One year ago Kara and I launched the Middle Kingdom blog. We had found that there were a lot of China blogs chronicling people’s lives and experience in China, there were blogs about politics and economics and even law, there were Chinese language blogs, and there are blogs about the Beijing bar, club and music scene. The one type of blog that we couldn’t find was one focused on helping regular people learn how to transition effectively and live gracefully in Beijing. So we started The Middle Kingdom.
In the past year we have written 71and had 181 people comment. We have 82 people on our email list and 56 RSS subscribers. We have had 5685 absolute unique visitors, 9744 visits, and 19,042 page views. All of that adds up to about 26.6 visitors per day.
The most popular content we have is The Definitive Guide to Getting Your Chinese Drivers License and the post about How Much Does it Cost to Live in Beijing. The next four most popular posts from the last year were all lists: 5 Things That Make Living in China Great, 7 Questions: Should We Move to China, 3 Things to Have on You, 4 Things to Do When Beijing Seems Crazy.
We’re not a big blog (not yet), but hopefully you, our readers, have found the stuff we write about to be interesting and helpful. Year one was really about laying a foundation, developing our personal writing styles and building a small following of readers. In year two we hope to expand our efforts and really become the best resource on the internet about expat life in Beijing. We have three goals for year two:
- Community. We want to foster more connections and community through the blog. Some of that will come through growing our readership, but a lot of our focus will be on tightening the connections we already have with our current readers. We might be inviting a couple more writers to contribute on a regular basis and we will be accepting guest post submissions. We will also be holding some Middle Kingdom live events.
- Sustainability. Our second goal is to find ways to make the Middle Kingdom blog an asset and not a drain on our finances. Part of this will be launching the Transition Accomplice Program. We will also be looking to add 2 or 3 sponsors to the blog.
- Productivity. In year two we hope to increase the number of posts we publish each week. We’ll do this be inviting guest posters and additional writers to contribute, as well as working to be more consistent in our own writing schedule.
Finally I just want to thank all of our readers for making this blog such an enjoyable thing for us to write. As we look at year two we would love to get some feedback from you: What topics do you find most helpful or interesting? What is your favorite post on The Middle Kingdom?
Also if you’re interested in submitting a guest post or have a topic that you thing we should cover write to us at info(at)themiddlekingdom.org.
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Less than a month ago my family made the decision to move to Beijing China. Through hours of searching the web to find out what I was in for I quickly found your site and continue coming back to it. I had one post and it was answered quickly and with complete detail. I have yet another question. We are considering schools for my daughter. Does anyone have first hand knowledge of 21 Century School? Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Rich
Happy 1-year anniversary! I’m a Beijinger working and living in Copenhagen, Denmark. I wish there had been a blog like this to make my transition to Danish life a bit easier. Great blog! Keep up with the good work!