Tagged: followers
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?
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 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?