Tagged: the best and worst of january 2014
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 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?