Sandalsand Norge >>
When the fireworks are over and a new year has dawned, I publish an account of what happened in the previous year. This article is about 2019 in terms of travels and publishing. Sandalsand publishes trips and travel related impressions on two websites: Global and Norway. There are also profiles on YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.
Sandalsand Global
Like the previous year I dropped the traditional Norwegian Easter holiday with snow and skiing. In 2019 I took part of my family with me and spent some wonderful days in Vienna, Bratislava and Copenhagen. Three countries, three capitals. A fourth capital turned up just a month later. In May I went to Dublin with friends.
My travels for the past ten years or so, have always included one overseas or cross-continental journey. This year I went to three countries known by some under the acronyms of DPRK, PRC and ROK. Most people know them as North Korea, China and South Korea. The main purpose was to visit the very closed country of North Korea and I used Beijing for transiting. On my way home I spent a few nights in Seoul as well.
I published 58 new articles on the website, which increased the overall to 909. (Browse the most recent here and work your way back in time on the same page.) In addition there are 33 menu pages. The number of photos increased to 9,492. In addition there are a few hundred special images, like the featured image on this post. The number of clicks on the website topped 30,000 – which is quite disappointing I admit.
This autumn I spent a considerable amount of time, in long evenings and weekends, to give both my websites a complete overhaul. The look and feel is totally different from what it was, and I am pleased with the result. I still believe there is room for improvements, incremental improvements that is. Read what I did.
Sandalsand Norge (Norway)
This is the website that is used to describe impressions from my own country, in Norwegian. Readers of Sandalsand Norge received 26 new articles from many parts of the country in 2019. This was an all-time low, and is partly explained by a larger number of articles on Global. Both websites combined saw on the other hand a marked decline in publishing activity. However, there is no lack of material or travels to write about. I have at least 25 identified articles up my sleeve for Sandalsand Global and 40 for Sandalsand Norge.
The entire website now consists of 623 articles plus 41 regular pages. The latter are found in the menus at the top and bottom of the page. There are now 11,412 images on Sandalsand Norge. Site clicks ended at about 70,000, almost half the number of the previous two years. I will need to look into this, because this too was a disappointment.
My Norway travels in 2019 brought me to the east and south of the country, besides my own region in Rogaland. The collage above shows only one picture from Norway, with a gun on a fortress above the border town of Halden. Sweden was once our enemy.
Other Social media
For Sandalfilm, my YouTube account, I found time to produce two short travel videos, which brought the overall number up to 198. Total views has now passed 772,000 of which 75,000 were in 2019. This is a decrease of about 40,000 from the average annual views over the last four years. There are now more than 1,000 subscribers, which is nice.
I uploaded 46 new pictures on Sandalgram, which is my account at Instagram. The number of followers decreased to 481. At Sandaltweet (Twitter), I irregularly share interesting articles, even beyond my own. However, I do not involve myself in discussions or direct communications with other Twitter users. The number of Twitter followers has now increased to 6,523.
My own activity on the regular social media is declining. Sandalsand on all channels is read and viewed but to a lesser degree than in previous years. It is kind of a give and take.
Read more
So, that was 2019. Continue with my dreams, aka my bucket list, for 2020 and beyond or dive into the following articles from previous New Year’s Day reviews.
Year-end reviews: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.
Wishes for the coming year(s): 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.
