Tagged: blogging statistics
The Best and Worst of May 2014
May was both a month of sorrow and a month of joy for me. My boss, mentor and role model passed away after his third battle with cancer this month. I’m still grieving for him but things are slowly getting back to normal as I’m trying to move on. Other than that, May was a pretty good month. The weather was so nice that today I finally got the garden in and I broke yet another monthly stats record.
This month I welcomed 51 new followers but also smashed April’s monthly views record, which was 11,905 views. In May I received 13,316 views, which includes 9,771 unique views. I’d say 3 months of breaking my monthly view records is a pretty good trend. But enough of my rambling. What were the most popular articles in May?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
3. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
4. End of Days by Eric Walters
5. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Meh, nothing new or unexpected here. The only really notable thing was that of my 13,316 views, 8,515 of them were on my Game of Thrones article (or about 64% of my total traffic). That’s up from the 58% of my total views last month! I guess as the season 4 finale draws nearer, more people are searching for Game of Thrones. It’s quite a lucrative thing to write about, statistics-wise.
So what were the worst articles this month?
1. Awful Egyptians by Terry Deary
2. City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
3. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
4. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
5. City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
As with the five best articles of the month, there’s really nothing new or remarkable here. The books are either older books or books that really weren’t that popular to begin with. No, it seems like Game of Thrones reigns supreme online lately. That’s a good thing for people like me who go off on a tangent and defend the both the TV series and the books.
So how was your May? See anything here that surprised you about my statistics? Are you a fellow Game of Thrones fan too?
The Best and Worst of March 2014
It’s been one heck of a month here at The Mad Reviewer. For 30 days straight I’ve had over 200 views per day, a personal record. Which also means that I beat my previous page views per month record of 8,228 in January 2014! The final tally is 8,941 views in all of March, which shatters the previous record. Far more important to me are the 58 new followers I gained during this traffic surge. That brings the total number of followers of this blog to 788, meaning that if my traffic stays high I’ll be having a very special 1,000 follower giveaway soon!
When I looked at the 5 best posts this month I had to laugh. Before I explain, here they are:
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
3. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
4. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
5. Some Thoughts About Book Blogging & Statistics
I honestly had to laugh at the Game of Thrones rant article being number one because it was number one by such a large margin. Of the 8,876 views I received this month 2,962 views were from that article alone. That’s insane and hilarious! I guess it might have something to do with the fact Game of Thrones Season 4 premieres on April 6 (yay!). The other ones are pretty easy to guess why they’re #1. They’re all popular books, articles kids use for school or semi-controversial ones that garnered lots of comments.
Okay, so which articles were the worst during this record-breaking month?
1. Emperor: The Death of Kings by Conn Iggulden
2. Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey
3. Desired by Shadow by Cynthia Luhrs
4. Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer
5. Lost in Shadow by Cynthia Luhrs
As usual I’m not too concerned about these reviews being the lowest ranked in terms of hits. They’re all either older books or books that aren’t exactly the most popular, even if they were excellent. Next month we’ll see different books on the bottom 5 and life will go on. It’s just interesting to see how the ‘worst’ posts rotate every month.
Discussion: Being Open About Blogging Statistics
As you guys have obviously realized, I’m very open about my blogging statistics. I’ve been doing my monthly “The Best and Worst of…” series since September 2012, about 9 months after I first started blogging. I don’t think statistics are something to brag about or be embarrassed about. They simply are. Why I publicize them is mostly because I like to analyze them and hear other people’s thoughts and commentary on said analysis. It’s nice to share ideas about why some posts are more popular than others or why my views spike/drop in a particular month.
Another reason is because when I started blogging I was looking into what book blogging statistics typically looked like and came up with zero information. I want to help new bloggers have some more realistic expectations about how many hits they’re going to get in the beginning as well as how their monthly stats aren’t going to grow at a consistent rate.
With that said, not every blogger is as open about their statistics. Some are even more open about their statistics and go so far as to do fancy pie charts and graphs about their traffic. It all seems to come down to the individual, which makes sense. Some people like me are a little bit more focused on their stats than others. At the same time, there are people who don’t care about their stats at all. Neither approach is better than the other; they’re simply different.
What I want to know now is: Are you, as a blogger, open about your stats? Why or why not? Do you enjoy it when bloggers share their stats or do you think it’s more of a bragging thing? And, do you think bloggers in general should be more open about their stats?
The Return of the Weird Search Terms
Yes folks, the weird search terms are back! The number of search terms I’ve received for Game of Thrones is up because of season four premiering on April 6 (yay!) but the number of weird search terms are up again. Here are just some of the weirdest/funniest ones:
unsimulated sex scenes archive
is divergent anti christan
dj mainwolf
the outsiders is a crappy book
opera mad by 4
something bad about women in writing
hateful romance
were slaves buried alive in pyramids
jealous word
use a model to discuss your christmas holiday
can too much reading make mad
just naked people
why is it weird for people to change naked
nude men people
women dislike male nudity
Well, these are all weird. There’s really nothing else to say aside from what is with all the people searching for naked people? No, let me rephrase that: Why do people searching for naked people come to my blog and not a porn site? I guess it’s one of life’s great mysteries.
So what do you think of these search terms? What are some of the weirdest search terms you’ve ever had?
Some Thoughts About Book Blogging & Statistics
I’ve had my own book blog for over two years and it’s actually taken me this long to come to the following conclusions:
1. Followers are way more important than daily views (generally).
On a more emotional level, it’s nice to know that currently more than 750 people enjoyed my blog enough to hit that follow button. But what I’ve found in my two years of blogging is that followers really are more important than daily views. Your average person stumbling across a blog isn’t going to leave a comment, but a follower might. Followers are the more engaged, active members of your blogging community and for me that’s why they’re more important than the number of daily hits I get.
Aside from that on a purely marketing standpoint, blog tour companies, authors and publishers seem to be far more concerned about follower statistics than daily hits. When signing up for blog tour companies I’ve only been asked once about daily hits (and I’ve signed up for 6 companies). And publishers/authors are generally not all that concerned about daily hits as long as you have a decent number of followers. I may only average 200 hits per day, but because of my 752 followers I get approved for a lot more review requests than I would if I had only 100 followers and 300+ hits per day.
2. Book reviews suck statistics-wise.
I’ve written nearly 500 book reviews but those are not what bring people to my blog. No, it’s my rants and articles that bring that most traffic. With season 4 of Game of Thrones coming up on April 6 my traffic has experienced an enormous spike because I’m suddenly getting nearly one hundred hits per day on my rant Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal. They’re not from people getting mad at the author for the initial ignorant article. They’re from people searching things like ‘map of westeros’ and ‘game of thrones women’. It’s sad to say, but for book bloggers, book reviews are not going to get you very far stats-wise.
3. Blog tours rarely boost traffic.
I haven’t actually taken place in many blog tours yet but I can say that the ones I have taken part in have done absolutely nothing to enhance my traffic. They’re a great promotional tool for authors to get their work out there and noticed in the blogosphere but for us bloggers they don’t really do much. Sure, the host-only giveaways are sometimes a great incentive as well as the fact that you’re getting more free books to read, but if you’re only in it to increase your stats you’d be better off writing a book review.
That’s not to say that blog tours don’t benefit bloggers as well. They’re good at helping you find awesome new authors. Thanks to blog tours I have some new favourite books in Andromeda’s Fall by Abigail Owen and The Collector of Dying Breaths by M. J. Rose. So if you’re not a big statistics fanatic, blog tours can be very beneficial by bringing books you otherwise never would have heard of to your attention.
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If I had to give any advice from this article I’d say to my fellow book bloggers: don’t worry too much about statistics. Sure, keep an eye on them if you want to be approved for those popular ARCs, but don’t let them run your life. The internet is a fickle place and although one week you may have a huge increase in traffic the next week you’ll have a 50% decrease in traffic. Worry more about building your community and getting some dedicated followers and you’ll do just fine.