Top Posts of 2018 and Year in Review!
By: LifeofaMedStudent
It’s been a great year for #LifeofaMedStudent and I wanted to highlight some of the progress of the blog as well as the top posts of 2018. This year there were great posts on the website, excellent interaction on social media, and a big expansion on Instagram. I’m also publishing a few of the financial numbers for the year, but no – I’m still not quitting my day job as an anesthesiologist!
In 2019, I will continue to try to amplify the voice of pre-meds, medical students, and residents everywhere and I think #LifeofaMedStudent continues to be a great calling to do just that!
2018 was the second full year the blog has been in existence after starting last back in mid-2016. The twitter account has been around since December 2011 – when I was just a 3rd-year medical student! The account has followed me through my years of medical school, residency training, and now through 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.
Let’s start by looking at some of the numbers on social media as well as on the website:
Social media numbers:
Twitter: 56,000 followers
Instagram: 20,800 followers (up about 20,000 from 2017 – more on this below).
Facebook: 1,500 likes
The Twitter account averages over 1,000,000 impressions per month! And the Instagram account soon will as well…
Website:
Pageviews in 2018: 202,920 (up from 143,848 in 2017)
Vistors: 145,065
Lifetime page-views: 402,015 views by 279,545 vistors.
There are now 175 posts on the site!
Top Posts on the Blog in 2018:
The Best Books for Clinical Rotations – 22,833 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.
The Best #LifeofaMedStudent Medical “Pick-up lines” – 18,242 views
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 very popular post since being 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! SEO ranking again boosting this post!
The Residency Interview DInner – 6,140 views
This post gives advice on preparing for the common “interview dinner” that occurs frequently the night before the actual residency interview. Apparently, current applicants are as in the dark on expectations for this as I was at that point – making this “how to” post very popular!
How to Study in Medical School – 5,672 views
This is my personal favorite post on the site because it literally changed my life. I very nearly failed anatomy in the first semester of medical school – then the professor pulled me into his office and told me the secret to studying in medical school. I went from that low moment to eventually achieve mostly honors by the end of medical school. This post was his secret and it’s hands-down the best study strategy I’ve used.
How I Became an Anesthesiologist – 4,896 views
Another good ranking on search engines, this post highlights my path to my current career as anesthesiologist. Having thought about primary care, pain management, and even a bit of ER – I’m very glad I went into the field of anesthesia!
Top Guest posts by page-views in 2018:
“Advice for New Residents – By Specialty!” – By Kamali Thompson
“Top 10 Tips to Survive the ICU Rotation!” – By Jeremy Topin, MD
“Pregnant in Medical School & Residency – My story and lessons learned!” – By Habiba Tunau, MD
“The Best Time to Have a Baby as a Physician?” – By Valerie A. Jones, MD
“How I Became a Surgeon” – By SingleScalpel
“What I Wish I Knew Before Medical School” – By Kamali Thompson
“The Surgery Rotation: Breaking down my 24 hours on Call!” – By @yang_xx2
“Confessions of a Med School Drama Queen” – By @DrLeahCroll
“Surgery, Lipstick, and the Rise of #GirlMedTwitter” – By @DoctorMeowskis
See how to contribute your own guest post!
And maybe we will see your name here at the end of 2019!
The big expansion into Instagram!
2018 was a year of continued growth in the website and on social media with some amazing posts on the site. But, it was otherwise pretty quiet and status-quo… Until late December, when for the first time ever – LifeofaMedStudent made an entrepreneurial gamble.
LifeofaMedStudent has had a small Instagram account (about 1500 followers) for about a year, with only marginal growth. Partially due to my own lack of dedication to regular posting and interaction, to be honest. But also partially due to the current algorithms on Instagram (and Facebook) – make it very hard to “break out” as a business account without paying their “boost” fees per post. In fact, only a fraction of my Facebook followers may see a post unless I pay more to boost it.
With this in mind, I’ve long had my eye on one largely dormant Instagram account that at its peak had about 25,000 followers of genuine, mostly medically interested followers. The prior medical student who started it had left medicine and the account set largely unused as a result. After watching it continue to sit for over a year with little use, and it’s numbers starting to decline, I decided to take a gamble. I offered to acquire the site and bring it back to its former life of helping pre-meds and medical students navigate through the life that is medicine. We found the idea mutually beneficial, and within just a few days LifeofaMedStudent had a new home on Instagram.
The early results have been excellent! One of the first posts had >60,000 impressions. In the first 5 days, the resurrected account reached > 75,000 people with 337,208 impressions. The follower count did dip a little (down about 500 of 21,000), but I expected to potentially lose a thousand or so followers as non-medical or personal followers of the prior account realized the switch. Overall, I’m simply VERY excited about #LifeofaMedStudent being able to bring a voice in social media to even more people!
Lastly, the finances behind #Lifeofamedstudent!
I first published this information in 2017 and in general like to lean toward 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 a well-paid anesthesiologist, this amounts to just a fraction of my income for the year. Still, it is exciting that I’m paid at all for what was once just a social media outlet as a medical student.
However, due to the recent acquisition, and sensitivity to that – I won’t be as transparent about the bottom line as I was in 2017.
My goal in 2018 was to have a gross income of over $20,000 for the website, which would nearly double the ~$11,000 gross of 2017. I am happy to report this was SUCCESSFUL! The gross income in 2018 was $20,183, with most coming from Sponsorships on the site and a bit (~$2800) coming from affiliate links via Amazon.
Thanks for everyone who continues to follow along and support the idea behind #LifeofaMedStudent – a social media movement to amplify the voice of all those in medical education and training!!
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
Instagram: Lifeofamedstudent
Congratulations with the continued growth of the website. It truly is remarkable that you started this as a medical student.
Just starting blogging myself in 2018 (April) I now realize how difficult and time consuming blogging is. A simple 5 min read post takes me 4-6 hours to get it to the point where I am comfortable releasing it.
Blogging can also suck away time in other ways too if you are not careful (reading other blogs to keep up, commenting, thinking of topics so you can post consistently, marketing, etc).
Like you, in a high income specialty (Radiology), the money I get from blogging is just a small drop in the bucket compared to my main gig, but for me it is a nice distraction, keeps my mind sharp, and allows me to express my creativity.
I would love for it to grow to the level of the “big boys” in my niche. That ship has probably sailed but it is nice to have a target to aim for.
Looking forward to what you have in store for 2019