Erica Robyn Reads

a horror book review blog

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My 1 Year Blogiversary

     Erica Robyn      38 Comments

Celebrating my one year blogiversary!

I cannot believe that today officially marks my one year Blogiversary. Man, this year has just flown by!

When I first started this blog here on Blogger, I didn’t really have a plan. All I knew is that I wanted to take my love of reading up a notch. I’m so glad that I took this path!

Of course I have had my fair share of stressful situations as a result of this blog, but overall it has been an absolutely wonderful year. I have met so many amazing readers, bloggers, publishers, and authors. Thank you all so much. Your support truly means the world to me!

In honor of today, I thought I would put together this fun little post. So let’s dive in!

My 1 Year Blogiversary

Fun Facts:

  • My very first blog post here was [Book Tag] 25 Bookish Facts About Me. 
  • I posted 16 blog posts before I got my first comment.
  • My first commenter was Julia @ Read and Live Well. Unfortunately, it seems her blog has been taken down.
  • Over the course of the year, my blog has gone through three major redesigns before settling in to the one you see today.

Stats:

  • My follower count here on Blogger has grown from 0 to 83.
  • My page view count has grown from 0 to 77,166.
  • My Facebook fan page follower count has grown from 0 to 143.
  • Honest review requests completed this year: 46

My most popular posts this year include:

  1. [Bookish Discussion] 16 Books That Didn’t Live Up To The Hype
  2. My Trip To The Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut
  3. 3 November Book Releases I Can’t Wait To Read
  4. My 10 Favorite Books That Were Published in 2017
  5. 6 Things Readers Want You To Stop Asking

What I’ve Learned:
I have learned that I cannot push myself to post once per day. I was following that schedule for awhile, but quickly felt like I was going to burn out. Now I simply post as I can. If that means I have the next month scheduled out ahead of time, great! If I need to take things day by day, that’s fine too.

I have learned that Honest Review Requests are so much fun, but they can quickly overwhelm. I had to change my policy about accepting submissions a number of times before I found a process that worked for me. However, I am still working on tweaking it and would happily take suggestions here!

On the note of honest review requests, I have learned that having a clear policy is key. This helps to create ground rules and protect you if something goes wrong. I was really upset that I had to make it clear that I would not put up with harassment or other negativity when dealing in honest review exchanges, but I’m very glad that I have only had to deal with that mess a handful of times.

I have learned how to politely decline an honest review request and how to inform an author that I will be DNFing their book. Though I still hate to do so.

Shout-Outs:
I know I am going to forget some key people here… so stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll be updating this section again soon 🙂

Thank you to all of you amazing authors for contacting me for an honest review and for being incredibly patient with me as I work to fine tune my process. And a special thanks to those of you that were extra patient during my nasty reading slump earlier this year that pushed all of my dates out a couple of months!

Thank you to author Scott Kauffman for providing me with Revenants: The Odyssey Home as my very first paperback for an honest review exchange.

Thank you to R. A. Desilets for allowing me to host an interview and giveaway here on my blog.

Thank you to L. M. Schukraft, Tony Moyle, and T.L. Branson for giving me the chance to be a beta reader for each of you.

Thank you to L.D. Goffigan and Martin Ferguson for immediately sending me the next book (or books!) in your series after I absolutely adored the first.

Thank you to Kelsey Butts and Pam Labbe for putting some wonderful books on my radar. I always look forward to seeing your email addresses pop up in my inbox!

Thank you to everyone that was so kind as to provide me with a testimonial after working with me.

And last, but certainly not least, thank you to all that follow, read, and/or comment on this blog. You are all so incredible!

Thanks for reading! And again, thank you all so much for your support! 
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Angela Lawrence says

    Congratulations on your 1st blogiversary! I honestly thought you had been doing this way longer, your blog is so polished! What amazing stats, as well! Best wishes for another great year!

    Reply

  5. Amy Rule says

    Congratulations! I also take the "take it day by day" approach too. If inspiration strikes I run with it, and I do love to plan ahead of time and schedule posts but if one day I'm not feeling up to it, I'll focus on something else for a little while and come back to it.

    Reply

  7. Barb says

    Happy Anniversary. I'm so glad we discovered each other's blog this past summer through the challenge we participated in. I think we are enough alike in our book preferences to enjoy visiting each other's blog, but different enough to make the visits interesting. Thanks for the recommendations and I look forward to reading many more posts!

    Reply

    • Erica Hatch says

      Thank you! I'm so glad we discovered each other as well! Before I visit your blog, I make sure to have my Goodreads open because I know I'm going to add everything to my TBR list! 🙂 <3

      Reply

  11. Evelina @ AvalinahsBooks says

    Congratulations!!!
    Wow, your Facebook page has a lot of fans 🙂 mine's smaller. I guess I don't like Facebook that much xD

    Nope, posting once a day is completely out of the question… What would even be the point? I don't think like enough people would even read you then. At least I don't know anyone who could catch up with all that content.

    But I guess I should really update my policy for once. I can't believe it's sitting there barely touched ever since I launched the blog xD

    Reply

    • Erica Hatch says

      Thank you! 🙂 My Facebook audience is pretty decent, but the engagement is quite low. I'm hoping it will improve in 2018.

      And right?! I think I post too much as is! haha That's another thing I want to work on for 2018. I think dropping some weekly memes will help.

      Good luck with updating your policy! 🙂

      Reply

  16. Literary Feline says

    Happy belated blog anniversary, Erica! And what a lovely post! I had to learn the lesson the hard way about posting when I want–or can–and not worry about posting all the time. It's a good one for all of us to remember, I think. Here's to another great year in blogging, Erica! I look forward to seeing what you are up to and reading this coming year.

    Reply

  17. Olivia-Savannah says

    I'm a week late, but congratulations on your blog anniversary! It took me a while longer of blogging to pick up some of the things you did. But yes, blogging every day unless it's your job to do so is incredibly difficult and practically impossible! Also, not worth the stress 😉

    Reply

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