+++
author = ["authors/drej.md"]
categories = "Meta"
date = "2016-01-02T21:44:00-05:00"
lastmod = "2016-01-03T11:24:00-05:00"
primary_image = "https://res.cloudinary.com/schmopera/image/upload/v1545409169/media/webhook-uploads/1451798998521/by-the-numbers.jpg.jpg"
publishDate = "2016-01-02T21:44:00-05:00"
related_articles = ["articles/schmopera-is-two.md", "articles/schmopera-is-one.md"]
short_description = "Meet Andrej, our co-founder and brain behind all things technical here at Schmopera. Since we&#039;re kicking off our third year in operation, and Schmopera has grown from a blog into a brand, we figured it was a good time for Andrej to fill you in on the technical happenings from behind-the-scenes."
slug = "by-the-numbers-2nd-birthday-edition"
title = "By the Numbers: 2nd birthday edition"

+++
## Hi Everyone!

Just about two years ago now, [Jenna](http://twitter.com/jennamariepiano) and [myself](http://twitter.com/dr_drej) launched this crazy journey and semi-corporial entity named Schmopera. It has been incredibly exciting to watch its growth over the last two years, and I wanted to take an opportunity to poke my head from the woodworks and share a little bit of what we've been able to accomplish over the last seven hundred and thirty days or so...

## A quick introduction

There, that's me.

<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/schmopera/image/upload/v1548213463/media/2019/01/me-square.jpg" style="float: right; width: 36%; max-width: 200px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em;">

My name is Andrej, I'm the co-founder of Schompera, and the "web guy", "marketing guy", "something's broken, fix it guy", to name a few. I've been a web developer and designer for close to 20 years now, and for my day job, I work for a digital agency called [Sapient Nitro](http://www.sapientnitro.com). Basically, I spend my days solving technical problems for large and complicated web sites and digital campaigns.

## So what?

Well, this makes me uniquely interested in building an extremely well made site, monitoring it, and tweaking it constantly to bring you guys the best experience while reading Schmopera.

As we get into our 3rd year of operations, and after 2 years of a lot of growth, I'm going to be starting a new segment called "By the Numbers".

You know... I think I'm just going to show you, then explain.

## Ooh, fancy!

With no further ado, take a look at a high level view of the traffic that Schmopera has been able generate in the last 24 months:

<figure data-type="image"><a href="https://res.cloudinary.com/schmopera/image/upload/v1548213791/media/2019/01/infographic.webstats.svg"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/schmopera/image/upload/v1548213791/media/2019/01/infographic.webstats.png">
 </a> <figcaption>(Click on the image for a -much- larger version you can see in detail)</figcaption> </figure>

## Neat, huh?

One of my favourite things about the web is learning how to interact with people, and engaging them as much as possible. Fine tuning this process leads to a _ton_ of data crunching.

What you're looking at in this infographic is just some very basic information from our standard web analytics. The numbers shown there are all as a result of growing our Schmopera brand from the ground up, organically, with blood sweat and tears since January 1st, 2014.

I'm going to be exposing some inner workings of Schmopera over the next few weeks by way of more infographics and stats on how we operate. Everything from the though provoking questions like, "does a [review](/categories/reviews/) garner more readership than an [interview](/categories/interview) with a singer?" and, "how is the Schmopera [store](http://store.schmopera.com) doing?"

## We have only you to thank

I'm excited to share all this information with you because it is you who helped get us here. With all the Facebook shares, invitations to shows, waves on the street, and what-have-you, you have helped build this brand with us.

## A note from our fearless leader

I'd like to leave you guys with a note from Jenna on this momentous occasion, and can't wait to share and grow more with you all.

[Click here to read it](/schmopera-is-two/), and Happy New Year!