
<p>This is my second year <a href="https://www.colbyfayock.com/posts/2020-content-roundup-year-in-review#content-roundup">putting together a content roundup</a>. It&#8217;s always fun looking back to see everything I&#8217;ve done, often forgetting that I actually did a particular thing this year and not 5 years ago (2021&#8217;s been weird).</p>



<p>I didn&#8217;t quite put out the same amount of content as I did in 2021, but my focus has been beyond purely content creation, but building integrations as a Dev Advocate, demos, and courses that help developers learn how to make awesome stuff in other ways.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s also been a year with a lot of huge changes! So let&#8217;s get started and dive in.</p>



<h2>Big life changes</h2>



<p>This year has not only been big for me professionally, but also in my personal life.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="2560" height="1517" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/colbycloud/images/w_1024,h_607,c_scale/f_auto,q_auto/v1642179119/twitter-colbyfayock-life-events-1_386cc822/twitter-colbyfayock-life-events-1_386cc822-jpg?_i=AA" alt="Screenshot of tweet showing new house and tweet showing new baby" class="wp-post-381 wp-image-386" data-public-id="twitter-colbyfayock-life-events-1_386cc822.jpg" data-format="jpg" data-transformations="f_auto,q_auto" data-version="1642179119" /><figcaption>New house and new baby</figcaption></figure>



<p>In June, my wife and I <a href="https://twitter.com/colbyfayock/status/1398331638430437376">bought our first house</a>! It&#8217;s been a lot of fun being able to have a place that we can make our own.</p>



<p>But that was small news compared to the <a href="https://twitter.com/colbyfayock/status/1418236217913716745">new member of the Space Jelly family</a>! Our first child and son, Gregg, came in July, bringing joy (and a whole lot of new challenges!) to our life.</p>



<p>We were fortunate that we were able to <a href="https://twitter.com/colbyfayock/status/1474526245002043396">celebrate the holidays this year in Brazil</a>, making it the first time my wife&#8217;s family was able to see our son. It was really special and we&#8217;re looking forward to getting back as soon as we can.</p>



<h2>New career</h2>



<p>Professionally, I carried out most of my year working with <a href="https://applitools.com/">Applitools</a> as a Developer Advocate, helping developers build quality products with visual testing, but in November I moved on to <a href="https://twitter.com/colbyfayock/status/1456656274658058250">join Cloudinary</a> as a Senior Developer Experience Engineer.</p>



<p><a href="https://cloudinary.com/">Cloudinary</a> has been a product that I&#8217;ve used personally on and off for years, but have always advocated for with my professional work. It&#8217;s a super powerful way to manage media, from working with creative teams for managing assets to actually delivering them.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve been super excited to join up with them and be able to help developers learn about media and how to effectively and efficiently use it in their apps.</p>



<h2>Content Roundup</h2>



<p>But the exciting part about all of this is the numbers right? How many articles and videos did I actually put out this year?</p>



<p>Let&#8217;s dive in!</p>



<h2>Articles</h2>



<p>I didn&#8217;t put out quite as many articles this year, but I ended up publishing to more places.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m super proud to have published an article on both <a href="https://www.smashingmagazine.com/author/colby-fayock/">Smashing Magazine</a> and <a href="https://github.com/readme/guides/code-automation-and-testing">GitHub&#8217;s README project</a>.</p>



<p>Last year I published the majority of my articles on freecodecamp.org, where this year I only published one in the beginning of the year.</p>



<p>I decided I wanted to focus on putting tutorials on my own site, which I made at <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/">spacejelly.dev</a>.</p>



<p>Next year I hope to continue to diversify where I write and get back to writing some good articles to support <a href="https://www.freecodecamp.org/">freecodecamp.org</a>!</p>



<h3>Overview</h3>



<ul><li>46 total articles</li><li>29 of those on <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/">spacejelly.dev</a></li><li>2 of those on <a href="https://colbyfayock.com/">colbyfayock.com</a> not including this one</li><li>9 of those on <a href="https://applitools.com/blog/author/cfayock/">applitools.com</a></li><li>3 of those on <a href="https://snipcart.com/blog">snipcart.com</a></li><li>1 of those on <a href="https://www.smashingmagazine.com/author/colby-fayock/">smashingmagazine.com</a></li><li>1 of those on <a href="https://github.com/readme/guides/code-automation-and-testing">github.com</a></li><li>1 of those on <a href="https://egghead.io/blog/build-cms-for-ecommerce-store-with-nextjs-and-sanity">egghead.io</a></li><li>1 of those on <a href="https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/colbyfayock/">freecodecamp.org</a></li></ul>



