2018 – A Year in Review and More

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic

2018 was a tough year at times and the best year at times, it all depends on my perspective when looking back at it I guess.  For my blog, we had a banner year with a vast improvement over the prior year.  It is hard to believe that people continue to come back to the site to read what I have to say.  It is rather humbling and much appreciated.  I don’t make any money on this, it is all for fun so to know people find it and come back motivates me to keep doing it.  I never thought I would be able to come up with material, but with over 730 posts so far, I seem to keep finding stuff to write about.

I will keep it to the blog as far as highlights for this past year, except I did turn 50, so that is pretty cool.  They say that the first 50 years of childhood are the hardest, and I would agree. It should be smooth sailing from here.

The first highlight, is that I have finally reached 100,000 views  on the site since its inception which was about 2 years & 7 1/2 months ago.  That is hard to believe. Now, I hope to do 100,000 views in 2019 alone.  That is at least my goal.

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As far as posts, what were the biggest posts of the year.  Here are the Top 5 new posts that were done in 2018:

If you wonder why I keep doing the Albums ranked worst to first, it is because they are pretty popular.  Also, I really like doing them so that helps.  It was nice to see the Def Leppard & Journey double bill gave me two of my biggest posts for the year.

Now, what about the biggest post I have done in prior years that seemed to kill it this year for some reason.

The Apple Music vs. anything seems to do very well.  I can’t get over that in 1 year, that one post got over 6,000 hits.  Nuts!  And people seem to love the song “The Sound of Silence” as it is by far the best one in that series. I love doing that series as well.  The funniest one for me is the Christmas Music memes.  That had done nothing all year and then on November 1st, it exploded and once Christmas was done, it died again.  We will see how next year turns out now that there are 2 of those Christmas Memes post.

The one I am happiest about is the New Releases page.  I work on that every week and try to keep it current and this year it started getting some serious traffic.  I am thrilled that it seems to be where people go to find out what is coming out as that was my hope for that page all along (plus it is a great reminder for me on what I need to go buy).

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The last three years have trended up nicely. I don’t know if this pace of growth will continue, but it is cool that it has grown like it has thanks to all you fine folks.  And thanks to Google Search.  You guys search from weird stuff…here are a couple search phrases people used that somehow found my site…

  • “remind me by a loud alarm on december 18 2018 at 1:30” – Sorry dude, I ain’t Alexa!!
  • “ncaa football scores” – Sorry, don’t know any scores, but I do know the Georgia Bulldogs got their ass handed to them in the Sugar Bowl against Texas 28-21.  Don’t let the close score fool you, it wasn’t pretty.
  • “rvadeliia maano ostoso xnxx” – Huh????
  • “function of spleen” – I have no freaking idea, this is a music site not Web MD
  • “vsb vskdbvi yiu reeslly hot me” – another one…Huh????  I think they are talking about Van Halen’s cover of You Really Got Me, but not sure they were even looking at the keyboard when they typed it.

And sometimes people were searching for answers to their questions, so I figured I would answer them now since somehow they mind my site as a result of the question…

  • “Is it too early to get a flu shot” – No, it might be too late now, but I guess it couldn’t hurt you…except it could give you the flu because it is the live virus…it gave me the flu once.  But again…not Web MD.
  • What rob zombie song starts out with screaming and fast guitar?  – ALL OF THEM!!!
  • Do rhino horns grow back? – If a Rhino is dehorned without cutting into the skull, it can grow back to almost full size after three years. However, if the rhinos skull is cut into while being dehorned, it could complicate or completely compromise the re-growth of the horn.  Mostly poachers just kill them since it makes it easier to get the horn.  Poachers suck!!
  • What does the song lips on you mean? – Dude, did your parents not have a talk with you about the Birds & Bees?  I don’t think it is my place to explain, but basically Adam Levine wants to put his lips all over her body and in special places and do things that would make you blush.  I hope that helps.
  • When did wife start touring with needtobreathe?  I am sorry to disappoint you, but my wife isn’t touring with Needtobreathe.  That would be cool though.

All my posts get posted to Twitter and Facebook and it is cool when an artist likes a post or it even gets linked on their website.  Just recently, I did the Whitesnake Unzipped Box Set review and if you were to go on the Whitesnake Website and look up the box set, they were linking to that post as an “Independent Review”.  I love Whitesnake, so this was a massive thrill to me.  I have had it happen before with John 5  and he actually mentioned the site.  That is totally cool for me and also helps keep me motivated.  I have noticed that when I give a bad review, the artist tends not to acknowledge it though…I wonder why???

Now, you notice the Best Views Ever at 367 from one of the pictures above?  Yeah, for some strange reason on January 2nd, I had a post completely and utterly blow up on Facebook.  That post alone is over 1500 for that one day and the day wound up at 1865.  What post was it?  The Top Rock Songs of 2018.  Why did it do so well?  Well, all thanks to the band Stryper.  They were #7 on the list and they kindly posted about it on Facebook with a link and they have a lot of followers that click on their links.  Crazy.

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If that wasn’t enough, Michael Sweet, lead singer of Stryper tweeted a comment and posted on Facebook as well the very next day. What did the site do this time?

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Not a bad couple of days.  That one post has over 3400 views in just a few days.  I am getting back to normal after a couple crazy days; however, there is still an slight uptick as a result.  I should be back to my 220 a day average soon.  It was fun while it lasted.

Okay, that is enough rambling on about me and my site.  I want to sincerely thank each and everyone of you for supporting the website and me. It means a lot.  Here’s to another great year and hopefully some great music to write about.  Thanks!!

16 thoughts on “2018 – A Year in Review and More”

    1. Thanks Yes, I am not a big fan is it normally doesn’t drive much traffic, but I love it when this stuff happens. Not necessarily for the traffic as much for the fact a band I really like has seen my stuff. That is the bigger high.

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  7. Wow, congratulations for the amazing success of your blog John! Yes, it’s fantastic when a major artist shares your post on their social media, bringing hundreds or even thousands of views. Very few of them ever do, unfortunately, which is a shame.

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    1. Thanks Jeff! I hate dealing with social media, but sometimes it pays off. Most of the traffic nowadays is simply search engines with WordPress a distant second and then the social sites (except for this year). It has been a fun ride, thanks for tagging along for so long.

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      1. I’m hopelessly addicted to social media, and spend far too much time on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook, which could be better spent writing more blog posts. As you may have seen, I now have over 11,500 followers on Twitter – many of them musicians & bands hoping I’ll write about their music. But even with all those followers, Twitter brings relatively little traffic to my blog unless a major band retweets my review, which has happened only a couple of times.

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