Tagged: blogging stats
The Best and Worst of February 2014
February just flew by in a cold haze for me. Temperatures here in Saskatchewan have been even colder than usual, which hasn’t made walking to work any more pleasant. Hopefully spring will come soon.
On the plus side, however, my stats were quite respectable in this shortened month. I received a total of 5,688 views, which includes 3,593 unique views. In addition to that, I’ve also welcomed 33 new followers. It’s just a little more than half of the followers I welcomed in January but I’m still quite happy with my statistics, especially because of the severe lack of book reviews I’ve published this month.
So which posts were the most popular?
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. An Apology to Self-Published Writers
5. WordPress, Stop the Arbitrary Suspensions
These are all articles this time around but as usual, none of them are surprising. The only new one on my best 5 list is my rant to WordPress about their arbitrary suspension policy. I was honestly touched by the concern many of my readers showed at my suspension and I’m glad there was no loss of followers and no significant decrease in statistics in the long-term. Still, it was a pretty disturbing experience considering how much faith I’ve always put into this blogging platform.
Enough of my whining. What were the five worst posts?
1. The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge Has Begun
2. My Interview with Katie Hamstead
3. The Best and Worst of September
4. The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong
5. My Interview with Michelle A. Hansen
Oddly enough, this time around 2 of my worst posts were interviews. My interviews have never been popular for whatever reason but I don’t recall them being on my worst list before. Other than that, I’m really not all that surprised. Two of the articles were at least a year old and the book review is definitely one of my older, not as well-written ones. Looking back at some of the reviews I wrote in my first year I have to cringe. They were pretty rough.
So how was your February? Read anything interesting?
2013 in Review (WordPress Annual Report)
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 59,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 22 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
For those of you wondering, yes I’m obviously still posting my own analysis tomorrow but this is a little preview if you’re curious.
The Best and Worst of November 2013
I can’t believe it’s December already. Where did November go? Obviously it was in a sick, flu-filled haze for me but it still seemed irregularly short. Now I have to start thinking about holiday shopping. Ugh.
On a slightly more cheerful note, the good news is that yesterday (November 30th) The Mad Reviewer got its 100,000th view since January 13, 2012. I almost did a happy dance at that news because it hasn’t even been two years of blogging yet! In addition to that, in November I received 5,827 views, which includes 3,865 unique views. That’s significantly up from September, the last month where my stats weren’t inflated by a controversial post.
So what were the best articles this month?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
3. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
4. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
Meh, none of these are a surprise. With the popularity of The Hunger Games as a novel study book as well as the popularity of Game of Thrones, it’s not that shocking that these two were vying for the #1 spot all month. I mean, the Game of Thrones article only beat The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome by 10 hits. That’s pretty good.
So what were my worst posts this month?
3. The King’s Man by Pauline Gedge
4. Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
5. The Scourge by A. G. Henley
All of these listed here as the worst posts are all about pretty darn good books, especially Black Ships and The Scourge. It’s not that surprising how such good books get ignored in favour of novel study books or popular TV shows (since the GoT hits come mostly from show-related search terms). That’s just how the internet is, but it doesn’t make me any less proud of these reviews.
Other than being miserable for two weeks, November was a pretty good month for me. How was it for you? Are you excited about the upcoming holidays in December?
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.)