Listen to this post: You can download the MP3 file, subscribe in iTunes, or listen with Stitcher. Site analytics for Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2018 Here’s a breakdown of site traffic analytics on idratherbewriting.com from Jan 1, 2018, through Dec 31, 2018 (based on Google Analytics): I'd Rather Be Writing gets about 1,552,615 page views per year, or 4,253 page views a day. Here’s another slice of analytics focusing more on audience: Here you can see a breakdown of sessions. During 2018, there were about 942,000 sessions, with users viewing 1.65 pages per session. Note: A "page view" is when the page loads, regardless of whether it's the same visitor or a different visitor. A "session" refers to a unique visit to the site. If the same visitor views 10 pages, it only counts as a single session. Users viewed an average of 1.65 page views per session. I’d Rather Be Writing received significantly more traffic in 2018 (nearly double the page views) than the previous year. The blue line represents 2018, while the brown line represents 2017. Traffic comparison by year. The increased traffic from the API documentation site probably accounts for the massive growth. The following table includes more details from other Google Analytics reports (the date range is Jan 1, 2018, to Dec 31, 2018): Jan 1, 2018 — Dec 31, 2018 Number Page views 1,552,615 Average page views per day 4,253 Average page views per hour 177 Unique page views 1,331,869 Average time on page 2:40 Users 687,818 Sessions 942,306 Sessions per user 1.37 Average session duration 1:44 Pages per session 1.65 Bounce rate 78% Organic search traffic 495,033 Traffic from social 5,596 Social site breakdown Linkedin 49%, Facebook 20%, Twitter 17% Geographical region US 35%, India 16%, UK 5% Browser Chrome 73%, Firefox 9% Operating System Windows 60%, Mac 20%, Android/iOS 13% Device type Desktop 86%, mobile 12%, tablet 2% API doc traffic percentage Here’s the big revelation. About 59% of the overall traffic to my site comes from my API documentation site: Traffic related to API documentation dwarfs all other traffic. The 83 posts I wrote during 2018 only accounted for 4.42% of my site’s traffic. The traffic from the API documentation visitors is outperforming other traffic sources. Age and gender The breakdown of audience age and gender is as follows: There are twice as many males as females reading my site. This demographic reflects the more male-centric programmer culture. In years past, the gender distribution was more balanced. But with more traffic coming in through my API documentation site, it suggests more programmers are reading the content. Why? The 2018 GitHub survey found that the gender breakdown among engineers was 92.9% male, 6.9% female. Given that my overall gender breakdown is now 71.7% male, 28.3% female, I think many of those readers are engineers rather than technical writers. In years past (such as 2017), the gender breakdown on my site was more evenly balanced. In fact, just last year, Google Analytics indicated that 34% of readers were male, 66% female. Top 10 lists for 2018 Here are a list of top 10 pages, sliced in different ways. Top 10 pages overall (across all sites) Here are the top 10 overall pages that received the most traffic last year. (The pages weren’t necessarily written during 2018.) Swagger UI tutorial (12% of traffic) Documenting APIs: A guide for technical writers (5%) Step 3: Parameters (API reference tutorial) (4%) I’d Rather Be Writing: Latest posts (4%) Submit requests through Postman (3%) Quick Reference Guide Templates (2%) 10 realizations as I was creating my Swagger spec and Swagger UI (1%) OpenAPI 3.0 tutorial overview (1%) JavaScript: Events and Listeners (1%) Inspect the JSON from the response payload (1%) Again, these top pages show that most of the traffic is coming through my API documentation site, with Swagger UI tutorial leading the way. var contents=new Array() contents[0]=' Sponsored message:Over 40,000 API developers use Swag