That Old Stats Post....

5/18/2016

Regular EW readers know that I am an online content writer by day (among today's 200 word pieces: Radiohead's album marketing strategy; getting in touch with your anus through regular proctological exams). I put some light SEO into each article I write, which is to say I am not 100 percent stats adverse.

A few interesting readership trends:

First off, since seeing a significant viewership increase about two months ago when I started the Arisugawa Park "cloud novel" project and began blogging in earnest, I have stayed fairly consistent at around 10,000 to 12,000 views per month. No mean feat, considering that I have a strict "no video, no clickbait, no bullshit"policy. Here is a look at trends over the past month:

The interesting things to note is that I got 412 views on May 15, when I posted Arisugawa Park 1.16 - Landing. This is dwarfed by 703 and 618 views on May 13 and May 17 respectively. Days when I posted nothing. What does this seeming randomness mean?

Let's take a look at the unique visitors:

As you can see, May 15 (412 views) far outstrips the other dates, with a whopping 123 unique visitors. I was puzzling this out and came to the conclusion that the difference is that these are not first-time visitors. These are 123 regular readers of the novel who come in for their Ari Park fix and get out.

So what to make of the 703 views and only 53 unique visitors on May 13? I believe it's that a number of first time visitors got interested in the content and started clicking around in the blog archives, reading other stuff. This is valuable in its own right––it means that what I write has heft and captures the interest of casual readers.

Now let's look at the stats for ArisugawaPark, to see if they correspond. The site was hovering at about 4-10 views and 1-2 unique viewers per day until I relaunched it as a home of the "cloud novel" last month.

Big sigh of relief, the stats do correspond (there has been some controversy about the veracity of Weebly's stats––the consensus seems to be that they have made them more accurate in the past year or so).

A relatively large spike, 129 page views on May 15, when I released the latest episode of Ari Park. In other words, some readers are visiting AP to get caught up on the story, refresh. This is encouraging to say the least––the first time I got a real spike from the publication of an AP episode.

For the sake of completeness, here are the unique visitors for ArisugawaPark:

72 unique viewers to 123 page views is an excellent ratio and what you would expect––unlike with EnduranceWriter, there is not much to explore except the ongoing first chapter.

Thanks for nerding out with me on this and exploring the dynamics of growing a blog audience. This may be something that you can get something practical out of if you are considering publishing a cloud novel of your own. Bottom line: it is not quick or easy, but an audience gradually grows.

As for Ari Park 1.17 - Imbecile? It is coming very soon, possibly mañana.

Damon D. Dawson of Bandito College

2 Comments

Nils Sens link

5/19/2016 09:50:30 am

I was wondering on how exactly a new release of some piece of the novel "draws in" new viewers. Do you announce new uploads prior to, well, upload on forums and facefook? Otherwise I'd be surprized that your viewers spike just after you release something new. It's not that you're following a predictable pattern of uploads, or do you? This isn't meant to discount these spikes etc., I'm just really interested in causality and sequentiality. So, either you have some kind of "baseline viewership" buzzing about on your page at any given time, then a new post would almost automatically cause a spike in activity, or you're announcing effectively. In any case, your views are impressive! I hope Weebly is honest - you might set up Google Analytics and compare the stats if you want to get to the bottom of things. I'd also try a 'call-to-action' where you'd ask at least the real, core readers (who come here every time) to leave a note or comment. If you then actually get 5-10 brave comments (I mean, this isn't the dark web), Weebly makes business sense. Quality over quantity any time.

Damon Shulenberger

5/19/2016 10:29:53 am

I would assume that there are people who are starting to read the blog regularly, i.e. on a daily basis. The correspondence between the spike in Arisugawa Park site reads and the publication of a new AP section seems to indicate that readers are now interested in exploring the novelistic narrative. Nils, we have gone over the accuracy thing... we did a test in your apartment, where your view translated to one view on my end and did not add any unique visitors thereafter. That guy who you linked to had the sound of someone who wasn't getting the results he wanted and was working up some elaborate justification. The low baseline my first several months writing the EnduranceWriter blog last year (40-60 views was the daily norm) is indication enough for me that the stats are approximately right. Weebly has not intrinsic interest in juicing the stats––they are making a whopping $15 off of me a month. I do know a guy who works for the company, come to think of it, I'll see if he responds. The interesting thing to me is that the cloud novel episode postings seem to attract a relatively low number of readers (400), but those that do visit are not clicking around randomly. They probably see on Facebook or Twitter that it is up, or stay abreast of my copious hints in other posts. Worth considering further, anyhow...

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That Old Stats Post....

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