One thing I don’t write a lot about in this blog is how I write this blog. I started it back in January 2015, when I was 15 months from executing my FIRE Escape. I began sharing since I didn’t see a lot of detailed, first-hand accounts of people that had reached financial independence & retired early and was craving information like that for myself.

First Post: Chief Sparky’s Blog

Since then, I’ve written a post – almost without fail – at least 2x a week. This is the 924th post in total. They usually go out on Monday & Friday mornings. I have them post around 2:30am because I know my board-buddy, Chet, gets up very early!

I try to alternate the posts between our experience on personal finance topics, and our ‘Life After FIRE’ lifestyle. I’ve kept the blog relatively anonymous from the beginning, but most of our friends & family know it’s me. There’s something about writing it from a generic point-of-view that keeps the writing out of the weeds.

I reached a big milestone last month … a HALF MILLION views. It’s now at 507,400. I think it’s actually a bit higher than that since there are a few hundred e-mail subscribers that read the posts without linking to the website. Still, it’s a big milestone for someone who never regularly wrote anything before.

Views aren’t readers, of course. We’ve had 120K unique visitors as well, so the average reader has viewed about 4.2 posts. The lowest read posts come in at about 200-250 reads, the higher ones get a thousand, or more. The most popular post on the site is from 2016. It has almost 6K reads since then …

Related: How Much Does 10 Years Of Early Retirement Really Cost?

Most of the other FIRE blogs that started when I did, seem to be gone. I’ll click on links to them now and then, but they are mostly defunct. A few continue to operate, and some – like PhysicianOnFIRE.com – have grown mighty in their reach. Leif, who runs ‘POF’ is kind enough to feature my posts in his popular ‘Sunday BEST’ feature now and then. That drives a lot of visibility. (His comprehensive site probably gets 500 Billion views in a few posts!)

The readership on MrFireStation,com is surprising to me since I’ve never promoted it in any way. I’m not even sure how people ever found it in the first place. I used to run digital marketing teams for MegaCorps, but I never got into the nuts-and-bolts of how to place media and attract readers. Maybe I should have learned to do that early on. Still, from the first year to the second, it jumped from 1K visitors to over 20K.

My wife asks how long I’ll keep writing and I generally say as long as the posts get at least 100 reads, I think they are worth doing for the time involved. Each post takes about 60 minutes to write & post. In addition, while I started with the intention of sharing/teaching folks about the FIRE journey & lifestyle, I now realize the act of writing the posts actually teaches ME a lot about personal finance and makes me a bit more mindful in appreciating what a wonderful thing early retirement is.

I continue to appreciate the regular readers who comment on posts (most often KlausWentzel, Bowmanifesto, Dave, Thom, and feisty Carol) and contribute great perspective & ideas. In addition to those written comments, my posts get lots of offline discussion with my family, friends, and neighbors. Often I’ll start a story and a friend will say, “I read your post about that …”, then tell me how dumb I am! 🙂

I think it would take a long, long time for this blog to reach a million views (if ever), so while I am here, I’ll just say THANKS for helping me get this far and please stay on your own journey to FIRE / enjoy your FIRE lifestyle. Also, please let me know what you’d like to hear more or less about in the future. In my own mind, it seems as if I’ve covered everything possible topic at this point, yet there are always new things I put on my list to explore and consider.

THANKS & HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

Image Credit: Pixabay