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20 April 2020

How Web Finds Started

Looking back over the last ten years or so I can't even estimate how many blog posts and videos we have shared in that time.....thousands!

At one point I was 'finding' 50-70 posts a week all Filofax related posts. It got to the point that people asked if I could split in to more bite size chunks, so it became two posts a week to ease the load!

When I joined Nan and Laurie back in 2009 we started off with some posts and the occasional link to other posts I found. There wasn't many videos back then, not until Imy came along and started doing Filofax videos and then is started to explode.

There are still people doing videos of course, but may be not as many on just Filofax, I have had to widen my search terms to bring you the video web finds each week.

During the current crisis a few blogs have re-emerged and people have started posting again after a break, which is encouraging in a way. I rarely remove a blog from my monitoring system unless the blog is removed from its host website.

What sparked the idea of web finds was a post by Gala Darling in June 2010 she had posted about 'A Filofax Love Affair!' Gala Darling was to me well ahead of her time, she blogged and shared her life like no one had done before.

At the end of her post was this set of links:


It created a four times increase in the number of visitors to Philofaxy, but I didn't notice this until a few days later. I was about to move from UK to France, so we were busy packing and visiting people. Looking at the stats I was able to trace back the source of all the traffic to this post.

This got me thinking.... I wonder if we could do the same for other Filofax blogs? And web finds was officially born.  It has become a bit of a 'labour of love' to create those posts over the years, some have been finished off late at night in a hotel room somewhere on my old small notebook computer or similar!

The format has evolved over the years as technology and sites have changed. Central to the system I use is Protopage, which I have used to gather the links to the posts each week both for blogs and videos for both Philofaxy and Travellers Notebook Times.

Next time you follow the links from a Web Finds post remember to leave a comment on the post or video you are looking at and say you found their post/video on Philofaxy.

If you have a blog or You Tube channel that you post about planners then be sure to get in touch with me to be added to the monitoring system. steve at philofaxy dot com

Remember, Philofaxy is hardcore!

7 comments:

  1. Thank you for this article and all do with the "Web Finds." It's one of my favorite posts. Great tip about leaving a message, 'found your youtube link from Philofaxy.

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    1. Hi Rita,
      Yes give them a nice surprise. It's hard work being a content creator or video creator these days, so much competition from all angles. A comment makes them feel noticed :)

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  2. Já virou uma rotina pra mim, acompanhar os links às quartas e sábado. Obrigada pelo empenho!

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    1. Obrigado, eu gosto de encontrar as postagens e pegar dicas e idéias também.

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  3. I honestly don't think I would have been so excited about posting on my blog back in the day if it wasn't for the fact that Philofaxy linked to my posts and propelled my stats up to the heavens. It was such an inspiring boost. I really did appreciate the traffic :) Thank you to Steve and the team. Zara from Filofancy x

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    1. Yes it always amuses me when I look at some blogs that do a variety of topics, health, beauty, lifestyle etc and their most popular posts are all Filofax ones... I wonder what caused that!! Not feeling guilty honest!!
      I'm pleased to see you are posting again as well. Thank you.

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  4. Always a favourite regular read for me too. Thanks Steve

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