Beyond the Pale: 2013 in Review

I started Beyond the Pale in 2008 as an outlet for a number of “hodge podge” ideas in my head.  Politics, baseball, movies, social commentary, as well as a few posts that reflected my Christian journey.  I hardly gave promotion or monitoring of “traffic” any thought as I viewed the blog more as a writing outlet and a journal for my future grandkids.

Owing to a personal spiritual renewal of sorts, just over a year ago I “re-booted” Beyond the Pale  into an (almost) solely Christian themed blog focused on areas of Grace, Kingdom, Church, and our identities as Children of God.  While still a relatively small blog I am really happy with the growth of Beyond the Pale this year and, more importantly, with the comments and e-mails testifying of how it has been a blessing in your lives.

So for fun, here are some stats from Beyond the Pale for 2013:

 

The Top 5 Most Viewed Posts

1) John Piper’s God Looks More Like “Dexter” than Jesus

2) My Top 10 Changes Coming To Christianity

3) Hype-Grace?: A Response to Michael Brown

4) My Brother’s Conversation with a Pastor (and why he left the faith)

5) The Kingdom of God vs. The American Republic

 

Traffic Data

Visits: 18,174

Pageviews: 26,860

Average duration per visit: 1:48 (nearly 2 minutes: a lot in “Internet Time”)

 

Where Do You All Come From?

Just over half of Beyond the Pale readers came from the United States followed by the U.K.  My own Hong Kong was only # 4 but as Google Analytics classifies the territory  as a “city” as well as a “country” it got #1 for city traffic  :

Country / Territory	Visits	% Visits
1.	United States	9,812	53.99%
2.	United Kingdom	1,229	6.76%
3.	Canada	1,086	5.98%
4.	Hong Kong	1,023	5.63%
5.	Australia	625	3.44%
6.	South Africa	357	1.96%
7.	New Zealand	348	1.91%
8.	Philippines	274	1.51%
9.	Finland	233	1.28%
10.	Germany	212	1.17%

 

But interesting enough when the visits are figured by city, the first U.S. city only clocks in at #5 (Thanks New York) :

 

City	Visits	% Visits
1.	Hong Kong	1,023	5.63%
2.	(not set)	546	3.00%
3.	London	280	1.54%
4.	Auckland	261	1.44%
5.	New York	194	1.07%
6.	Denver	180	0.99%
7.	Sydney	164	0.90%
8.	San Francisco	151	0.83%
9.	Brisbane	137	0.75%
10.	Los Angeles	128	0.70%

 

Anyhow, thanks to all the Beyond the Pale community for letting me be part of your 2013.  I trust 2014 will be great year of understanding even more how much God loves us and sharing that love to our neighbors, our cities, and our world!

Peace & Grace,

Steve