Sixth year of blogging – Summary

The Poor Swiss in numbers

We can start our retrospective of my sixth year of blogging with some numbers about the blog.

As usual, here are the page views for each month of this sixth year:

Interestingly, the traffic picked up significantly from last year. This is good because 2022 was considerably worse than 2021 and 2020. However, it is essential to note that the peak in June 2022 is due to a change in how stats were gathered. So, the increase is not as great as it looks.

If you wonder why this stopped on July 1st, it is because Google Analytics 3 stopped working that day. I tried migrating to GA4, but this tool is too bad. So, I migrated to Plausible Analytics, which is faster and better for privacy. But I lost all my data (my fault entirely), so the graph is not interesting to share for this year.

These days, I do not pay too much attention to these stats because they are not representative of the helpfulness of the blog. I am even considering dropping stats entirely since they are not meaningful. Let me know what you think.

Most of my traffic is from search, followed by direct (unknown sources) and then email. Other sources are bringing negligible sources of traffic.

The list’s number of email subscribers has increased significantly this year. This works well, and I hope everybody gets something out of the emails.

The comments are also doing well, reaching over 12000 comments, about 3000 more than last year. While it takes me a lot of time to answer everybody, I think it has substantial value for the blog.

The blog now counts 458 articles in English, 328 in French, and 319 in German. I have completed the translation of the blog in German this year. At this point, every new article comes in English, French, and German. While the translations are imperfect, people are generally positive about having the three languages.

For some comparison, you can read the summary of the previous year.

What went well?

We should first talk about what went well with The Poor Swiss.

The main goal of this blog is to help people in Switzerland with their finances. And given most interactions I get by email and comments, I think this goal is still fulfilled.

Overall, interactions with my audience are doing well, and I want to continue on that route. It is sometimes getting difficult to deal with the traffic of emails and comments, but I managed to keep up with it even though my response time was higher than before.

At the same time, I got a new logo for the blog. This logo is much more professional, and I like it. However, I know that some of you do not enjoy it. Let me know in the comments below what you think.

Surprisingly, the translation of the blog in German went well. The (bad) plugin I am using for translations, WPML, got an update that made translations easier. So, it was not so much agonizing pain as for the French translation. I still did not enjoy it, but I could do it faster.

I got two more contacts with the press this year. One article was published by Swiss Life. And I have another one that should be published soon. Again, it probably made very little difference for the blog, but it is an interesting way to improve communication, and they were both quite interesting.

What did not go well?

My main issue with the blog this year is balancing it with other projects. At some point, I invested too much time in it and almost got burned out. And at some other issues, I struggled to keep up with even basic maintenance tasks.

Next year, I need to find a better balance between the blog and my other priorities (family, work, and other projects).

During this sixth year, I did some little experiments to increase my presence on social media. However, it did not work at all. I did not raise my follower count or drive more traffic to the blog. So, in the end, since I did not enjoy that, I simply stopped my last social media account, Twitter. I want to focus on things I enjoy and bring value rather than on something like that.

One thing that I wish I could do is plan more updates of older articles. Some of them need a refresh. But I had little time this year for that.

Overall, I just wish I had more time and energy to dedicate to this blog.

What changed during this sixth year?

Quite a few things changed on the blog during this sixth, but they are barely visible to all readers.

As mentioned already, I translated everything into German as well. I think this closes a gap for the blog that was important.

I rewrote the blog’s theme almost entirely but kept the design the same. The HTML code of the blog was way too convoluted and contained too many elements that were not necessary. I refreshed it entirely. This makes it much easier to maintain and edit. And it should make it very slightly faster for you.

The home and blog pages look much better, with some significantly better-looking featured images. I am using a designer on Fiverr to do these. I have not yet finished all the old images but I am slowly working through them. I think it is a nice improvement.

I also migrated to a new server. The new one is slightly cheaper, more flexible, and convenient to run. It is not always faster, but most of the requests to the blog are not hitting the server, so it should be fine.

Finally, I switched from a sole proprietorship to a Limited Liability Company (LLC). I wanted to separate the blog from our finances. Another reason is that we want to keep some money in the blog where we will pay lower taxes than if we received the salary. It took longer than expected to make all the changes, but now everything is set up.

For 2023, many of the blog expenses and income will still be in our finances. But 2024 should be entirely on the LLC, hopefully.

So, many things changed under the scenes on the blog. I am glad that everything is done because it means that the foundation is better for any changes (if any) I make next year.

Most popular articles

We can see which were the most popular articles on the blog during this sixth year. This list may not be accurate since I have lost several months of analytics, but it should still be a good sample.

So, here are the five most viewed articles, in order:

1. Updated Trinity Study
2. Wise vs Revolut
3. Online Shopping in Switzerland
4. The Best Credit Card in Switzerland
5. Best Phone Plan in Switzerland

I am glad the top spot is for my updated Trinity Study results. This is an article that I update at least once a year, and that requires a lot of work. I think it is an excellent article.

I will soon update the Trinity Study article again. And I plan to update other articles based on the same simulations. I now have another system to generate the graphs for these articles, making it easier to maintain.

The Wise vs Revolut article has been in top articles ever since it was written. I am not a massive fan of this article, but it brings a lot of traffic.

The following three articles discuss finding the best services to save money. My articles about saving money are very popular on this blog. It makes sense since people always like saving money.

The next year of blogging?

I expect nothing significant for the seventh year of blogging unless my time and energy increase. I will need to be careful about balance.

Last year, I was planning to write an ebook, but I do not think this will happen.

My goal for the seventh year is to keep everything running, write one article a week, and avoid articles becoming too outdated.

Your point of view?

This blog is for you! I want to get your point of view on this blog!

What do you think I should focus on next year?

What do you think went well or did not go well during the fourth year?

Do you have anything you would like to have on this blog? Any suggestions for articles?

Conclusion

I could spend less time than I would have wanted on the blog during this sixth year. However, the blog is still doing okay.

Overall, the main goal of this blog is to help people with their money. And I think the blog still meets that goal, based on the thousands of interactions with my readers.

While there was nothing entirely new on the blog this year, the foundation of the blog is now more solid. This will help if I need to make changes in the following years.

I currently have no projects lined up for the future. I mainly want to keep a good balance of time and energy for this blog. I want to keep the blog’s foundation strong and hopefully build a little on top of that.

What would you like to see happen during the blog’s seventh year?

What do you think of my blog? Do you like the direction it is going in?

Recommended reading

• More articles about Updates
• November 2021 – Not so frugal
• August 2021 – A good simple month
• March 2022 – Splurging the bonus