thanks... and bragging
I deliberately haven't written about my statistics for a while but there have been a few interesting milestones recently that are worth mentioning.
Most excitingly on January 21 this year unique visitors here passed the 10,000 mark. That it was passed so soon was largely due to the gaming and poetry follow-up post comments + further thought - gaming + poetry being linked from Silliman's blog the previous day, January 20, which became the busiest single day so far this year. Many thanks to everyone who helped santiago's dead wasp pass that milestone.
I'll return to visitor stats shortly after a quick look at some personal accomplishments. February marks 24 continuous months where there has been an entry each month, this is by some way the longest period of consistent blogging at santiago's dead wasp. 2009 was in fact the first calendar year with entries each month although there were fewer entries in 2009 than 2008, 251 to 302. However they were more consistently distributed, ranging from 13 entries in the least active month to 36 in the most active. This is very different from 2008 which ranged from 2 entries in two of the months to 81 entries in another.
Returning to visitor statistics, even after the first four months of 2009 I still didn't expect to pass 10,000 visitors much before 2012. I'll come to some of the reasons why that expectation was exceeded shortly.
The counter I use (Statcounter) measures pageloads - this is normally the highest figure, unique visitors - this can be the same as pageloads but is generally lower, and returning visitors - this is normally the lowest figure, often by quite a margin. These figures are necessarily approximations - they can't tell me if different people are using a single computer or if one person is checking from a number of different locations for instance. Briefly, Statcounter summarise them like this:
'Page Load - The number of times your page has been visited.'
'Unique Visitor - Based purely on a cookie, this is the total of the returning visitors and first time visitors - all your visitors.'
'Returning Visitors - Based purely on a cookie, if this person is returning to your website for another visit an hour or more later.'
December 2009 brought the largest monthly total of pageloads, unique visitors, and returning visitors of the year. Indeed of any year so far. The previous record was held by May 2009. The year was generally busier in each month than was the case in previous years. For the whole of 2009 pageloads, unique visitors and returning visitors were higher than for the whole of 2005-2008 taken together. Both pageloads and unique visitors individually were higher for 2009 than for the total pageloads for the whole of 2005-2008. Returning visitors for 2009 were higher than the unique visitors for 2008 (1846 and 1827 respectively) and higher than the total pageloads for any year from 2005-2007.
So to why my expectations were exceeded last year. Because of the events I chose to cover, and because some of my coverage was linked to, often by higher profile sites, my readership figures received various filips through the year:
The first major spikes in traffic were for my coverage of the Bury Text Festival (next on in 2011 - see Tony Trehy's blog for further information), especially when Ron Silliman and Geof Huth linked to my coverage. In fact on the two or three occasions when Ron Silliman has linked to santiago's dead wasp I've seen a boost in numbers across two or three days with a huge spike the first day. Throughout the rest of the year my coverage of Marina Abramovic Presents…, the Manchester Blog Awards, and reviews of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, and later Sunn 0))) at Islington Mill all attracted higher than usual numbers after being linked by others.
Just as exciting was discovering early in the year (when someone else told me) that both santiago's dead wasp and matt dalby poet appeared as autocompletes on Google. Impressively while at the beginning of the year my Technorati authority was around 0-3, and in May had reached a dizzying 7, by December it reached as much as 423. Obviously this is subject to fluctuation, but was 422 just a couple of days ago.
Less explicably in December the average number of visitors to the site took a step-up on a daily and weekly basis with no obvious cause. This continued through January, which ended with just 11 fewer total pageloads than May last year (1,005 vs 1,016), but with higher unique (743 vs 708) and returning visitor (245 vs 242) numbers - making it the third busiest month ever.
The Marina Abramovic and Sunn 0))) entries have overtaken a 2007 piece on MDMA as the most read articles on the blog. However, the recent gaming + poetry post is now the most commented on.
If there are lessons to be learned from this for building readership they seem to be:
1) Blog consistently. If you can't blog predictably every day/every other day/every Tuesday or whatever, try to make sure it's frequently enough that people come to trust that if they check back in a few days they have a good chance of seeing something new.
2) Try to maintain a minimum standard of writing and discussion.
3) Link to people within posts and in your blogroll (not for the sake of it but because it helps your reader and/or helps build a picture of your interests). It is also a useful way of becoming part of a community of bloggers with similar interests.
4) Have a reasonably clear identity for the blog.
