I started The Niche blog in largely its current form early in 2010, and now 7+ years later we’ve hit two big milestones recently.
First, about a month ago, we reached 10,000 comments made on the blog. Thanks for being involved in the discussion on the Niche blog!
Second, we reached 7,000,000 total page views on the Niche. Considering early on, we were getting something like 7 readers a day, to get to seven million is quite something. It’s been an exciting, wild ride in many ways.
Earlier this year, I hit another milestone of the 2,000th post on the Niche. Maybe I “talk too much” on this blog? Anyhow, people seem to keep coming back. You can also see in the screenshot of stats above that our best day ever traffic-wise was nearly 45,000 page views. It can be hard to predict sometimes what will take off and what won’t. Some posts I think will really get people stirred up and into reading and discussion, have little impact, whereas others that seem routine suddenly take on a life of their own.
One of the most popular pages on this blog ever, our Spanish-language educational outreach page ¿Qué son las células madre? just passed another milestone: half a million page views.
I am gradually blogging less often and I expect that trend to continue in coming years. I’m just so busy. Maybe some folks who are not fans of this blog will say, “hallelujah!” at the idea of me blogging less and that’s fine. I’ll take it as a compliment.
From the beginning I thought of this blog as an experiment. It’s not going to be infinite. Another science blogger, the anonymous DrugMonkey, recently hung up his blogging after 10 years. I get it. Blogging can be very rewarding professionally and personally in terms of educational outreach, building bridges, and I’ve learned a lot, but it takes energy and there are risks to it.
So when I call it a day at some point in future years, how many total page views will the Niche blog have then? How many comments? Posts? I don’t know. For now, I’m still “into it” even if posting less often. Heck, obscurity as a scientist may have its perks too, right?
Congratulations Paul. Interesting to see that individuals have now taken to injecting themselves with edited cells. So the ‘industry’ if I may call it that is facing challenges on many fronts. It will be interesting to see in the next couple of years some of the output of clinical trials as to how much benefit much of the science is likely to produce on the ground. So plenty to keep blogging about and reporting on, if you have the energy or desire to do so.
Paul, I say please keep blogging whenever you are moved to blog. Always interesting to see your perspective as well as the thoughts of some of your readers!
Congratulations Paul! A wonderful accomplishment.
I started my blog in December 2005, when I retired from consulting – but, pulled the plug before you. I gave up writing in Jan 2016, with my last article, on gene editing in ophthalmology (CRISPR/Cas9), published in The Ophthalmologist that month.
I managed to put over 300 articles online on my blog, and about dozen or so articles published on regenerative medicine – stem cells, gene therapy and gene editing in ophthalmic journals since 2010 – with probably an additional 250 or more published articles during my 36 years of consulting in ophthalmology & medical lasers – on contact lenses, IOLs, ophthalmic & refractive lasers, (and medical lasers – laser hair removal, for example), and other new technologies (drugs & devices) for treating retinal diseases.
Irv
great and very informative blog. Congratulations and thank you for so many interesting articles and discussions.
Amazing milestones Paul. You should be very proud. Congratulations on all that you have given to the community.
Amazing accomplishments… anonymity no longer possible for you, Dr. Paul. When it gets time to go back to full-time science, you will have laid the foundation for generations of science writers/bloggers to come….
Thanks, Don. I cram my blogging effort into only a few % of my time, but hope it has outsized impact.
What you do makes a tremendous difference so thank you for all your efforts!
Paul