<p>While 46 is lower than last year, I&#8217;m still super proud of this output, 6 short of 1 per week for the entire year.</p>



<h2>Top 2021 spacejelly.dev Articles by Pageviews</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="2560" height="1274" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/colbycloud/images/w_1024,h_509,c_scale/f_auto,q_auto/v1642179110/spacejellydev-2021-views/spacejellydev-2021-views-jpg?_i=AA" alt="Google Analytics showing top 10 articles on spacejelly.dev" class="wp-post-381 wp-image-382" data-public-id="spacejellydev-2021-views.jpg" data-format="jpg" data-transformations="f_auto,q_auto" data-version="1642179110" /><figcaption>Spacejelly.dev top 10 for 2021</figcaption></figure>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Note: These numbers may not be totally accurate, as I use Google Analytics, which is commonly blocked by ad blockers</p></blockquote>



<ul><li>6,432 &#8211; <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/posts/how-to-create-a-headless-wordpress-blog-with-next-js-wordpress-starter/">How to Create a Headless WordPress Blog with Next.js WordPress Starter</a></li><li>6,160 &#8211; <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/posts/how-to-use-cloudinary-images-in-next-js-with-blurred-placeholders/">How to Use Cloudinary Images in Next.js with Blurred Placeholders</a></li><li>4,736 &#8211; <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/posts/how-to-create-a-custom-github-action-with-node-javascript/">How to Create a Custom GitHub Action with Node &amp; JavaScript</a></li><li>3,362 &#8211; <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/posts/how-to-automate-code-linting-in-next-js-with-eslint-husky-git-hooks/">How to Automate Code Linting in Next.js with ESLint &amp; Husky Git Hooks</a></li><li>3,296 &#8211; <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/posts/how-to-send-emails-with-sendgrid-and-next-js-serverless-functions-for-a-contact-form/">How to Send Emails with SendGrid and Next.js Serverless Functions for a Contact Form</a></li></ul>



<p>I really don&#8217;t know what to have expected in terms of Pageview numbers, but I&#8217;m pretty happy with that. I don&#8217;t really do a whole lot of promotion aside from 1 <a href="https://twitter.com/colbyfayock">Tweet</a> and a link in <a href="https://www.colbyfayock.com/newsletter">my newsletter</a>, meaning, it&#8217;s a vast majority from search.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="2560" height="1539" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/colbycloud/images/w_1024,h_616,c_scale/f_auto,q_auto/v1642179092/spacejellydev-2021-acquisition/spacejellydev-2021-acquisition-jpg?_i=AA" alt="Google Analytics showing traffic acquisition details" class="wp-post-381 wp-image-383" data-public-id="spacejellydev-2021-acquisition.jpg" data-format="jpg" data-transformations="f_auto,q_auto" data-version="1642179092" /><figcaption><meta charset="utf-8">Spacejelly.dev acquisition</figcaption></figure>



<p>I generally need to get better at promoting my content, though generally speaking, I firmly believe that SEO is more important than any amount of Tweets on Twitter for long-term growth.</p>



<h2>Videos</h2>



<p>I typically put out a video for every article I write. I end up using my article as somewhat a script, and while it&#8217;s not identical, it&#8217;s about the same.</p>



<p>In addition to my article-based videos, I also published my streams after airing and other videos like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFsfg2xP7cbJ_JS7HcWSPCtuqsi89lChN">Jelly Drops</a>.</p>



<p>My Jelly Drops idea was to provide short videos teaching a specific JS fundamental. I think it helped some people but it didn&#8217;t really do as well as I was hoping. I enjoy doing them so I&#8217;ll probably still do some more this year, but it&#8217;s not a focus.</p>



