EVERYTHING BLOGGING HAS DONE TO ME | CELEBRATING TWO AND A HALF MILLION READERS!!!

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."

Zig Ziglar

In a recent career opportunity, I found myself having a lot of moments where I was thinking ‘I know that because of my blogging’ or ‘I learnt how to do that through blogging!’ And it is these moments and in celebration of I’m NOT Disordered reaching two and a half million readers, which have inspired this blog post where I’m going to chat through all the influences and the ways in which blogging has impacted me and changed my life…

THANK YOU FOR 2 MILLION!!! | HERE’S THE LARGEST REASON FOR I’M NOT DISORDERED’S POPULARITY & ALL MY SECRETS BEHIND IT!

I came to win, to fight

To conquer, to thrive

I came to win, to survive

To prosper, to rise

To fly

Nicki Minaj ft. Rihanna – Fly

If ever there was a time for a stereotypical beginning, it’s here(!) – because I literally and honestly cannot believe that I’m writing this! My little mental health blog has over two million readers?! Like, what?!! Where did that come from? It’s the strangest thing; that I’ve very obviously known it was coming – I mean, you know I like to celebrate my reader milestones; so, it’s obvious I keep an eye on my blog’s statistics… But it still feels like it just caught me by surprise and stole the ground out from under me! It’s like when you’re about to get an injection and you know it’s coming but you still get a shock… Except, much less painful! So, to celebrate this enormous milestone, I’ve created this blog post – and a reel over on my Instagram (@aimes_wilson) – revealing all my stories and tips around the largest reason for I’m NOT Disordered’s popularity: publicity…

HOW DID WE GET HERE? | 1.4 MILLION READERS

In planning and putting this post together, I realised that my last reader milestone was on my Instagram in February 2024 celebrating 1.3 million readers (you can see the Instagram Reel here) and that this means I’ve had over 100,000 readers in five months… Now, to put into context why I see this as such a WIN(!), when I first started blogging in 2013, I celebrated my first 100,000 (I even had a party, which you can read about here!) after TWO YEARS! These statistics got me thinking about whether this means I’m working harder than I was all those years ago and that became one of the inspirations for this blog post where I’ll be putting a lot more thought into what exactly this increase in readers means and how it has occurred…

AN INSIDE LOOK INTO I’M NOT DISORDERED’S READER MILESTONES | CELEBRATING 1.2 MILLION READERS!!!

“Create in the dark, only then can you recognise the light.”

Jyrki Vainonen

` It took me quite a while to figure out what angle to choose in writing this post – which I really wanted to use to mark I’m NOT Disordered reaching 1.2 million readers on July 15^th. In the end, I’ve decided to do a bit of an in-depth look into the milestones my blog has achieved in so far as its reader statistics over the entire ten years of its existence…

I want to start off by saying something that I’ve spoken about before (particularly in this post celebrating half a million readers: HALF A MILLION READERS!!! | LESSONS LEARNT, ADVICE & MORE! | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)) – but with the number of readers growing so rapidly so quickly, it’s probably worth saying it again… Another inpatient of the psychiatric ward I was on when I created, I’m NOT Disordered who had a blog, asked me why I cared so much about ‘the numbers.’ Now, rather than this being a genuinely curious question, knowing the girl; I recognised it was a bit of a dig and an accusation or nod towards thinking that I was being somewhat superficial. In all honesty though, in seeing/knowing that the girl’s blog had a good few thousand readers less than mine, and it had been going for a good few years already by that point, I wondered if some of the spite in that question was born out of jealousy or competitiveness.

50 OF MY FAVOURITE I’M NOT DISORDERED BLOG POSTS | CELEBRATING 850,000 READERS!!

It feels like just yesterday that I was writing the post celebrating 800,000 readers (you can read it here) and now, just over three months later, we’re on 850,000!

I’ve had so many ideas for this blog post, and very quickly realised that I was going to struggle to decide on one particular theme or format for it. I decided that to be celebrating this milestone, the post really should just be about I’m NOT Disordered…

 

THE MONUMENTAL POSTS FOR MY MENTAL HEALTH

RECOVERY:

 

Saturday, 19 January 2013

The Bad Tribunal

www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2013/01/i-genuinely-believe-she-would-kill.html

 

Thursday, 28 February 2013

The AWOL Procedure

www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2013/02/and-why-are-you-in-there-because-shes.html

 

Sunday, 14 April 2013

The Photographic Reminder

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2013/04/be-brave.html

 

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

Psychotherapy Began!!!

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2013/05/im-only-anxious-because-of-you.html

 

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

I Came So Close

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2013/05/again.html

 

Monday, 20 May 2013

And Then I Told the Whole Story

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2013/05/im-going-to-need-lot-of-prn.html

 

THREE QUARTERS OF A MILLION READERS!!! | EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING A BLOGGER

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try

John F Kennedy

I cannot believe my little blog has reached three quarters of a million readers! I mean, from starting this thing in my hospital room over 100 miles away from home, to now having over 750,000 readers?! Reaching this milestone, I wanted to use it as an opportunity to give people a look into the life of a Blogger, what it means, and my tips on how to succeed in this industry…

Starting off small

I’ll never forget the day I started I’m NOT Disordered; January 6^th 2013. I had been an inpatient in a specialist hospital for over a year and had just had a 1:1 with my Key Nurse, Debbie. She asked if every evening, I would start writing little bits about the abuse I had gone through when I was 15. I agreed that I would show a member of staff the writing to give them all a better insight into what I’d been through and why it has affected me so much. 


Making this plan felt like a really big step toward recovery and I wanted to document my progress for myself and my friends and family who were so far away that I think it was really hard for them to understand what was going on for me. My decision to use a blog to document that progress was completely random – in fact, it wasn’t really a decision! I just… did it!


So, in the beginning my target audience was literally about ten people, which meant that when I reached 100 readers, another inpatient and I screamed with joy and excitement. We screamed so loud that the hospital staff came running down the corridor pressing their assistance alarms because they thought someone was ‘kicking off!’