Can you believe that it’s already been one full year of Architect This City? Well it has. I wrote this quick post on August 28, 2013 and it kick started a yearlong discipline of writing something everyday (usually) about cities.

In celebration of this one year anniversary, I thought I would open up the kimono and provide a full look at what one year of regular blogging looks like in terms of the numbers, as well as in terms of the benefits that I feel I derived from it. So here goes.

Below are my pageviews from Google Analytics (the number at the top of the Y-axis is 10,000). As you can see, it’s been a slow and steady climb:

Here are the top 10 countries that read Architect This City (also from Google Analytics):

Here are the 5 most read posts from the last year (notice a trend?):

1. Transitioning from architecture to development
2. How Toronto became cool
3. What real estate developers do and why I became one
4. The future of the architecture profession
5. A new model for the architecture profession

And here’s where I sit in terms of followers and subscribers:

• Twitter (@donnelly_b): 1,364 followers
• Facebook (ATC Page): 152 likes (relatively new addition)
• Tumblr: 2,592 followers
• Email Subscribers: 871

When I started blogging, I already had a few hundred Twitter followers, but probably less than 100 Tumblr followers, and absolutely 0 email subscribers. Interestingly enough, it took almost 11 months to get to 250 Tumblr followers, but only another 3 days to break the 2,000 mark. So these things definitely snowball.

But the numbers really only tell one side of the story.

Over the past year I’ve had the privilege of meeting a ton of great people as a result of me putting myself out there publicly. In fact, it has now reached the point where I just can’t keep up with all the requests for coffee. I hate saying no (or forgetting about the email), but there’s only so much time in the day. Regardless though, I’m always flattered and entirely grateful that somebody actually wants to hear what I have to say. So I try and take as many meetings as I can.

Blogging everyday is certainly a lot of work. But it’s no different than keeping any other routine (like going to the gym) and there are countless benefits to doing so. If you’ve ever thought about starting a blog, I would encourage you to give it a try. Once you get rolling, it actually becomes hard to stop.