Another year down and I’m here to sum up the year that was 2022!
Here we are again, another year down and time for a post summing up the last 12 months. Obviously these posts only come around once a year but, for some reason, I completely missed the 2021 edition! We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
For anyone that wants to have a little look back in time, I’ll link the previous years below. Just look at the optimism in the 2018 and 2019 posts!
2018: A Year in Review
2019: A Year in Review
2020: A Year in Review
2022
The only right and proper way to start this post is to say that 2022 brought the arrival of our beautiful baby girl, Evelyn. It’s still strange to physically write that I’m a father now but this year has been all about little Evelyn and the joy, the love and the challenges that come with becoming a parent.
I could probably write for hours about my thoughts and feelings after ten months of being a father but a lot is covered by my album of the year ‘The Hum Goes On Forever’ by The Wonder Years. Well worth a listen if you like your music loud and full of meaning.
I don’t want to die, ’cause I got to protect you. You’re the reason I can’t leave here yet, the reason I don’t want the world to end.
2022 finally saw the eventual retreat of Covid-19 so that life could start working back towards some kind of normal. I was surprised just to see how quickly ‘normal’ returned and how quickly all of those wishes about how life was going to change for good were forgotten. Covid-19 did however catch up with us and in August we all succumbed to the virus for around ten days. I think I’ve been ill more times this year than ever before!
My Highlights of 2022
Introducing my little baby girl, Evelyn
Our first family city break in London
A feel good trip to Harrogate
Finally upgrading my camera to the Fujifilm X-T5
The Year as a Travel Blogger
Back in 2020, I made the decision to transfer and re-design my entire website across to Squarespace which, in the main, was not a terrible decision. The website looked the part but ultimately I realised that it was doing nothing for growth or for SEO. I had very limited access to the nuts and bolts of the website so it just became apparent that I need to switch back to a website built using WordPress.
Well, let me just say, what an effort it was to transfer everything back across. Everything was pretty much like for like save for all of the images/gallery blocks on every single post which had messed up. Whilst I haven’t got to every post yet, most are looking back to their beautiful selves with a fresh look across the site. I also had an issue with hosting so have gone from Siteground to Rocket.net which is more expensive but is insanely fast. Google’s Pagespeed insights gives the site a score of 99 for performance.
Travel blogging is definitely working really well for me at the moment. I remember reading back when I was starting out in 2017 that it took a while to really establish yourself and I might just be starting to see the rewards from 5 years of jamiechancetravels.
This year I’ve worked with tourism boards and been paid to do so, I’ve stayed at and eaten in many great places and next year is already looking like it might top this one in terms of travel blogging. I managed to publish 36 posts this year (including this one) which is an improvement on recent years. Now if only I could post much more regularly, get to 50,000 sessions per month and get accepted into Mediavine…
Finally, in terms of page views, we’re looking at ending the year on between 120,000 and 130,000 which again is absolutely mad. In 2018, it was 15,000 and by 2020 it was 80,000. Fingers crossed that things look to be heading in the right direction. I just need to find some time to get through a backlog of post ideas from the last few years!
My Five Most Popular Posts of 2022
As always, it’s the photography related posts that are the most popular but the views on the travel related ones are also very consistent. As far as I can tell (bearing in mind the switch), these are my top five posts this year:
My 2021 Fujifilm JPEG Settings
Fujifilm’s Classic Chrome for Travel Photography
My Fujifilm Photography Workflow
A Look at the Classic Negative Film Simulation on the Fujifilm X-T2
Fujifilm’s ACROS Simulation in the Real World
What Next?
Life as a parent is obviously going to look a little different moving forward but I’m really hoping that we can start to incorporate trips abroad again next year. We had a practice run on a two night city break in London which went better than expected so fingers crossed we can start to get away!
I’m excited for next year, I really am.
As always in these posts, I want to say thank you to each and every person who takes the time to read my posts, check out my photography and supports me. I appreciate it and I hope that I’m able to keep you onboard over the coming years!
If you have any suggestions about what you’d like to see more of, let me know!
Cheers
Jamie
Congratulations on the arrival of your baby this year and all your travel blogging wins! Hoping next year is equally full of exciting adventures!
Thank you very much! I’m sure next year we’ll finally be able to add some adventures abroad!