Three Years of thendraluthaman.com!
My baby is three now! Threee!!! Those of you following me on Instagram would know I’ve been hyping this for a WHILE now. I just couldn’t help myself! I was so excited about thendraluthaman.com turning three because – well, of course knowing I’ve sustained this whole thing for three years and all is really nice, but also because I really like the number 3. 3 and 5 actually. My favourite thing I’m doing in the world is turning my favourite age, so if that’s not cool and celebratory-worthy, I don’t know what is.
Anyway, what a CRAZY year this has been! Whew! Especially when compared to how relatively tame things were last year! This year wasn’t just about having random blurbs of activity because I wrote something, this year was about people reading my work on any given day, at any given time because we have TRULY gone international. We have friends from East Timor and Kenya! So much growth has happened over here, so many new faces, and so much more content I feel fairly proud of if I can say so myself! I admit, I did slip up here and there a little, but overall, pandemic or not, I’m quite pleased with what I have managed to put out this year! There’s content about current events, there’s content I’ve been stewing in for a while now, there’s content that’s a bit random and more on the ~ la, la, la, la, la ~ side of things; I would say it’s a good mix of things! And let’s talk about our tenacious women content as well, shall we? I mean. Did it do INCREDIBLY this year or what?! You have been following this space for quite some time now, so I won’t bore you with the recap, so let’s move on back to the site and three years of having this website!
Now, I don’t want you to be thinking it’s all been smooth-sailing and what not. There were many times this year when I just wanted to stop posting, I even considered deleting my site off the face of this earth because I felt frustrated, inadequate, uninspired or just simply tired of everything. The thing about running your own show is, you have to figure out what to do next… even when you absolutely do not want to. Because no one else is going to make that call for you, and in a way, not to romanticise things, no one else can in a way that you could. Because this is yours. Sure, you can have some experts to come in and manage things for you or give you possible suggestions but that’s not all there is to it when you’re creating content for an audience. You have to believe in it for them to believe in it. Stats and numbers aside, sometimes, you have to rely on your gut because it knows you and your audience like no one else. So that’s what I did this year. Pair that with this small part of me that gets up every single time I feel absolutely DEPLETED and goes, “No, I’m going to keep trying. I will die trying if I have to, but I will not stop.” I don’t even know where this voice is from because I’ve never felt this way about anything in life before. I know for a fact I just stopped trying at some point when I was in school, but still went every day because of friends and what other choice did I have? One of the reasons I kept showing up at my 9-5 every day was there was always at least one project I was interested in and also had the determination to prove something (to who you ask? Anyone and everyone really – for my parents, that I’ve fulfilled the dream they had for me, for people who didn’t believe in me that a Tamil woman can have a good job and a career, the list goes on). But something about this voice just feels different. I can’t quite fully explain it but it’s like I’m willing to try even if I lose my sanity.
And this will to try and listening to you feels like it’s paying off! My site is growing on Google so people are reading my old work even if I don’t post something, some of you have gotten so committed to this site that you tell me you have “catch-up” days where you sit down and look through what I’ve posted since I last wrote, and many of you head over to my site the minute you see my announcement that a new post is up. Which I love but I also don’t get?! Every time I see the surge in my website traffic towards a new post, all I can think is “Do these people not have anything better to do?!” In a nice way, I promise. I can never seem to say that without seeming ungrateful. It’s just this thing I have. In last year’s post, I talked about the general scepticism I have when someone sends a compliment my way about my work. Truth is, I still feel that way. A lot. I still tend to think someone is lying when they say something nice about something I wrote even though the rational part of me demands to know why someone I don’t even know would want to lie to me in the first place. I don’t know why this is the case – maybe I need some professional help for this?! Either way, that’s enough rambling from me. I want to THANK YOU for the spectacular year we’ve had. Your continued support for this space is what makes thendraluthaman.com Google-able and it’s what keeps me going. Thank you for believing in me and like I said in my Instagram post, it’s an incredible privilege to have readers, and more so to have loyal ones. You lot are the best and I would give you the sun and stars to say thank you if I could. Here are some stats and fun facts from the last year to round things out on a fun note!
These are the top posts from the last year:
Tia Bhuva - Visionary, Innovative Entrepreneur
Shobana Lakkavally - Dream Getter, Educator, Artist
Geerthani - Artsy, Daring, Dreamy
These are the top posts that are not tenacious women content:
Turning 28: The Good, The Bad, and The Okay
The Problem With Vijay TV
I Tracked My Mood for 3 Months - Here’s What I Learned
Top posts from this year:
About the Word “Desi”
5 Lessons From 5 Years of Working a 9-5
Growing Up Tamil in Singapore
We crossed 10, 000 page views this year and we are very close to 13, 000 right now. So close we would probably cross it once this post is up.
We grew by 88.8% because we went from 276 regular readers to 521. FIVE. HUNDRED. We have FIVE HUNDRED readers. What’s next?! A 1000?!
Anddd we now have an average of 110 visitors per month to my site. Per month. A hundred people want to take the time out of their day to spend it on my site. No big deal. It’s cool.
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