Sunday, January 1, 2017

2016 in the rearview: The Brick Bucket yearly recap, vol. 3

Another year has come and gone, and it's time for me to look back on The Brick Bucket and the LEGO community as a whole in 2016. 

This year - May 16, I believe - will mark the third anniversary of The Brick Bucket. That's a pretty cool achievement and I'm happy to still be here running this little blog with the help of some fantastic fellow contributors. We didn't put out as many posts this year, but we aimed for quality over quantity and I still think the Bucket is a good place to go to find some really awesome MOCs. 

I'd like to start off by discussing the addition of our newest writer, John Klapheke (BrickBuilder7622 on Flickr). John joined us in August 2016 after I blogged his microscale modern architecture build. Since then he's boosted our coverage of Castle-type MOCs (Aaron, Frog and I are more sci-fi-oriented). He's been a welcome presence on the Bucket and I've been happy to work with him. His builds are pretty sweet too, so be sure to check out his Flickr...

And now, allow me to introduce 2016's most popular posts on The Brick Bucket. 

Most popular posts (most pageviews)
  1. Please welcome new contributor John Klapheke!
  2. Desert Fortress
  3. All of these MOCs are sort of related...
  4. The good, the evil and the...nocturnal being?
  5. Lovely German office building
  6. Luggabeast
  7. Tokyo skyline
  8. "I'm late I'm late I'm late"
  9. Dragon warrior
  10. Cars and trucks and things that go*
Our top posts featured a variety of MOCs, from sci-fi to Castle to character builds and more. I think this illustrates the variety the Bucket is capable of, and how there's something here for every fan. 

Most-blogged builders
Jonas Kramm (Legopard) was by far our most-blogged builder, with 9 posts credited to him in 2016. Jonas is simply an incredible builder and well deserving of this small honor. I highly recommend you go scroll through his Flickr. 

Deltassius put up a strong second place finish with 5 MOCs of his being blogged. Deltassius is an under-the-radar mecha builder and his little 'bots are also worth a view or two on Flickr. 

In a tie for third place, Djokson, John Snyder (jsnyder002), nobu_tary, Robert Heim (Robiwan_Kenobi), and Tim Schwalfenberg (One More Brick) each had 3 of their MOCs blogged. 

Traffic sources and audience
Here are 2016's top visiting countries to the Bucket:
  1. United States
  2. Germany
  3. Russia
  4. United Kingdom
  5. France
  6. Canada
  7. Italy
  8. Slovakia
  9. Australia
  10. Netherlands
The U.S. still makes up the majority of our views, but Germany now accounts for quite a bit too (then again, Dead Frog is a German citizen!) The U.K. drops from 2nd to 4th, while Russia and Italy are up and Australia and the Netherlands are down. Slovakia is new in the top 10 and honestly? I can't account for that :P

Much of our traffic this year came from Google (a good sign - either people are Googling us, or our links/images are showing up higher in search results!), with a significant portion also from Twitter. BrickRSS and The Brothers Brick were also fairly large sources of traffic. 

More info
Average posts per month in 2016: 8.42
Total posts in 2016: 101

Social media
We maintain a presence on Twitter and I try to update our Pinterest board whenever possible. Give us a follow!

In conclusion...
Thanks again to everyone who reads and supports The Brick Bucket. I'm happy to lead such a talented team and to provide the LEGO community with another source of MOCs, reviews, and more brick-related goodness. In 2017 I'd like to post a little more, but of course we'll always be aiming for quality over quantity. If any of you have any comments or questions - or would be interested in joining our staff - feel free to use our contact page or talk to any of our writers on Flickr. Happy New Year and best of luck with your LEGO endeavors in 2017!

No comments: