Tagged: stats analysis
The Best and Worst of January 2014
January was a record-breaking month for me. Not only did I welcome 64 new followers (about two per day) my total views for one month record was shattered. My previous record was 6,927 views in September 2012. Now January 2014 is the record to beat with 8,228 views, including 5,133 unique views. It may be a while before I break my record again but I’m very happy that my traffic has been consistently high this month. So which articles brought people to my blog?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. An Apology to Self-Published Writers
3. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
4. The Mad Reviewer Reading and Reviewing Challenge 2014 Sign Up
5. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
We have a new article on the top 5! Thanks to more than a little bit of help with Twitter promotion from Mark Lee of The Masquerade Crew my article ‘An Apology to Self-Published Writers’ went from getting two views in the entire month of December to climbing to the #2 slot this month with 834 views. That, my friends, is the power of promotion. Even with help it couldn’t beat out my Game of Thrones article but I was very pleased with the results of the Twitter promotion. It also helped that people like you, my readers, spread the word about my reading challenge so I got 45 people to sign up this year. That’s double the number that signed up last year.
So which articles were my worst this month?
1. Discussion: Posting Schedules
3. Cleopatra Confesses by Carolyn Meyer
4. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
5. Your Shameless Blogging Self-Promotion Thread
I’m not really too worried or annoyed at any of these appearing on my list of least popular articles. They’re either outdated articles like the self-promotion thread and the discussion or they’re older books that aren’t really popular much anymore. It’s not the end of the world because none of these have appeared on the bottom 5 list before and likely won’t for a while yet.
In January I had record-breaking stats, read some great new books and re-read several of my old favourites. All in all, it was a pretty good month. How was your January?
The Best and Worst of 2013
It’s 2014 already! Which means it’s a new start for everyone, a time to improve a little bit. And I certainly intend to improve my blogging. That brings me to the point of this article: analyzing my 2013 stats.
But my yearly round-up isn’t just about stats! No, I’ve always thought this blog is more than just stats so I want to share with you posts I thought were particularly good/enjoyed writing as well. Yet in keeping with my tradition I’ll introduce the posts based on statistics first.
The 5 Best Posts (Traffic)
1. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome (5,076 hits)
2. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal (3,287 hits)
3. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (1,646 hits)
4. The Day an Author Suggested I Kill Myself (1,642 hits)
5. The Giver by Lois Lowry (823 hits)
(These are just the views for 2013, not all time.)
The thing I find so interesting about the top 5 posts is that if you look to The Best and Worst of 2012 it turns out my review of The Outsiders had more hits when I had fewer followers than it has this year. It only has 1,646 hits compared to 2,615 throughout all of 2012. I’m happy my old posts are still getting decent traffic but it’s interesting how that’s gone down. Another interesting thing is that The Outsiders was my top post last year with just 2,615 hits. This year my top post has over 5000 hits. I think it’s due in part to my “Best and Worst of…” series but also because the post has simply been shared lots and I’ve had more traffic overall this year. Continue reading
The Best and Worst of December 2013
I know that I usually save these posts for the beginning of the next month, but I have my 2013 analysis scheduled for that day. So I’ll just analyze December in December, just like last year.
December has been an awesome month for me. At the time of writing I have 6,149 total views, which includes 3,878 unique views. That means that I’m up from November and seeing as I’ve had 5 consecutive months of higher-than-average stats I think I can safely call it as it is: my blog is growing. This is in part thanks to the 41 new followers I’ve welcomed to my blog this month for a total of 633 followers! Follower stats have always been more important to me than views so I’m very happy about this record-breaking month.
So what were my best posts this December?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
4. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
5. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
The usual suspects are the top two posts but I’m so happy that my speed-reading tutorial has finally taken off. ‘Calling all Authors!’ is a big success in part because I had a lot of help with promoting it on Twitter and The Masquerade Crew. It also helps that many authors told their friends about the opportunity, which is why I now have so many submissions for prizes for my reading challenge.
So what were my worst posts this month?
1. Arlo and Jake Enlist by Gary Alan Henson
2. Genghis: Birth of an Empire by Conn Iggulden
3. Discussion: Favourite Book Covers
4. The 3 Best Books to Read in the Bathroom
5. City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
As usual, none of these really surprise me. The book reviews are for older books/indie books and the one article in there was admittedly pretty dumb. This is the first time a discussion post has appeared in the 5 worst articles of a month, but that’s understandable seeing as it is an older one and it was never all that popular when it was first posted.
Well, that pretty much sums up my December: awesome. My stats are up, I’ve been averaging a little over a follower a day for the whole year and life is good. And the funniest thing? In 2012 December was a horrible month; my stats took a huge dive. So now, of course, in 2013 they’re going strong.
How has your December been?
The More Followers I Have, The More I Get
As you guys have realized, I’m pretty open about my blogging stats. I like analyzing them and hearing your thoughts on things like why certain articles are doing well or why traffic could be down in a given month. But one thing has been puzzling me of late: followers.
You see, I was flipping through my ‘Trophies’ in WordPress (which is a feature that shows when you achieved certain milestones in likes, comments or followers) and saw that I had 200 followers on January 31, 2013. That’s a year and a couple weeks after I started my blog. I figured that was pretty good, getting 200 followers in only a year considering that I don’t blog on controversial things that get lots of clicks.
Then I noticed another trophy: I had 500 followers on September 26, 2013. Less than 9 months after getting my 200 follower trophy, I suddenly had 500 followers. That’s 300 followers in less than 9 months. Considering it took me a little over a year to get just 200 followers you could say it took me by surprise. Then I started thinking: the more followers a blog has, the more new followers it seems to get. But why is that?
Is it because people seem more attracted to bloggers who look like they have their act together? Or is it because they see a good commenting community? Could it be because more people hear other people talking about the blog? It’s hard to say.
What do you think? Why do blogs with more followers have an easier time getting new followers than smaller blogs?
The Best and Worst of October 2013
Overall, I’d say October was a pretty awesome month for me. In real life I got to scare children on two separate occasions and read some pretty awesome books. Blog-wise I’m doing better than ever. October 2013 has been my second best month of all time in terms of stats. I have received 6,779 views and that includes 4,416 unique views. My best month is still September 2012 when I received 6,927 views, but I’m very pleased with my progress.
So what were my best posts this month? Let’s take a look:
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
3. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
4. Discussion: Blogging Pet Peeves
As my regular readers know, none of these are new except for my blogging pet peeves discussion post. So why did I have so many views this month? Well, looking at the number of hits on the article ‘Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal’ it’s almost six times the number of hits for the #3 slot. The same goes for my Hunger Games article. Game of Thrones, both the book series and the TV show, is still wildly popular so there’s no surprise there. And the Catching Fire movie is coming out soon, so it’s not really all that surprising that that particular article is picking up. The fact that The Hunger Games is a popular novel study book doesn’t hurt either.
Okay, so the best articles were pretty much my usual ones. Which were the worst?
1. Lady of Palenque: Flower of Bacal by Anna Kirwan
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
3. Genghis: Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden
4. Awful Egyptians by Terry Deary
This is the first time any book by Roald Dahl has appeared on my 5 worst list so it’s a landmark month in both the best and worst lists. The other books are either older novels or were just plain unpopular even when they first came out. Really, I’m not all that surprised by any of the ones on this list other than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
In the spirit of Halloween, here’s a picture that sums up my most awesome day:
This is at the end of a long 3 or so hours of scaring children. I swear my hair looked better at the beginning of the local haunted house. (For those of you that are curious I’m the dumb-looking redneck zombie on the right. On the left is a bookish friend of mine that’s also a huge fan of The Walking Dead and scaring children.)