Not long ago I read a piece on another blog in which the author talked about her most viewed posts. This impelled me to take a look at my own output so far. I wrote my first post on this blog on October 11 of last year and I've published 74 altogether.
My purpose has always been to explain what and how I write and to get people interested in my stories and in my ideas. So some of my early posts (the first one was An Introduction to my Worlds; it has a nice picture of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head on it) are important but also among the least viewed. I really should repeat some of them, with some editing, and maybe I'll just do that!
Things proceeded at a blah pace until I hit a post on November 29 that has accrued 79 page views! And it keeps picking up views, which really puzzles me, since it's nothing but a brief announcement that I'm publishing a separate page with my Future History on it. The page itself has 52 views, so that means a lot of people looked at the meaningless announcement but never looked at the page.
Here are my five most popular posts of all time on this Ruminations blog (in reverse order):
No. 5: 53 page views of my December 8 post: "Double Topic: Update on Permission Grind; Language in the 30th Century." It deals with my problems with getting permission to publish my copyrighted epigraphs, and it also discusses the reasons for the adjusted spellings of names and other English words in the 30th century. Actually, it's pretty interesting. But how do people keep finding it?
No. 4: 56 page views of my June 12 post: "Curmudgeonly Addendum to Previous Post." Not exactly a magnetic title! It's very short and it's tagged "Smashwords Formatting." Ah, that may have something to do with it! But the previous post was "Ah, Sweet Mysteries of Smashwords," also tagged "Smashwords Formatting," and is much more detailed, and yet it's received only 13 page views! Does that make sense? The mystery persists!
No. 3: 79 page views on the one from November 29, mentioned above, called "A Discussion on Someone Else's Blog Spurs Me to Post My Future History." Maybe the "Future History" tag grabs people.
No. 2: 84 page views of my February 16 post: "Update on Permission, Chapter Posting, & eReaders -- and why not give "Monster" a try while you wait?" Another omnibus post dealing with formatting, the permission thing, stuff on my Wingdings problem, etc. It's fairly interesting but hardly earthshaking. I really don't understand why it keeps bringing people back on a regular basis. I suppose it could be the "Conlang" tag.
And -- ta-dah! -- at No. 1: 101 page views and growing daily: "Formatting Print Books with CreateSpace." (March 5) Who would have thought? I wrote the post at the suggestion of somebody on Twitter and apparently lots of people want information on that topic! When I check Keyword Searches, I find at least 6 different phrases with the word "CreateSpace" in them. That undoubtedly has something to do with it.
Additional posts on formatting topics have also been decently viewed: "Preparing a Cover for Your CreateSpace Book" has had 47 views, "More on Formatting Books with CreateSpace" has 18, "Formatting Illustrations for CreateSpace, and Other Miscellany" (which includes the map for "Stolen Mother") has a healthy 29 just since July 15. And "Use of Unicode in Kindle Formatting Is Incomplete! has 43 views.
I do hope some of you have benefited from my limited experiences with formatting for publication. It seems to show that practical advice proves popular.
One of the pleasant surprises is "A Picture of a Termite Worker Face," which 34 people have checked out. And my three offerings to the Third Sunday Blog Carnival have done quite well. Chapter 7 of v.1 of "The Termite Queen" has 28 page views, my short story "A Little Laboratory Work" also has 28, and the Prologue to my unfinished novel "The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars" has a whopping 42. Also, people seemed to want to read my comments on Mundane Science Fiction (31 views). The Waldo Canyon Fire got 25.
However, some of my posts have been duds as far as viewership goes, and yet some of those are among my favorites and deserve more attention. I'll discuss those in my next post!
No. 5: 53 page views of my December 8 post: "Double Topic: Update on Permission Grind; Language in the 30th Century." It deals with my problems with getting permission to publish my copyrighted epigraphs, and it also discusses the reasons for the adjusted spellings of names and other English words in the 30th century. Actually, it's pretty interesting. But how do people keep finding it?
No. 4: 56 page views of my June 12 post: "Curmudgeonly Addendum to Previous Post." Not exactly a magnetic title! It's very short and it's tagged "Smashwords Formatting." Ah, that may have something to do with it! But the previous post was "Ah, Sweet Mysteries of Smashwords," also tagged "Smashwords Formatting," and is much more detailed, and yet it's received only 13 page views! Does that make sense? The mystery persists!
No. 3: 79 page views on the one from November 29, mentioned above, called "A Discussion on Someone Else's Blog Spurs Me to Post My Future History." Maybe the "Future History" tag grabs people.
No. 2: 84 page views of my February 16 post: "Update on Permission, Chapter Posting, & eReaders -- and why not give "Monster" a try while you wait?" Another omnibus post dealing with formatting, the permission thing, stuff on my Wingdings problem, etc. It's fairly interesting but hardly earthshaking. I really don't understand why it keeps bringing people back on a regular basis. I suppose it could be the "Conlang" tag.
And -- ta-dah! -- at No. 1: 101 page views and growing daily: "Formatting Print Books with CreateSpace." (March 5) Who would have thought? I wrote the post at the suggestion of somebody on Twitter and apparently lots of people want information on that topic! When I check Keyword Searches, I find at least 6 different phrases with the word "CreateSpace" in them. That undoubtedly has something to do with it.
Additional posts on formatting topics have also been decently viewed: "Preparing a Cover for Your CreateSpace Book" has had 47 views, "More on Formatting Books with CreateSpace" has 18, "Formatting Illustrations for CreateSpace, and Other Miscellany" (which includes the map for "Stolen Mother") has a healthy 29 just since July 15. And "Use of Unicode in Kindle Formatting Is Incomplete! has 43 views.
I do hope some of you have benefited from my limited experiences with formatting for publication. It seems to show that practical advice proves popular.
One of the pleasant surprises is "A Picture of a Termite Worker Face," which 34 people have checked out. And my three offerings to the Third Sunday Blog Carnival have done quite well. Chapter 7 of v.1 of "The Termite Queen" has 28 page views, my short story "A Little Laboratory Work" also has 28, and the Prologue to my unfinished novel "The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars" has a whopping 42. Also, people seemed to want to read my comments on Mundane Science Fiction (31 views). The Waldo Canyon Fire got 25.
However, some of my posts have been duds as far as viewership goes, and yet some of those are among my favorites and deserve more attention. I'll discuss those in my next post!
I think it is fun to look at which posts have the most views--because in part it sort of shows us what attracts people. I went and looked at the post with the highest views on my blog, and it has changed once again. It was a post I did for the A to Z Challenge in April, and it gave me a lot of traffic. I think I might want to start blogging again!! :) Cheers, Jenn
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting, Jenn! Yes, I think it's useful to find out what's popular, although I'm hoping to stimulate interest in some of the less popular subjects that are important to me! I guess we need a mix!
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