew Wedding

Romance in the Mediterranean

The Man Port William Scotland

The Man, taking a break from walking the dog

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:

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.

2010_All

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…

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?

Click here to subscribe by email or RSS feed

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

Year at a Glance – January 2011

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Last year, I initiated a monthly post where I looked back at the preceding 4 weeks and using one of the 11 boxes surrounding our hand drawn Australia Map Journal, recorded a *highlight*.

Over the course of the year I created a sheet simply summarizing

’2010 ~ Year at a Glance’

2010

2010

It was such fun looking back and being reminded of how much we’d achieved I plan to do the same this year so…

Where 2 in 2011? ;)

Where to in 2011?

In January, our Map Magnet manufacturer moved their operation to Brisbane!

Our products are therefore not only Australian Made, but they’re all produced within a 100 km radius of our office ~ Our magnets…

…our printing, our travel wallet manufacture and display box production is all created in Brisbane.

Its a bit like the 100 mile diet, which is a diet consisting of food only grown within 100 miles of one’s home, except in our case its manufacturing all components within a 100 km radius of our office so its the 100 kilometer product ;)

January 2011 ~ Year at a Glance

My illustration for January 2011 *highlights* the celebration of launching our locally made magnets, but also reflects the dreadful wet weather circumstances that occurred as our first batch rolled off the Brisbane production line.

After months of rain (due to La Nina) Brisbane river devastatingly broke its banks submerging tens of 1000′s of homes and businesses.

This link shows remarkable before and after aerial photos ~ http://www.abc.net.au/news/infographics/qld-floods/beforeafter2.htm

(Slide your mouse from right to left over the photographs to see the before and after flood images of various locations)

The flooding of the Brisbane River came after three quarters of the state of Queensland had been declared a disaster zone due to widespread flooding that covered an area the size of France and Germany.

The aftermath of this water deluge was still being contended with when a category 5 cyclone Yasi bore down on northern Queensland ripping apart homes and businesses around Tully and Mission Beach.

This was followed by extensive flooding in Victoria and Melbourne.

While Perth, Western Australia was facing bush fires that tore through and destroyed 72 homes :(

With so much adversity it’s been hard to concentrate and focus, but small businesses pushing forward is critical for an economy now having to budget a major rebuilding and recovery programme.

Were you personally caught up in any of these awful freaks of nature?

Did you have friends or relatives affected?

Please share your stories in the comments below ~

Simply Summarizing your Year on a Single Sheet

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At the end of each month during 2010 I looked back and notated the highlight of the preceeding 4 weeks in one of the boxes on an Australia Map Journal ~

The idea, quite simply, was to

simply summarize the year on a single sheet ~

So at year’s end I’d have my

2010 year at a glance

If you want to see the project developing month by month, here is the category link to 2010 as I entered each month’s highlight.

For a closer look at the finished sheet ~

Here is January to May 2010

During which time

  • We were featured in Giftrap Magazine
  • Published our special edition Australia Map Journal
  • Attended the Reed Gift trade Fair in Sydney
  • Spent 2 months in Scotland
  • Expanded the Map Magnet Range from 22 to 30 regions across Australia

And then June to December 2010

  • Spelt out why we do what we do with our sharewords :) *highlight your holiday adventures*
  • Finalist in the Home based Business Awards ~ flew to Melbourne for presentation
  • Kimberleys Map Magnet a flyaway success in August, during the WA dry season
  • Our Alexa ranking went up, and with that we were included in the top 100 travel blogs list from around the world
  • We sold our 100,000th Australia Mail-It Map
  • Attended the ITE (Independent Travel Exchange) in Sydney
  • Put out our first retailers Newsletter

Being a person who tends to breeze over each milestone as I scuttle on to reach the next, I must say, looking at it now in its entirity, it was quite some year!

And for such a little monthly input the rewards of seeing how the business developed and grew over 12 months has way outweighed the effort/commitment to do it!

I’m really looking forward to doing it all over again to create my

2011 Year at a Glance

Care to join me? ;)

BUY your Map Journal here NOW!