My oldest blog is about 2.5 years old now, long enough for statistical trends to emerge. Low traffic, but it's interesting to see what's top of the charts.
Litrefs
Litrefs gets about 20 hits/day. The most popular pages have been
- Poetry Punctuation (547 hits)
- poetry pamphlet publication in the UK (357 hits)
- Comments about poetry publishing (154 hits)
Fair enough - punctuation and publication will always be of interest to writers.
Litrefs Articles
Litrefs Articles gets about 40 hits/day. The most popular pages have been
- Metaphor and Simile (2,241 hits)
- Rhyme (485 hits)
- Tania Hershman: an interview (129 hits)
"Metaphor and Simile" gets many Google hits in bursts. I suspect it's found by pupils doing assignments.
Litrefs Reviews
Litrefs Reviews gets about 20 hits/day. The most popular pages have been
- Stuart: A life backwards (236 hits)
- The Best British Poetry 2011 (125 hits)
- Poetry Writing: The expert guide (112 hits)
The first and third are by authors who've been in the news recently (Masters for a new book and Sampson because of the Poetry Society). I suspect that those pages are picked up in random Google searches. Certain reviews seem to attract short-lived attention on the grapevine - BBP2011 was one of them.
Meanwhile, my Literary Quotes web page attracts about 40 hits/day. I'm surprised it's that low - review/article writers should find it useful.
My story collection "By All Means" (ISBN 978-0-9570984-9-7), published by Nine Arches Press, is on sale from 
My poetry pamphlet "Moving Parts" (ISBN 978-1-905939-59-6) is out now, on sale at the 
Fascinating, though I find looking at my stats just depresses me. What does amaze me, though, is how you are able to keep up so many blogs. if you add all these together, that's a lot of people reading what you have to say, even given the inevitable overlap.
ReplyDeleteI read a book or 2 a week on average, making notes as I go along. The articles are often blogifications of older web-pages, so they don't take long either. And I rarely post on Facebook, thus saving lots of time.
ReplyDeleteI have a wee look at my own stats (my blog is 4¼ years old) and these are the top four entries:
ReplyDeleteThe Last Station - 5155
When I was Five I Killed Myself - 4709
Why I Hate Love Poetry - 3030
Beatrice and Virgil – 2414
I say this not to boast but to wonder why. I see our blogs as very similar in many ways and I would have thought that we would attract much the same readership. The reason for the difference can only come down to public awareness. Why are people not aware of your blogs? And the only answer I can come up with is promotion. I long ago gave up on the if-you-build-it-he-will-come mentality. If you want readers you have to go where they’re looking and wave your knickers in the air metaphorically speaking. Also I only have the one site. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think it’s better because I’m running a one-stop-shop. In theory your blogs should be more user-friendly because if people are only interested in book reviews then you’ve filtered them out into a handy separate site. The bottom line is: I don’t know. I wish I did. I wish I got how this all works. My most recent post talked about voyeurism, exhibitionism and Christina Ricci and I wondered if there might be a spike in my hits from a lot of people who weren’t looking for a literary essay. I got an extra one hit for ‘christina ricci’ and that was it. I got more hits for ‘mice cartoon from the ning nang nong’ – I know, so go figure.
I don't advertise much. Looking at other stats suggests that it helps a lot to have links from other, more popular, blogs. I don't always write with others in mind (some of the "reviews" are notes to myself that I put online so I can easily find them). I prefer the multi-blog approach, but not all readers will. I think your posts are more readable than mine, Jim, and authoritative, so I'm not surprised at your audience stats.
ReplyDelete