Rather than do a ‘best of’ style post, every year I’m going to do a rundown of what I’ve written about on the blog this year.
Previous years: [2023]
tl;dr
The only real change to the blog this year was that I started posting audio demos in pairs, to (hopefully) make it easier to hear differences between settings and/or signal chains.
I had a brief look at some analytics for the site. The data didn’t tell me anything helpful; (mostly) that many visitors were interested in gear that I found disappointing. I don’t want to write more about gear that doesn’t inspire me; this is why I’ll never be a professional content creator in this space!
Next year, I’m planning to start “documenting” pedals Trogly-style, rather than just give my own impressions of them. There’s a lot to figure out before I make a start on that.
A Subtle Change In Format That Worked For Me
I made a small change this year to how I approach the audio demos: I started posting them in pairs within each blog post. Sometimes it would be a comparison against a tone from earlier in the same blog post, and sometimes it would be a comparison against a tone from a previous blog post.
It wasn’t planned; it just fell out naturally from what I’m thinking when I’m exploring what I can get out of a new (to me) pedal. (You can see this in action in my #CoffeeAndKlon article about the JRAD Archer Clean.)
I’ve reached the point (probably been there for a year or two now!) where I’m not looking at a pedal in isolation. Yes, I’m looking to hear what I can get it to do, but I’m more interested in what options it gives me. (Regular readers may recall that I love having options.)
Does it have a sound that I’ve never had before? Does it have a familiar sound, just one that works better with a specific signal chain? Does it show me that I’ve got a problem elsewhere in my signal chain? Or does it show me that a pedal works better than I thought it did while I was playing?
I found that a great way to answer those questions is to have two (or sometimes more) recordings that I can quickly and easily switch between.
Expect to see me use this format a lot more in 2025.
I Dabbled With Analytics This Year
This blog isn’t my living, it’s just my public diary of my main hobby. I’m writing for myself, partly because the writing is part of my process of learning about guitars and gear, and partly because I find it helpful to refer back to what’s in those old posts from time to time.
From the variety of comments left on the blog over the years by total strangers, people do visit the site. I’ve just no idea where they come from, or what they’re looking for. So I signed up for a free trial of privacy-friendly Plausible Analytics to find out.
I can’t share any graphs, as I didn’t sign up for a subscription after the trial expired. Here’s what I remember though:
- Fully 1/3 of visitors are either bots or (possibly) using reading apps that download web pages before you click on them.
- Nearly everyone else is coming from Google. Not a big surprise: my little blog is often on the front page if you search for the topics I write about. (Mostly because the content creators publish videos rather than articles.)
- I didn’t see any traffic from the usual Internet gear forums.
- Plausible couldn’t track where everyone came from (or, for privacy reasons, wasn’t able to share that information with me).
In terms of what people came here to read, it was quite the long-tail:
- The vast majority of people came here to read about the JHS Notaklön and the ToneX One pedal.
- There was a surprising amount of interest in my article about the costs of buying a real Tweed Deluxe amp. That article is one of the few I’ve written about the Tweed Deluxe amp that doesn’t appear on the front page of a Google search, so I have no idea why it’s my most popular article about the Tweed Deluxe.
- After that, visitors are here to read all sorts of articles. I’m assuming that they’ve found me while doing research into a second-hand purchase on eBay and the like?
See, this is why I couldn’t be a content creator.
A professional content creator would look at this data, and create even more articles about the JHS Notaklön (or JHS pedals in general, perhaps), and the ToneX One. That’s basic Audience Building 101: publish more about the topics that people want content about.
Thing is, all those people came here to read about two products that would make my Top 3 Disappointing Purchases Of 2024 list. That might change in the future (it has in the past). But today, the last thing I want to do is write more about gear that I’m not going to reach for and use myself.
That is a real luxury, and one that I will jealously guard 🙂
What Happened To Last Year’s Plans?
None of last year’s plans for the blog happened.
In terms of improving both the hosting and adding a newsletter, that’s still on my TODO list. The timing depends on my work, but I’m aiming for both to happen in 2025.
I did actually publish some of my Axe-FX 3 presets up on Axe Exchange. As far as I can tell, no-one even noticed. I will publish my pedal platform presets at some point, but I don’t see an audience for per-blog post presets at this time.
I didn’t introduce any new blog series this year. I put all of my energy instead into creating new pedal platform presets. That needed sorting out!
I did write some more #CoffeeAndKlon articles. That was nice. The JHS Notaklön aside, it does feel like there’s a lot less interest in the Klon than there used to be. I plan on writing a few more next year.
Any Other Plans For 2025?
Yes.
There’s one particular thing that I want to launch next year: a new series of articles where I document the pedals that I try, Trogly-style. (Checkout https://www.youtube.com/@Trog if you don’t know what that means.)
It’ll be written articles with photography and audio demos (rather than videos).
Other than that, I’m still working out the details. I need to put together a list of things to document, and figure out a repeatable workflow so that all the new #ForTheRecord articles are of a similar quality and style.
I also need to decide how to share this with you. As well as the written articles, I’d like to make the content available in some form of machine-readable format too, so that it can act more as documentation and less than merely opinion.
I’ll be starting with the Fender Lightpipe series of drive pedals (the Pugilist, Santa Ana, The Pelt, et al), before moving on to documenting my collection of tweed-tone pedals.