Happy New Year! A Review of 2011.

Happy New Year, and welcome to 2012!

Invest It Wisely saw a good amount of healthy growth in 2011; search engine traffic in particular grew fantastically. One thing I would like to work on is on my engagement with the readers. In light of that, I would like to ask: Dear reader, what do you enjoy about this site, and what would you like me to improve? If you are not satisfied, then I have failed. I am always looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

2011 in recap

~118,000 unique visitors; up 400% from 2010 over a matching period of time.

1009 Twitter followers; unsure since I don’t know the count from 12 months ago, but probably also up around 400%.

731 RSS subscribers; up 242% from the beginning of the year.

Most popular posts of 2011

1. 3 Unconventional Investment Moves to Make in 2011
2. 7 Things to Invest in for 2011
3. Bitcoin: The Digital Currency of the Future
4. Nature Versus Nurture
5. How to Get Fit, Feel Better, and Get Rid of Your Foggy Head: A Few Simple Steps
6. 3 Frugal Ideas for a Romantic Valentine’s Day
7. Becoming a Renaissance Man: Early Retirement Extreme
8. What Do You Need to Get out of the Rat Race and Achieve Financial Freedom?
9. Is It Time to Nuke the Spill?
10. What Are The Best Gas Credit Cards For 2011?

Some of these posts were featured or were the subjects of heavy commentary; I was surprised to see some of the others appear in this list! Here are the top most commented posts of all time, excluding giveaway-type posts:

Most commented posts of all time

1. 3 Unconventional Investment Moves to Make in 2011
2. What Do You Need to Get out of the Rat Race and Achieve Financial Freedom?
3. Becoming a Renaissance Man: Early Retirement Extreme
4. Our First Home Together
5. Gold, Revisited: Is $1500 Near?
6. Bitcoin: The Digital Currency of the Future
7. New Year’s Blogging Resolutions
8. Punished by Akismet: Am I a Spammer? What Do I Do?
9. The Importance of Opportunity Costs, and Why They Should Not Be Ignored
10. How mozRank is Filling in the Gaping Hole Left by the Departure of PageRank

I can’t forget about all of the great support from my fellow bloggers. Here are the top 10 referring blogs and publications of 2011:

Top 10 referrers of 2011

1. Yakezie
2. Beating The Index
3. Andrew Hallam
4. Early Retirement Extreme
5. The Passive Income Earner
6. Financial Samurai
7. Subramoney
8. My Own Advisor
9. Young & Thrifty
10. Money Index

Happy New Year, and I hope you enjoyed a good one with friends and family. Here’s to a great 2012 together. 🙂