<p>I also did two videos to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFsfg2xP7cbL3g3xHn9ZinXoLbYh1PN9R">talk about the gear I use</a>. Again, didn&#8217;t do very well, but still might do more, we&#8217;ll see.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m not the type of YouTuber who&#8217;s hyper growth focused. A lot of what I do comes from what I think others would find helpful to their dev journeys and also things that I enjoy teaching.</p>



<p>For instance, my direct and to the point format is geared towards learning and not YouTube growth, so my channel probably will never blow up like others, but I&#8217;m happy with my growth.</p>



<h3>Overview</h3>



<ul><li>93 total videos on YouTube</li><li>76 of those on <a href="https://youtube.com/colbyfayock">my YouTube channel</a></li><li>17 of those on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk13Ucc26mWqI4xvsbO13jw">Applitools YouTube channel</a></li></ul>



<h3>Top 2021 Videos on my YouTube by Views</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="2560" height="1015" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/colbycloud/images/w_1024,h_406,c_scale/f_auto,q_auto/v1642179129/youtube-colbyfayock-2021-views_38406377/youtube-colbyfayock-2021-views_38406377-jpg?_i=AA" alt="YouTube Analytics showing top videos by Views in 2021" class="wp-post-381 wp-image-384" data-public-id="youtube-colbyfayock-2021-views_38406377.jpg" data-format="jpg" data-transformations="f_auto,q_auto" data-version="1642179129" /><figcaption><meta charset="utf-8">YouTube top videos of 2021</figcaption></figure>



<ul><li>27,047 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjZIeA952jE">From Design to Development Crash Course &#8211; Full Stack Next.js Tutorial</a></li><li>13,747 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1-hmauMht0">Sass in Next.js Tutorial &#8211; Write SCSS with CSS Modules</a></li><li>7,907 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BrZeaw3sLQ">React SEO with Next.js &#8211; Dynamic SEO Meta Tags Tutorial</a></li><li>7,742 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrVYLLpoyMw">Send Emails with SendGrid &amp; Next.js Serverless Functions &#8211; Contact Form Tutorial</a></li><li>7,203 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7VeENVQntY">Next.js Image with Cloudinary &#8211; Blurred Placeholder Images Tutorial</a></li></ul>



<p>My course clearly did super well compared to other videos. I&#8217;m not sure of how &#8220;worth&#8221; the course was in terms of channel growth, as views isn&#8217;t the only metric, but I plan on doing more of these in the future because they seem to help people a lot and people enjoy them.</p>



<p>All of my top content also is Next.js related. I definitely plan on continuing to work a lot with Next.js, but I&#8217;d like to start mixing in <a href="https://astro.build/">Astro</a> a bit as I see a lot of potential in it and generally I&#8217;d love to see more diversification in the market share for frontend frameworks.</p>



<h2>Streams</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.colbyfayock.com/posts/colbyashi-maru/">I ran a show</a> called <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/colbyashi-maru/">Colbyashi Maru</a> every week for a period of time up until my son was about to arrive.</p>



<p>I had a lot of fun doing this, but it never took off.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know that I plan on bringing back Colbyashi Maru, but I do plan on putting on a new stream series, more details to come 🙂</p>



<h3>Overview</h3>



<ul><li>28+ total streams</li><li>23 of those for <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/colbyashi-maru/">Colbyashi Maru</a></li><li>5 of those for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFsfg2xP7cbJqYWlsEQjxR0GKfTsYlYax">my recent Ecommerce course</a></li><li>More on various other channels</li></ul>



<h3>Top 2021 Streams by YouTube playback</h3>



<ul><li>1,594 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UZBhWAlyTo">Full Stack Serverless with Prisma &amp; Next.js ft. Mahmoud Abdelwahab</a></li><li>1,396 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyXyygeC2RE">Ecomm &amp; Next.js with Salma AKA whitep4nth3r</a></li><li>1,080 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIiOwNb7KR4">Themeable Layouts with Sass &amp; 11ty ft. Stephanie Eckles</a></li><li>1,025 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcaYol_XFk4">Draggable Kanban App with Svelte ft. Brittney Postma</a></li><li>967 &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw7D5RyXWJ4">Automating Social Images w/ Airtable, Cloudinary, &amp; Serverless ft James Q Quick</a></li></ul>



