The second anniversary of the Not so bad Astro web site has just passed. I'm pleased that the site has grown substantial local and worldwide audiences with lots of new content:

• Over 42,000 user sessions and 80,000 page views over two years. On an average month there are 1750 visits. The peak month had 3351 visits during the August 2017 solar eclipse.
• Over 29,000 unique users have visited. There is a core group of about 1000 returning users. New and occasional users come from three main sources: search engines, direct links, and social media posts.
• Visitors have come from 145 different countries. Most are from North America and Europe. The addition of easy translation links a year ago was successful in attracting more worldwide users. India is now one of the top ten counties and Brazil, the Phillipines, Japan, Singapre, and Hong Kong are all in the top 25.
• The site has over 370 pages of unique content as images, how-to notes, and my blog. A steady rate of two to three pieces of new content a week focused on small telescope astrophotography has built a core group of visitors with similar interests.

The site combines a personal journal and social media driven outreach, with both unique Creative Commons licensed written content and eye candy images. Outreach leverages multiple social media outlets (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Cloudy Nights, Quara) without being dependent on any proprietary platform. The custom site delivers a high quality user experience and image rich content with exceptionally high performance.

The combination of a custom site and social media new content notification has worked well to build a site with sustained interest. With AWS hosting and standards based tools, direct costs of the website are only about $50 a year. There is no need for distractions like advertising.