One Year Anniversary!

That's right, as of today Looniephoto is celebrating its one-year anniversary. When I started this site, I had no idea whether or not I'd even stick with it, so I'm chuffed it's lasted this long. What had originally started as project to focus on during a period of unemployment has morphed into an ongoing side project for me. It's hard to believe that this time last year I was sitting at my desk trying to think of possible names for a photography-themed blog.

For those wondering about the site name, I realize it probably doesn't make sense to people from most parts of the world, so allow me to explain. The Canadian one dollar coin is called a loonie, which happens to be a homophone of loony, so in essence the whole name is just a really bad pun. To be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly happy with the name (I think it's quite stupid), but after getting frustrated with every other possible name already being taken, it'll have to do.


Site traffic has been going through near-constant month-to-month traffic increases, especially at the end of 2013. I must admit it's pretty darn encouraging to see this. With that in mind, kudos to all of you for reading.

So who's reading the site? Not who I originally thought, that's for sure. When I started the site, my plan was do a photography version of Mobilesyrup, with commentary meant specifically for that market. But it didn't take long to see that most of my readers were American, so that plan was quickly scrapped. To those who are curious, the top 10 countries viewing the site are as follows:

Russia and Thailand are mostly spambot views, though.

As for site content, reviews have been by and large the biggest source of traffic, with 8 of the 10 most-viewed posts falling into that category. News and editorial type posts gather enough views to justify their existence, but they lack a long lifespan since there's only a short time window when they're relevant. Those top five countdowns and Retroscans I do also garner a decent number of views. Guides and tutorials on the other hand fail to gather any any significant number of hits - much to my surprise. I guess competition with other more well-established websites in that category is tough. And without further adieu I present the top 10 most viewed posts from the past year:

I have plenty planned for LP's second year, including catching up on my backlog of reviews, and several articles that I had planned to do last year. I have a lot to go through, but the review of the 5D classic is probably next...though my readers have heard that one before. My upcoming review roadmap is as follows:
-Canon EOS 5D
-Canon EOS 50D
-Canon 24-105 f/4L IS
-Canon 70-200 f/4L
-Canon 50 f/1.8
-Nikon D2Hs
-Nikon 1 J2
-Nikon D300
-Nikon 18-105 VR
-RF 603 Transmitter
-Metz 50 AF-1

I may not get to all of them this year but I'll sure as hell try. Anyway, thanks to all my readers for a great first year, and I look forward to keeping this site going well into the future. I've been stuck in a once-a-month rut with posted for the last few months, but if product announcements start coming in at a more rapid pace it'll probably stimulate my interest in writing a little more.