nixdrones.co.uk

One website, 365 days and the growing world of Nix

There is something rather satisfying about owning your own little corner of the internet.

Social media is useful, YouTube is brilliant for video, and Facebook can send a photograph flying around faster than a DJI Mini 4 Pro with a tailwind. But a website is different. It is home. It is the place where everything can be brought together properly, without an algorithm deciding that today nobody is allowed to see it.

That is what nixdrones.co.uk has become for me.

It may have started with drones, and drones are still a huge part of it, but the website now represents much more than flying cameras. It is where Vanilla’s campervan adventures live. It is where Torque’s rides can be recorded. It is where festivals, campsites, equipment, photographs, videos, cooking experiments and the occasional magnificent bit of Nix engineering can all sit under one roof.

Recently, I downloaded the website traffic figures covering a complete 365-day period, from 30 July 2025 to 29 July 2026.

I wanted to know whether anybody was actually visiting.

The answer was yes.

Not only are people visiting, but the audience is growing—and growing much faster than I expected.

The big numbers

During those 365 days, nixdrones.co.uk recorded:

• 7,051 page views

• 5,209 visits

• An average of 19 page views every day

• An average of 14 visits every day

• Traffic on every single day of the year

That final figure is one of my favourites.

There was not one completely empty day. For 365 days in a row, somebody somewhere visited nixdrones.co.uk. It may have been for a drone article, a campervan story, a photograph, an equipment review or something they discovered through Google. Whatever brought them in, the front door opened every day.

For a personal website built around my own interests and adventures, I think that is something worth celebrating.

I am not running the BBC, Amazon or a global media corporation from the back of Vanilla. I am one man writing about the things I enjoy, taking photographs, making videos and sharing what I have learned along the way.

Seven thousand page views suddenly sounds rather respectable when viewed like that.

The audience is getting bigger

The most encouraging discovery came when the year was split into two halves.

During the second half of the year:

• Daily page views were 46% higher

• Daily visits were 67% higher

• Daily visitor activity was 73% higher

In plain English, far more people were finding the website during the final six months than during the first six months.

That is the real story behind the figures.

The website did not merely have one lucky afternoon when a link went wild on Facebook. The general level of traffic increased. More people began arriving more often, and the usual day became noticeably busier.

During the first half of the year, the website averaged about 16 page views and 11 visits per day. During the second half, that grew to approximately 23 page views and 18 visits per day.

Those are not enormous numbers in the wider internet world, but this is not a competition with enormous commercial websites. The important comparison is nixdrones.co.uk against its earlier self—and by that measure, it has made very good progress.

The aircraft has left the ground. Now I need to keep it climbing.

July found another gear

The latest 30 days in the report were particularly strong.

Compared with the previous 30 days:

• Page views increased by 31%

• Visits increased by 20%

• Visitor numbers increased

• More people looked at an additional page

• Fewer people left immediately

That combination is important.

It is easy to produce a sudden rush of low-quality traffic. A link gets shared, people click it, take one glance and disappear. The latest figures were better than that. More people arrived, but the way they used the website also improved.

July 2026 was running at the fastest monthly pace in the report, averaging almost 26 page views per day. Even though the figures stopped on 29 July, the month had already produced 752 page views and 580 visits.

If the latest 30-day rate continued for a full year, the website would reach roughly:

• 9,600 page views

• 7,300 visits

That means the next major landmark—10,000 page views in a year—is no longer some wildly optimistic target scribbled on the back of a beer mat. It is genuinely within reach.

The day the doors nearly came off

The busiest day of the entire year was Sunday 16 November 2025.

On that one day, the website received:

• 125 page views

• 102 visits

• 98 visitors

That was a huge leap above the normal daily figure.

Something clearly happened. Perhaps an article appeared high in a Google search. Maybe a post was widely shared. It could have been connected to a YouTube video, a social-media post or a link from another website.

The traffic report does not tell me exactly what caused it, so I need to do a little detective work.

That date matters because successful websites are not built by admiring unexplained spikes. They are built by discovering what caused them and working out whether the result can be repeated.

The surge also started the busiest seven-day run of the year. Between 16 and 22 November, the website collected 278 page views and 213 visits.

Whatever I was doing around that period, I want another look at it.

The day people stayed for a proper look

The busiest day was not necessarily the best day.

For me, one of the most interesting dates was Wednesday 13 August 2025.

That day produced:

• 98 page views

• 22 visits

• An average of 4.45 pages viewed during each visit

• A much lower rate of people leaving after one page

• An average visit lasting more than five minutes

Those visitors did not simply arrive, glance through the window and walk away. They came inside, took their coats off and had a look around.

The surrounding period was strong as well. On 12 August, visitors averaged 3.73 pages per visit. On 18 August, they averaged 2.57 pages, while only 38% left without opening another page.

Something about the content, the layout or the type of audience arriving during that week encouraged people to explore.

That is just as valuable as attracting a large number of visitors.

The dream result would be to combine November’s enormous reach with August’s curiosity: lots of people arriving and then choosing to read several articles.

