That Edge-of-Your-Seat 2016 Recap and Statistics

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2016 was the year I started posting regularly on ReprobateTypewriter.com.

Posting regularly was a new thing for me, and I didn’t really start until April, when I did the A-t0-Z Challenge. I’m going to be up front about it, and say that part of my discipline for finally putting my butt in my chair and doing it was that after my sister died, getting up and doing a blog post every day was more or less the only solid thing I could think of. I didn’t do it because I believed it would actually result in anything.

So, here are my results. The interesting ones, anyway. I had 758 views in 2015. In 2016, I had 5,683. In July and December of 2016, I had more views than I did in the entire year of 2015. If I follow this rate of growth out through 2017, I wind up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 43,000 views. I’m not sure if that’s a practical goal, or not. Still distancing myself from that, a little bit.

I did the StoryTime Blog Hop Four times, the A-to-Z Challenge in April, and NaNoWriMo in November. (And theoretically camp nano, but it got swallowed. Life.) Then, I did the Nano Blog Hop. I’ve also become a regular at the Insecure Writers’ Support Group. So, much more social than I have been in the past.

Oh, and look at me. I have followers. I’m not filling sold-out arenas, just yet, but there are more people following this blog than in my first school. Including the teachers.

My top pages for 2016 (not including my home page or stuff like “about me”) included a few of my short stories:

And the Storytime Blog Hop Page.

Over all, I’m happy with the results I’ve gotten. Among other things, I’ve started to see growth as something that can be measured in years, instead of centuries, and progress as being a realistic, and possible goal.

So, how has your path been?

7 Comments

  1. A.S. Akkalon

    Reply

    Congratulations on a great year blogging-wise!

    I only started blogging in October, and so far I’ve managed two posts every week. I’m thrilled because people have been reading my blog and commenting on it, and some of them are even people I don’t know! A few people have said I make them laugh, which is a great feeling.

    I don’t know if my stats mean anything, but I’ve had 2,210 page views, 1,102 sessions, and 603 users. That’s probably more people than I know in real life.

    Mostly I’m just impressed that I’ve managed to come up with something new to talk about twice a week every week, and someone thinks what I write is worth reading.

    In 2017 I hope to survive and keep entertaining my readers. 🙂

    • Karen

      Reply

      I don’t know what good is, either, but your stats sound pretty darn good to me! I’d be glad to have stats like that for a couple of months. We’ll have to trade notes, sometime.
      My site is set so it doesn’t count me, if I’m logged in, and I haven’t been promoting all that much in real life, and not at all on Facebook.
      I think a rate of growth might be the easiest way to avoid comparing apples to oranges, but I’m not really there, yet with the numbers.

      • A.S. Akkalon

        Reply

        Thanks! I’m certainly happy with my numbers.

        I tried to set my stats so they ignore my own visits, but I have no idea if it worked, and I think it counts it as a visit when I ping my site for one of those speed test things.

        In terms of promotion, I have a Facebook page that I barely use. I put a link to each new post there and that’s it. Same with Google+.

        I tweet each new post three or four times the day I publish it, and each day I tweet one random older post. I keep a tweet on my most recent post pinned to the top of my Twitter feed.

        I also post each new blog post to the Absolute Write forum, in the thread for new blog posts.

        I’ve told one person from real life about my blog. 🙂

        How about you?

        • Karen

          Reply

          My blog tweets automatically when I put a post out for the first time, and I’ll tweet once or twice (different posts) when I think of it. I like Twitter, but it’s a lot more conversational than promotional for me, right now.
          I still have to put things on Google+ manually. I’ve been doing that for a couple of months. It’s not a habit yet.
          I have to check out the Absolute write thread. I hadn’t heard about it, but then, I haven’t done all that much over there.
          You’ll laugh… I had a bunch of business cards made up a while ago. Pretty basic stuff. Name, website, email. And I think I’ve handed out like four of them.
          As far as I can tell, I haven’t gotten any views from real life, but then… I’m not really promoting there, yet.

          • A.S. Akkalon

            There’s nothing laughable about making business cards, you just probably need to give out a lot more than four of them to get viewers that way. 🙂

            I very aware of the issue of coming across as spammy, in Twitter or AW or elsewhere. On Twitter I chat and share a lot of other people’s blog posts and quotes and stuff, so the proportion of my blog posts is pretty low. I hope it’s not annoying anyone.

            I would feel bad about mostly using AW for that one self-promotion thread right now, but I’ve been a very active part of the community there in the past so I don’t think it’s out of line. I also follow the links to a few other people’s posts listed in the thread each time I go, and I think I’ve got some reads from that.

            Commenting on other people’s blogs is a great short-term way of getting readers, but I only want to keep going back to blogs that genuinely interest me, and I’d rather people followed me to read my posts than just because I followed them.

    • Karen

      Reply

      I’m hoping to help others… and maybe talk others into helping me. It’s so hard to get an objective grasp on where you are, when you’re blogging.

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