<p>The Twitch metrics are hard to gauge, I don&#8217;t really know what made sense to show, and again, my channel never grew much, so thinking YouTube playback was a fair way to show this.</p>



<h2>Courses, Workshops, Webinars, Twitter Spaces, &amp; More</h2>



<p>In 2021 I put out a new course on <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/levelupecommerce">Level Up Tutorials</a>. I was super happy to work with the amazing <a href="https://twitter.com/stolinski">Scott Tolinski</a> to get this out. I plan on doing another course with him this year, but not details announced.</p>



<p>Beyond that I did my first workshops towards the end of the year. I was asked by the Jamstack Conf organizers (Netlify) to do a workshop and another for GitHub Universe. Because of the success of signups for GitHub Universe, they asked me to do a second one too!</p>



<h3>Overview</h3>



<ul><li>1 course on <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/levelupecommerce">leveluptutorials.com</a></li><li>3 webinars with Applitools</li><li>1 workshop with Applitools</li><li>2 of the same workshop for GitHub Universe</li><li>1 workshop for Jamstack Conf</li><li>2 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFsfg2xP7cbLglr0g2v8kGYYQTBJq_UpJ">Twitter Spaces</a></li><li>28 conference talks that I kept track of</li></ul>



<p>Don&#8217;t really have metrics for any of this. But I&#8217;m proud of all that work this year and hope to do more workshops in 2022.</p>



<h2>Plans for 2022</h2>



<p>So what&#8217;s in store for the new year?</p>



<p>I&#8217;m not the type of person that likes to put hard numbers on my goals, but I broadly have a bunch of stuff I want to do and keep doing.</p>



<h3>Articles &amp; Videos</h3>



<p>I have no plans on stopping my article and video content. I love to try to get one article and video out per week, so I&#8217;ll still try to aim for that.</p>



<p>You&#8217;ll likely see more Cloudinary content. I&#8217;m not getting any pressure to put out more content from my team, but I&#8217;m thoroughly enjoying getting to work with the product everyday and helping others learn how to do awesome things with it, so I&#8217;m going to keep having fun with it.</p>



<p>I also have some sponsored content lined up. My most recent one was from <a href="https://uniform.dev/">Uniform</a> talking about <a href="https://spacejelly.dev/posts/how-to-personalize-content-jamstack-web-experiences-with-uniform-next-js/">personalization</a> which I really enjoyed. Looking forward to working with more products in this way.</p>



<h3>Streams</h3>



<p>I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;ll bring back Colbyashi Maru, but I do have a new show lined up that I&#8217;m excited about. Once I settled in from travel and get into the new year, I plan to start fleshing out the details and announce my plans.</p>



<h3>Courses</h3>



<p>My plans already include two separate courses. One ecommerce related and one Cloudinary and media related. It&#8217;s possible I&#8217;ll even put out more than that, but those are the only ones currently lined up.</p>



<p>I also want to do another YouTube-based course, though haven&#8217;t planned out any type of curriculum yet.</p>



<h3>Workshops, Webinars, Collaborations, &amp; More</h3>



<p>I also want to do more workshops. I had a lot of fun running the few I did virtually.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m looking forward to things opening back up in person so I can give one to a class IRL.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m also generally always open to collaborations, so I hope to work more with other awesome devs from other teams to try to ultimately help others do cool things.</p>



<h2>What are your plans for 2022?</h2>



<p>I&#8217;d love to hear what your goals are and how you plan to make the best of 2022. <a href="https://twitter.com/colbyfayock">Hit me up on Twitter</a> and let me know what you think of my plans and what your goals are!</p>


2021 Content Roundup – Year in Review

<p><del>Finally launched, frostydeals.com is a pet project created by <a href="https://twitter.com/hjeebus">Broc Klein</a> and myself that functions as an aggregator for one-day deals across the web.</del></p>
<p>Project no longer available.</p>


Frosty Deals, Daily Deal Hub

New site design, how about an updated resume?

<p>Updated resume.</p>
<p><img src="https://cdn.fay.io/images/2011/colby-fayock-web-and-graphic-design-resume-2011.1.jpg" alt="Colby Fayock Resume"></p>


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2021 Content Roundup – Year in Review

Frosty Deals, Daily Deal Hub

New site design, how about an updated resume?

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