Essentially there are no quick fixes, you have to earn your readers and work to keep them - as you might expect. And remember that it will take time.
Most excitingly on January 21 this year unique visitors here passed the 10,000 mark. That it was passed so soon was largely due to the gaming and poetry follow-up post comments + further thought - gaming + poetry being linked from Silliman's blog the previous day, January 20, which became the busiest single day so far this year. Many thanks to everyone who helped santiago's dead wasp pass that milestone.
I'll return to visitor stats shortly after a quick look at some personal accomplishments. February marks 24 continuous months where there has been an entry each month, this is by some way the longest period of consistent blogging at santiago's dead wasp. 2009 was in fact the first calendar year with entries each month although there were fewer entries in 2009 than 2008, 251 to 302. However they were more consistently distributed, ranging from 13 entries in the least active month to 36 in the most active. This is very different from 2008 which ranged from 2 entries in two of the months to 81 entries in another.
Returning to visitor statistics, even after the first four months of 2009 I still didn't expect to pass 10,000 visitors much before 2012. I'll come to some of the reasons why that expectation was exceeded shortly.
The counter I use (Statcounter) measures pageloads - this is normally the highest figure, unique visitors - this can be the same as pageloads but is generally lower, and returning visitors - this is normally the lowest figure, often by quite a margin. These figures are necessarily approximations - they can't tell me if different people are using a single computer or if one person is checking from a number of different locations for instance. Briefly, Statcounter summarise them like this:
'Page Load - The number of times your page has been visited.'
'Unique Visitor - Based purely on a cookie, this is the total of the returning visitors and first time visitors - all your visitors.'
'Returning Visitors - Based purely on a cookie, if this person is returning to your website for another visit an hour or more later.'
December 2009 brought the largest monthly total of pageloads, unique visitors, and returning visitors of the year. Indeed of any year so far. The previous record was held by May 2009. The year was generally busier in each month than was the case in previous years. For the whole of 2009 pageloads, unique visitors and returning visitors were higher than for the whole of 2005-2008 taken together. Both pageloads and unique visitors individually were higher for 2009 than for the total pageloads for the whole of 2005-2008. Returning visitors for 2009 were higher than the unique visitors for 2008 (1846 and 1827 respectively) and higher than the total pageloads for any year from 2005-2007.
So to why my expectations were exceeded last year. Because of the events I chose to cover, and because some of my coverage was linked to, often by higher profile sites, my readership figures received various filips through the year:
The first major spikes in traffic were for my coverage of the Bury Text Festival (next on in 2011 - see Tony Trehy's blog for further information), especially when Ron Silliman and Geof Huth linked to my coverage. In fact on the two or three occasions when Ron Silliman has linked to santiago's dead wasp I've seen a boost in numbers across two or three days with a huge spike the first day. Throughout the rest of the year my coverage of Marina Abramovic Presents…, the Manchester Blog Awards, and reviews of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, and later Sunn 0))) at Islington Mill all attracted higher than usual numbers after being linked by others.
Just as exciting was discovering early in the year (when someone else told me) that both santiago's dead wasp and matt dalby poet appeared as autocompletes on Google. Impressively while at the beginning of the year my Technorati authority was around 0-3, and in May had reached a dizzying 7, by December it reached as much as 423. Obviously this is subject to fluctuation, but was 422 just a couple of days ago.
Less explicably in December the average number of visitors to the site took a step-up on a daily and weekly basis with no obvious cause. This continued through January, which ended with just 11 fewer total pageloads than May last year (1,005 vs 1,016), but with higher unique (743 vs 708) and returning visitor (245 vs 242) numbers - making it the third busiest month ever.
The Marina Abramovic and Sunn 0))) entries have overtaken a 2007 piece on MDMA as the most read articles on the blog. However, the recent gaming + poetry post is now the most commented on.
If there are lessons to be learned from this for building readership they seem to be:
1) Blog consistently. If you can't blog predictably every day/every other day/every Tuesday or whatever, try to make sure it's frequently enough that people come to trust that if they check back in a few days they have a good chance of seeing something new.
2) Try to maintain a minimum standard of writing and discussion.
3) Link to people within posts and in your blogroll (not for the sake of it but because it helps your reader and/or helps build a picture of your interests). It is also a useful way of becoming part of a community of bloggers with similar interests.
4) Have a reasonably clear identity for the blog.
Essentially there are no quick fixes, you have to earn your readers and work to keep them - as you might expect. And remember that it will take time.
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