Happy one year of blogging! (+ giveaway!)

The fourth of July. Not only the National Holiday of the United States but also the day this blog was founded! My very first blog post came online exactly one year ago. In honor of that very first post, I’ve already celebrated a bit last week, with Summer 2019: Movies to watch. Today’s the big celebration! I’ll take you to the beginning of this blog and end where we are now: One year later.

How it began and how I came here

I had already tried starting a blog before. Twice actually. Both about movies and both in Dutch. Those were over five years ago. Last year, I wanted a new challenge. My friend at school, Anna, had been blogging for four years and she eventually persuaded me to start blogging too. The new challenge was born…

My very first blog, when I was 14. I only wrote one post in which I introduced myself.

My second blog. I wrote a total of four blog posts, but nobody read them so I stopped

At that point, I already knew it was going to be about movies. I only had to think of a name. I thought this was going to be simple, but it really wasn’t. My brainstorm session took quite a while. Most of the blog names on blogspot back then were already in use. Names like Amenic, moviepalace, eddieredmayneismyhero (a joke, obviously), callmebyyourmovie, nottingchill, littemisscinemas and then, finally, Little Miss Chick Flick. Inspired by my love for chick flicks and the movie Little Miss Sunshine. I guess the name also fits myself, as I’m quite little (1,54m).

Then, the big blogging adventure could start. Starting out through blogspot.com, my domain littlemisschickflick.blogspot.com was registered. I chose a standard theme and started blogging, exactly one year ago.

The very first screenshot of my blog. I had created a logo and was busy shaping the website

Since then, a lot has changed. Last January I moved my blog to a paid WordPress domain, with a completely new layout. That was the best decision I’ve ever made. It’s easier to use, it’s more professional and I can control the theme more.

In the beginning, I wrote about two blog posts a week. One ‘normal’, one with that week’s movie news. When school started again, I ditched the movie news and stuck with one blog post each week. Less stress, still fun. I had one series which I blogged about every month: Monthly movie releases. When I found out they weren’t read much, I moved them to my Instagram. Once a month movie releases are posted in my Instagram story. This works way better! Since I still wanted a blogging series, I’ve started the Let’s Talk series a few months ago. Read them all here:

My Instagram has improved a lot. I started out with a template with a polaroid picture. Then, a blue/white feed came. That one didn’t last for very long. I’ve gone brainstorming once again and came up with my current feed. Backgrounds inspired by the most common colors in movie posters, not too much text, just keeping it simple. This feed won’t last forever, but I’m going to stick with it just a little bit longer. I’m still hoping to get a bit more followers, but I’m glad to finally have reached the 100!

I’ve still got a lot to improve, but in my opinion, I have improved a lot in the past year. Let’s see what has happened next year…

And remember the Get to know me post? “Oh and I’m very secretly hoping to get invited to a movie premiere, but that can only be something I can dream of. ” I have already achieved that one!

A few statistics

In this year, I’ve written a total of 50 blog posts with very different themes. About books, about directors, about award shows and many, many more. Some posts only have 5 views, but recently the standard is about 20. Last week, I got a record of 51! This might be low for other bloggers, but I’m purely blogging for my own entertainment. Every view is great for me!

Last month was the best month for views thus far. Let’s see if I can maintain (or improve) these statistics! The total number of page views (on Blogspot and WordPress combined) have reached 2000 this week. Still a lot of work to do, but the start is here.

The statistics of views on my blog from January this year

Since January, 92,8% of my visitors have been new visitors. I had an avarage pages/session of 1,72 and a session duration of 1 minute and 3 seconds. Before I switched to WordPres, I had 90,5% new visitors. The avarage pages/session was 2,54 and the session duration 1 minute and 48 seconds. I guess this has something to do with the fact that I was advertising this blog as new and that people wanted to read the About me page and my first few blog posts. Right now, I’m only advertising my newest blog posts.

I’ve had visitors from every continent. Most of the visitors in the first half year were from the Netherlands. This was 70% of the total number of visitors. Right now, most visitors are from the USA (35%), with the Netherlands close in second place. I guess this change is because of the difference in advertising my blog in the first half year and the second half year. I’m more active on international level than before. When I started, I promoted my blog on Dutch forums and groups, but right now mostly on Instagram and worldwide forums and groups.

In this year of blogging, I guess I’ve seen more movies than ever before: a total of about 160 movies. That one about every two days! Some movies I’ve seen twice, or even thrice, in the past year.

My total number of followers on social has improved too! I started out with an Instagram account. I’m almost to 120 followers there. I’m most active there. A bit later, I started out a Pinterest profile. In the beginning, it wasn’t very successful. When I started making mobile wallpapers, interest grew. In the beginning, I had about 300 monthly views on my pins. This number grew, especially after I had made wallpapers of Avengers: Endgame. These were really, really successful! They have a total of over 10.000 views. That’s one-third of my total number of views on ALL of my self-made pins! I’m quite proud of this achievement, let’s see if I can maintain these stats.

Views on my own Pinterest pins. The spikes from May are all from my Avengers: Endgame wallpapers.

GIVEAWAY

A one-year-of-blogging party couldn’t go without a giveaway! Want to win a printed poster, mobile wallpaper and desktop wallpaper of your favorite movie? Join the giveaway on Instagram now!

Thanks to all readers for sticking up with me in the past year. I’ve still got a long way to go, but I’m glad at where I am right now. Let’s see what the future holds for me!