Top Posts of 2017 and State of the Blog!

Top Posts of 2017 and State of the Blog!

By: LifeofaMedStudent

It’s been a great year for #LifeofaMedStudent and I wanted to highlight some of the progress of the blog and our top posts of 2017. I’ll also share about the page-views, and for the first time ever – how much #LifeofaMedStudent profited in 2017! Spoiler alert, I won’t be quitting my day job any time soon! But, I will continue to try to spread the voice of pre-meds, medical students, and residents everywhere and I think #LifeofaMedStudent has found a great calling for doing just that!

2017 was the first full year the blog has been in existence after starting last July 2016. The twitter account, as many know, has been around since December 2011 – when I was just a 3rd year medical student! The account has followed me through my years of school, residency training, and this past July as I started my new job as an attending physician. My hope continues to be that by sharing my experiences in medicine, as well as sharing others, it will make a positive difference in the lives of those in medical training – whatever point in the journey you are at.

The numbers of the blog suggest #LifeofaMedStudent is doing just that! The twitter account is up to 53,800+ followers, Instagram (relatively new) is up to 1000+ followers, and Facebook has almost 1000 likes as well. LifeofaMedStudent.com continues to grow, with monthly views consistently between 10-15,000! For 2017, this has led to a total views of ~144,000 and all time views will cross above 200,000 likely the first week of January! Not bad for a blog just in its 18 months of existence, but in many ways I hope just the beginning!

Alexa Rankings have likewise followed in a favorable direction – LifeofaMedStudent.com is now in the top 1-million of all websites worldwide and in 200,000 of all sites in the US.

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Here were the top posts in 2017:

The Best Books for Clinical Rotations – 14,400 views.

This is by far the most read post and is helped by really strong SEO ranking – it’s also a great run-down of the most popular books for medical students as they start clinical experiences. It also shares a bit about how I set up my study schedule during the clinical years.

How I became a Surgeon – 3,900 views.

This was a great guest post by SingleScalpel and every time I share this on twitter it gets a lot of views and amazing feedback. If you’ve ever thought about being a surgeon or the life of a surgeon, this is must read.

The Best #LifeofaMedStudent Tweets of All Time – 3,300.

A classic post that lists some of the most popular tweets from the #LifeofaMedStudent twitter account. This was one of the first hand-full of posts on lifeofamedstudent.com and continues to be popular.

Should you give up on your dream to become a doctor? – 3,160.

This is another post that does well largely because of strong search results. I take a look at the costs of medical school and at what point I might have considered giving up on being a doctor. The short answer, if you can’t see yourself doing anything else… don’t. But understand the emotional/financial/non-matching risks of going to less desirable medical schools, particularly those in the Caribbean.

2017 NRMP Match Statistics – 3,080.

A quick read on the numbers behind the 2017 Match Results. Will be updated in a few months for 2018!

The Best #LifeofaMedStudent Medical “Pick-up lines” – 3,050.

Someone had to make a collection of all the funny medical/science pick-up lines, right?! And apparently, ya’ll are laughing along with me on this one – as this has been a pretty popular post published around Valentine’s Day 2017. If you know of some I missed, add them in the comments and I’ll credit you in the original post!

The Best of #PagedBecause – 2,900.

I loved writing this one – this is a collection of the best #PagedBecause hashtags on twitter. As you can imagine, many docs and nurses had fun with all the pages gone wrong through the years. A lot of laughs and eye rolls on the pages from this one!

Guest posts..

Continue to be a big part of #LifeofMedStudent and my goal of sharing the voices of those in medical training. While only 1 post in the top 7 was a guest post, almost all of 7-20 WERE guest posts. Pretty incredible really, and the major reason I started the site. Share the voice of many!

Some of the most popular were:

Surgery, Lipstick, and the Rise of #GirlMedTwitter – by @DoctorMeowskis

Confessions of a Med School Drama Queen – by @DrLeahCroll

The Surgery Rotation: Breaking down my 24 hours on Call! – by @yang_xx2

How to Land the Residency you Want – a Sponsor post from BoardVitals

A Month in Sri Lanka – My Amazing Elective Experience! – by @jaz_medicine

The Reality of having a Mental Health Issue as a Medical Student – by @usycool1

Pregnant in Medical School & Residency – My story and lessons learned! – by @Ladydoctor03

Imposter Syndrome – The Struggle of Being Good Enough – by @studentmed_life

The Best Time to Have a Baby as a Physician? – by @obdoctormom

See how to contribute your own guest post at lifeofamedstudent.com/contribute! And maybe we will see your name here at the end of 2018!

I have to admit not everything about 2017 was a success. I did have a great experience transitioning to wordpress.org and re-branding the website with a fresh new look/theme in May. This will probably be the website’s theme that will probably last for years to come! At the same time however, I tried to start a forums section on the website that has largely fallen flat, with just a few posts in the months since. One post, EM vs Anesthesia – a look at choosing between the specialities – does get a handful of views a day from search engines. I’m going to try to market this feature more in 2018, as a well moderated forum is a great way to ask questions and get a variety of answers and help.

The other casualty of 2017 was the “Wednesday Around the Web” series. While I loved this from a collaboration and sharing standpoint, the truth is it didn’t get nearly as many views as it was worth the work. A few posts from that got a couple hundred clicks, but most were mid double digits at best. As a whole the series was ok for views I guess, but each individual post never lived on and was never re-read over and over like the many excellent posts above. If you miss this series, let me know! I’ve thought of bringing it back once the website grows a little more and I can really drive some worthwhile traffic.

Lastly, the finances behind lifeofamedstudent!

I’ve never published this before, but have now leaned toward just being transparent about the fact that yes… I do make some money from the hours and hours of work I put into the twitter account and website. But as you’ll see… it’s probably not amounting to even minimum wage! It was a nice as a resident, but now as an attending anesthesiologist, this amount is but a fraction of my income for the year. It’s still exciting that I’m paid at all for what was once just a social media outlet as a medical student.

Gross Income:

$11,524

The vast majority is from the Sponsorships that you see on the site, however I did make about $1500 of that from affiliate sales via Amazon.com.

Expenses:

$770

This is mostly PayPal expenses, the ~$100/year for the website, and a few times I tried Facebook Ads.

Profit:

$10,754

Woo, 5 digits!

Thanks to everyone for making LifeofaMedStudent a great outlet and voice for medical trainees across the world. Keep the guest posts coming and I’ll keep sharing them along with my own story and advice!

Best wishes and Happy New Year!

• Charlie of #LifeofaMedStudent

For questions, guest posts, sponsorships, or just to say hi, shoot me an email at lifeofamedstudent@yahoo.com!

Follow along:

Twitter: @lifeofmedstudnt

Facebook: Facebook.com/lifeofamedstudent

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