That is the sweet spot.

The problem with the second click

The figures also revealed the main weakness.

Across the full year, the average visitor looked at 1.35 pages before leaving. About 85% of visits ended without another page being opened.

In website language, that is called the bounce rate. It sounds more dramatic than it really is.

If somebody searches for a specific answer, finds my article, reads it and leaves satisfied, that visit has still been worthwhile. A person does not have to spend an entire evening exploring the website for the page to have done its job.

However, the figure also tells me that many people are reaching the end of an article without being shown an obvious next step.

Imagine somebody reading about a campsite visited in Vanilla. They might also enjoy:

• The complete trip report

• The equipment used during the stay

• A related drone video

• A review of the awning or power setup

• A nearby Torque ride

If those links are not clearly presented, the visitor may never realise the extra material exists.

The next stage for nixdrones.co.uk is therefore not simply shouting more loudly to attract more traffic. It is making the website easier and more enjoyable to explore.

Building journeys instead of isolated articles

I want each article to become part of a bigger journey.

A campsite review should naturally lead to the campervan trip. The trip should lead to the drone footage. The footage should link to the aircraft and camera equipment used. A Torque ride should link to the route, the bike setup and the practical lessons learned.

The website already contains the ingredients. They simply need connecting more effectively.

My plan is to add a clear “Continue the adventure” section to the bottom of important articles, with three genuinely relevant choices.

I also want stronger sections covering:

• Drones and aerial photography

• Vanilla and campervan travel

• Torque rides and Cannock Chase

• Campsites, festivals and road trips

• Technology, power and equipment

• Videos, photographs and practical guides

The aim is not to trap people inside the website like an online furniture shop refusing to show them the exit. It is to help them find the next thing they are likely to enjoy.

If I could increase the average from 1.35 pages per visit to 1.50, the existing number of visits would create roughly 760 extra page views a year, without needing to attract one additional person.

That is a very worthwhile improvement from a few carefully placed links.

The best days for new material

The figures even revealed a weekly rhythm.

Sunday attracted the most visits and visitors. People clearly have more time to browse as the weekend winds down.

Tuesday produced the highest number of page views and the deepest browsing. Tuesday’s visitors were more likely to explore another page.

Thursday was normally the quietest day.

That suggests a simple publishing routine:

• Share a photograph, short video or preview on Sunday

• Publish the main article on Monday evening or Tuesday morning

• Use Thursday to update older posts and improve their links

• Reshare a useful older guide at the weekend

This does not mean I will refuse to publish on a Wednesday because the sacred spreadsheet has spoken. A good story is a good story on any day. But the figures provide a useful guide for planning the bigger articles.

Why a website still matters

There is a temptation to believe personal websites are old-fashioned.

Everybody is on social media. Videos go on YouTube. Photographs go on Facebook or Instagram. Short updates disappear into timelines almost as quickly as they arrive.

That is precisely why the website matters.

Social media is borrowed land. The rules can change, the reach can disappear, and years of posts can become nearly impossible to find. A website creates a permanent home where adventures can be organised properly and rediscovered later.

On nixdrones.co.uk, a campervan journey does not have to vanish beneath tomorrow’s football opinions and pictures of somebody’s breakfast. It can remain where it belongs, surrounded by photographs, videos, maps, equipment notes and connected stories.

The name may say Nix Drones, but the site now represents the wider Nix world.

It is Nemesis, Zoom, Sneaker and Twitch in the sky. It is Vanilla on the road. It is Torque on the forest tracks. It is campsites, festivals, technology, cooking, portable power, photographs, mistakes, improvements and the small victories that make the next adventure better.

Most importantly, it is mine.

The next 365 days

My target for the coming year is straightforward:

• Reach 10,000 page views

• Reach 7,500 visits

• Encourage more people to open a second page

• Keep publishing useful, honest and personal material

• Turn the strongest articles into connected series

The current traffic rate suggests those targets are achievable.

I do not need one enormous viral hit. I need steady progress: one good article, one useful update, one better internal link and one properly told adventure at a time.

That feels right for Nix Drones.

The website was never intended to be a polished corporate brochure full of people in hard hats pointing at imaginary graphs. It is a living record of the things I do, the places I go, the equipment I use and the lessons I learn.

Some articles will fly. Some will quietly collect readers from Google over several years. Others may be read by only a handful of people but still preserve a memory that matters to me.

All of them have a place.

The final Super Nix verdict

After studying a full year of figures, I can say this confidently:

nixdrones.co.uk is growing.

It recorded more than 7,000 page views, more than 5,000 visits and activity on every day of the year. The audience in the second half was dramatically larger than it was in the first. The latest month was one of the strongest, and the best 30-day period for visits came right at the end of the report.

The challenge now is to convert more of those visits into journeys through the website.

The old version of nixdrones.co.uk was building a collection.

The current version is building an audience.

The next version will bring everything together: drones, Vanilla, Torque, travel, equipment, photographs, videos and the whole growing Nix family.

The domain started with drones.

The story has become much bigger.