Feb 7, 2014 / News

Pat yourselves on the back! A look at your Zero to Hero Successes

We posted a quick Zero to Hero wrap-up last week (Have you taken the poll yet?), but now all the numbers are finally in. We though you might be interested in how you did.

We’ll warn you: it’s not pretty… it’s beautiful. Stunning, really.

It’s time to toot your horn! Pat yourselves on your respective backs. Raise your glasses. Paint the town red. Take all your money to the bank, put it in a high-yield CD, and then pick up your dry-cleaning. Whatever you do to celebrate success, do it — hopefully something more fun than that last one — because y’all had an amazing month.

Our Zero to Hero goals for you were to get you posting, get you connected with the larger blogging community, and get your comfy with your blogs. You did, and you are.

We compared everyone who signed up for Zero to Hero with a random sample of the rest of WordPress.com. Most bloggers published an average of 0.2 posts during January, but not you! You published nearly ten posts on average — lots of you posted many more — for a 4,259.74% improvement.

new-posts

We’d wanted to make the circle for “Most” a big larger, to make it easier to see, until we realized how much larger we’d have to make the “You” circle to keep it proportional and accurately reflect your achievement. Since we can’t ask you to project this graphic onto the side of a building or an IMAX screen, you’ll have to be happy with a little dot.

(If you do project it onto a building, please send us a photo.)

Sadly, many new bloggers register their blogs but don’t publish for quite a while, or have trouble finding a rhythm. It’s tough to get over the initial roadblock, whether that’s stage fright, inertia, or just lack of time, and make regular blogging a part of your life. You’ve already stared down one of blogging’s biggest challenges, hitting the publish button, and attacked it with gusto.

Of course, we all hope that people will actually read what we publish, but you’ve got that covered, too. You trounced the general blogging masses when it comes to racking up followers, gaining an average of 11 per blog.

new-followers

What’s most exciting is that this actually the least impressive number we have to share when it comes to your followers, Likes, and comments — most of the statistics are so outlandishly large that they’re hard to capture in a graph that’s visible to the naked eye. When we compared Zero to Hero bloggers against a random sample of blogs from the top 1,000,000 sites on WordPress.com, here’s what happened:

  • Most bloggers who’ve been blogging for more than three months got five Likes in January — Zero to Hero bloggers who’ve been blogging for more than three months got 119, for a 2,248.34% improvement.
  • Most bloggers who’ve been blogging for fewer than three months got six or seven Likes in January. New Zero to Hero bloggers got 30 — 339% better.

We’re talking Seahawks/Bronco level trouncing here. (Sorry, Denver.)

You also gave as a ton of feedback, which is invaluable to us as we work to improve Zero to Hero and create other programs  to support your blogging goals. A few of your comments also gave us the warm fuzzies:

“This was just what I needed to finally do a lot of the things on my blogging to-do list. It finally looks like the blog I had in mind when I started blogging two years ago.”

“During this month I got 39 followers, one award for best new bloggers, made a couple of friends in fellow bloggers, found a lot of support and improved my writing skills. I will miss these daily challenges immensely!”

“I feel like I’ve finally found my true voice regarding my blog.”

“I joined on impulse and didn’t even think I’d keep up, but I managed to do all the tasks and it was the best thing that ever happened to my blog! I’m really so sorry that it’s over. I’ll be looking forward to keeping in touch with fellow Heroes and waiting impatiently for what next you on WordPress will have in store for us!”

You also told us what you didn’t love (Not enough writing assignments! Too much repetition! Not enough material for advanced bloggers!), which is equally valuable. We’re digesting it all, and whatever we do next will be the better for your candid feedback.

We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: WordPress.com wouldn’t be what it is without you. Keep up the great blogging!

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  1. I love this wrap up. It’s hard to tell what kind of progress, if any, I’m making. You made it easy! Thanks for crunching my numbers for me. I’m inspired to keep on.

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  2. Michelle..its been one great ride and thanks to ZTH I took the leap into blogosphere head on and landed on my feet..looking fwd to the next installment 😀

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  3. Thanks so much for the great challenge. You really got me to up my consistency of posting and it made a huge difference to my traffic, my followers, and my motivation to post!

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  6. Oh, you quoted me! I’m famous, even though the quote is anonymous 🙂 Seriously, I loved this challenge. Also, thank you, WordPress, for the nice gift that you are giving us, Zero-to-Heroes, for our participation and for answering the poll! Now I’m thinking how to spend it best and what upgrade to get for my blog…

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  10. I have always been a cheerleader- from a very young age – I had the pom-pons, the ready smile and a penchant for clever lyrics, puns and rhyme…My career is that of encouragement and support. My passion is writing. Hero to Zero was a passel of the really cool cheerleaders validating, smiling, throwing kisses, and winks and affirming nods. I loved it! Thanks for the ride.

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  11. I think it bears repeating: publishing statistics like this is incredibly beneficial. It helps give people a better idea of whether their blogs are meeting realistic expectations… regardless of whether they participated in Zero to Hero.

    And on a completely unrelated note…

    Many of the posts from Daily Post and the official WordPress blog aren’t appearing in the Reader even though I’m subscribed to both. A couple of daily challenges have passed through and I was able to find the Weekly Photo Challenge on my own (because I knew it was coming). The “From Our Blogs” section on the bottom-right corner of my stats page also hasn’t been showing everything you’re putting out.

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    2. Hey thanks for putting this out! I’ve been having the same trouble…and not just with The Daily post…other blogs that I follow, even their posts were missing from my reader! I thought it was probably some errant settings my non-techie self had erroneously changed to 😀

      @MichelleWeber
      Glad to know “someone’s” sorting it out! (a.k.a Top.Men.)

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  12. Actually, I “liked” this because I needed to ask a question and that was the only way I could figure out to do it. So, are these figures about my blog, NeoBohemia? Or are they a general illustration of what it would look like if I consulted this blog here? And really, to what extent is quality considered? All I really see is an obsession with numbers, how popular am I, people ask, gimme a number! Yes, rank me. What percentage am I in? Anyone consider the intelligence or the creativity of the posts? There are a lot of blogs about kittens, for example. I don’t dislike kittens, really, I love kittens, ok? But I’m not going online to watch them when I have some of my own. Or if you want to see kittens, why not rescue one?

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    2. Most folks dedicated themselves to producing quality posts they were proud to share — numbers are an interesting way to see if something is catching people’s attention, but they’re certainly not the end-all of blogging.

      To your question, these stats don’t represent your blog, they represent the bloggers who took part in a 30-day challenge we ran in January.

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