Tagged: the best and worst of
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.
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?
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?