Holy cow, this little blog is three years old. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. It’s pretty cool to look back through the archives and see a record of our lives since moving to the farm.

Every year at this time I also like to look back at some of the blog’s stats and some of the landmarks from the past year.

It’s partially about having a record for myself, but also about sharing some of my numbers with other bloggers out there.

Blogging is a community and a pretty diverse one. Blogs come in all different sizes, but readership and viewership stats aren’t something we talk about all that often… at least not that I see.

This post is not about comparing one blog to another, and it’s especially not that bigger is better. I have to admit though that I’m often curious about how my blog measures up.

Mine truly is a little blog, and I like to share some of my numbers in the hopes that my experience might encourage some other small bloggers. There are lots of us who are not in it for the daily page views or the advertising dollars (for a fabulous example from a not-so-small blog, see this post from DIY Diva). I blog because I love it. I’m in it for myself and for all of you reading.

So the first thing I have to say as I celebrate my third blog-iversary is thank you to all of you. Thanks for reading and following along on our adventures.

And now on to the numbers. (And by the way, WordPress, anytime you want to go back to the classic stats page that would be alright with me).

In my third year of blogging, my little corner of the internet had 58,681 views and 29,132 visitors. My average daily views heading into year 3 now sit just over 200. Here’s how things have developed over the past three years (WordPress didn’t track visitors in year 1):The top 10 countries got a bit of a shake-up this year–or at least bottom half of the list did. The U.S. and Canada still lead the pack, but Europe came on strong bumping India, New Zealand and South Africa out of the top 10.

1. United States — 36,757
2. Canada — 14,025
3. United Kingdom — 2,684
4. Australia — 1,248
5. Germany — 725
6. France — 452
7. Switzerland — 422
8. Ireland — 262
9. Netherlands — 256
10. Denmark — 216

Visitors came from 135 different countries in total.

I also celebrated some blog records this year.

• On Dec. 4, I reached the milestone of 100,000 all-time views.
• Just this week, I received my 1,000th like.

• On Nov. 6, I had my most visitors and views in a single day ever thanks to the One Room Challenge. The previous record of 543 views in a day (which was set way back on July 23, 2012) was supplanted by a new record of 603 views and 357 visitors.
• The One Room Challenge was also responsible for the most comments on any post–44 (although half of them are me replying to people’s comments)
• November’s views record only stood for a few months before it was broken on Feb. 9 by a new total of 631. Interestingly, the visitors number that day was pretty standard for me–119. My conclusion is that I have a new reader who binge read basically the whole blog in one day. Whoever you are, welcome. I’m glad you liked my blog.

And that brings us back to all of you again. I blog for myself, yes. But if this was simply a personal journal, I’m not sure I’d have kept going for three years. I really like knowing that there are people out there who enjoy my writing and like reading about our adventures. Thanks for being part of our life.