Read time: 6 min.

Most of my favorite blogs wrap up the year with a retrospective that shares stats, insights, popular posts, and personal favorites. It’s a fun bit of reflection, and reading them helps me shape my own goals and expectations. I can’t believe another year has flown by since I did this, but the numbers are in, so let’s see how 2024 turned out.

I started this blog in September 2022. Over four months that year, 6,085 visitors viewed it 10,240 times. A full year of posting in 2023 saw 72,854 people view it more than 111,000 times! I wanted to hit 130,000 views this year, and I wound up exceeding that. 103,499 people came to visit Hiding in Plain Sight on a total of 160,460 occasions! I’m blown away! An increase in page views of 42% is no small potatoes for my little blog. Here are the year’s most widely-read posts:

5: Ball Brothers’ Colossal Batch Tower: One of Muncie’s tallest towers isn’t near our university or downtown. It’s a seventy-year-old remnant of when the city used to crank out Ball jars by the millions.
4: The sad fate of Delaware County’s Mt. Pleasant Methodist Church: I got a chance to explore a long-abandoned church and ponder its fate.
3: Abandoned Marsh: New Jersey Street in Indianapolis: This one surprised me. I drew an old Marsh Supermarket with an intriguing history in the heart of downtown Indianapolis.
2: The abandoned Ferris wheels of Royal Blue, Tennessee: I wasn’t sure the set of random Ferris Wheels I saw on I-75 near Knoxville were real or a figment of my imagination. Turns out, they were real.
1: Knox Township’s Oak Grove schoolhouse in Jay County: the ruins of an abandoned schoolhouse north of Redkey, Indiana, have fascinated me for years.

Traffic to my five most-visited posts represented about 10% of my total views in 2024. Views of my five personal favorites represented far fewer -just over 3%- but I’m glad I wrote them anyway.

5: A trip to Taco Casita: My mom and I went to a long-lost Taco favorite in Terre Haute.
4: The Bethel schoolhouse: a long goodbye: This one pained me to write. A long-time landmark was finally demolished.
3: I Miss Miller Milkhouse: I tracked down the history of this early Indiana convenience store chain and took photos of the buildings that remain. 
2: Muncie’s Lustron legacy: I visited five prefabricated Lustron houses in Muncie.
1: An illustrated history of Marsh Supermarkets: I drew typical Marsh Foodliners and Marsh supermarkets from 1947 to 2014 and provided some history.

Sharing my posts in history groups on Facebook has led to a noticeable uptick in engagement across both platforms. Still, I was a little disappointed to see a 1% decrease in likes this year and a 5% decrease in comments on WordPress. I genuinely enjoy connecting and interacting with you, and it looks like I need to do a better job! That said, here are 2024’s most commented-upon articles:

5: Forgotten Photos of Fort Wayne’s Elmhurst High School: I found some old photos I took before a high school was demolished and wrote some of its story.
4: A brief history of Burger Man: I traced the history of a pioneering local fast food chain. 
3: Muncie’s Lustron Legacy
2: The Lustrons of Richmond: I found five early Lustron homes during a trip to Richmond.
1: An illustrated history of Marsh Supermarkets

Comments and likes aside, I’m thrilled to see how much my reach has grown in just over two years of blogging. A big part of that growth comes from search engine referrals, which jumped from 7% of my traffic in 2023 to about 21% this past year. What’s more is that a news aggregator app started picking up my posts in late November. It’s exciting to know that more people are discovering what I write on their own without me having to jam it down their craw. It’s those connections, big and small, that make my effort worthwhile.

That effort has shifted a little, as I’ve been steadily decreasing the average word count of each of my posts. Not everyone has time to take a deep dive, and that extends to me, too. In 2022, I averaged 1,104 words per post. 2023 saw me limit my verbosity to 877 words each day. This year, my average is 638. I think writing less is a good thing! It’s allowed me to continue to publish daily and provide content that people actually have the time to read. 

Finally, I have one last update- the tip jar. I put a link to my Ko-Fi page at the end of each post that allows you to donate $3 to buy me a cup of coffee. This year, your generosity purchased about seventy-five coffees for a total of $226! I’m fortunate to be able to pay to publish my work here, but that hasn’t always been the case. Your munificence will go a long way to cover my domain and hosting costs as I upgrade to the next tier sometime this coming year.

2024 was one of the most stressful and challenging years I’ve ever endured from a personal and professional standpoint- a slog if there ever was one. Posting here has been a great outlet! At the end of the day, I’m so glad you -and more than 100,000 others- found something meaningful here this past year more than 160,000 times. I’m not sure if 2024 will be a high, a plateau, or a stepping stone to something more, but thank you for reading, liking, commenting, and being part of this continuing experiment. Here’s to an even more exciting 2025!