And now the easiest post I write all month: my review of what my readership looked like the past 31 days. I have to admit once more I’m not satisfied with my writership. I didn’t get some projects going that I wanted; but that’s all right. I’ve got five big ideas in mind for the coming several months. Thinking up what to do is always the hard part, other than actually doing it. So that’s my part. Now on to your, the readers’, part. Here I pause while savoring my last moments of not knowing the response was bad.
Oh, how about that. It wasn’t bad. It was even good. Readership was back up in May, rising to 1,274 page views all told. This ties with January for the second-greatest number of readers so far this year. It’s a fair bit up from April’s 1,117. Down from March’s 1,779, but what wouldn’t be? The number of unique visitors rose too, to 837. That’s below March’s tantalizing 999, but up from April’s 731. I did post 12 pieces in May, compared to 11 in April, and 16 in March. I suspect that the number of posts published is the only thing in my control that can influence readership numbers.
I can say what people were looking for. The most popular post of the month was, once again, about the number of grooves on a record’s side. I think it’s been getting more popular lately. This shows the power of uploading a better picture of that Buggles album cover, I suppose. The five top posts of the month:
- How Many Grooves Are On A Record’s Side?
- How Two Trapezoids Make This Simpler
- Reading the Comics, April 28, 2018: Friday Is Pretty Late Edition
- Reading the Comics, May 18, 2018: Quincy Doesn’t Make The Cut Edition
- Reading the Comics, May 23, 2018: Nice Warm Gymnasium Edition
So it’s worth spending some time improving the graphics for my crushingly detailed examination of the area of trapezoids. Writing blogs always say use quality graphics for your articles and it turns out they’re so right.
I struggle still with reader engagement, and I understand that. A lot of what I write is in improv terms hard to advance. I need to be better at writing open things that encourage response. There were a mere 17 comments in May, improved from April’s 13 but still not much at all, especially compared to March’s 53. Which still isn’t great but is something. There were 73 things liked in May, the same number as in April. And way down from March’s 142.
What countries sent me readers? Mostly the United States, as always. But here’s the full roster:
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 915 |
| Canada | 60 |
| India | 59 |
| United Kingdom | 36 |
| Australia | 21 |
| Germany | 12 |
| Puerto Rico | 11 |
| Denmark | 10 |
| Philippines | 10 |
| Singapore | 10 |
| Malaysia | 9 |
| Slovenia | 9 |
| Indonesia | 8 |
| New Zealand | 7 |
| South Africa | 7 |
| Israel | 6 |
| Spain | 6 |
| Brazil | 5 |
| Hong Kong SAR China | 5 |
| Italy | 5 |
| Switzerland | 5 |
| Sweden | 4 |
| Vietnam | 4 |
| Greece | 3 |
| Ireland | 3 |
| Norway | 3 |
| Russia | 3 |
| Albania | 2 |
| Belgium | 2 |
| Ghana | 2 |
| Japan | 2 |
| Pakistan | 2 |
| Slovakia | 2 |
| Thailand | 2 |
| Turkey | 2 |
| Algeria | 1 |
| Austria | 1 |
| Brunei | 1 |
| Costa Rica | 1 |
| Egypt | 1 |
| European Union | 1 |
| Finland | 1 (*) |
| France | 1 |
| Jamaica | 1 |
| Kuwait | 1 |
| Mauritius | 1 |
| Morocco | 1 |
| Netherlands | 1 |
| Poland | 1 |
| Qatar | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1 |
| Serbia | 1 (**) |
| South Korea | 1 |
| Sri Lanka | 1 |
| Saint Kitts & Nevis | 1 (*) |
| Trinidad & Tobago | 1 |
| Ukraine | 1 |
That’s 58 countries which sent me readers over the month. That’s three months in a row the total’s been 58 countries so I assume WordPress is just making these numbers up and figures 58 looks about right. Not suspiciously few, not suspiciously many. We’ll see.
There were 22 single-reader countries. That’s different at least; in April there were 14, and in March 15. Finland and Saint Kitts & Nevis were single-reader countries in April also. Serbia’s been single-reader for three months running now.
The Insights panel tells me that for 2018 so far I’ve had 66 posts, and have accumulated a total of 443 likes and 161 comments. There’s 55,677 total words. This means I published 10,836 total words over the month, which is more than I did in April. I thought I was tired. My year’s average right now is 843.6 words per post; at the end of April that was 830.4. My posts for May alone averaged 903 words. The April posts averaged 772. I knew I was getting more verbose. There’s 2.4 comments and 6.7 likes on average for the post. At the end of April this was 3.5 comments and 6.9 likes per post.
The month officially starts with 62,824 pages viewed from a tracked 30,339 unique visitors. I’ve officially got 759 WordPress visitors, who’re following through their Readers page. I’d be glad if you joined them: you can use the button at the upper-right corner of this page to follow via WordPress. You can also see me as @Nebusj on Twitter. And if you’d prefer you can follow the RSS feed for my posts. If you do that I get absolutely no information about what you read or how interesting you find it, and that’s fine by me.
We ended up putting 38 goldfish back in the pond. The reader with long-term memory may remember we brought 52 in. The fish had a hard winter, one afflicted by water quality issues and feeding issues. We’re trying to recover emotionally, and to work out a plan for better fish care next winter.
I think “Views Per Visitor” is just total views divided by total visitors, which in your case is 1274/837=1.52.
Congrats for the rising viewership in May!
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Thanks. I’m sure the views-per-visitor is just this simple calculation. But it’s the significance that I’m less sure about. Like, it seems to imply that most readers find a page they’re interested in, and a fair number go on to read a second before drifting off. What do they find? What are they interested in? Have I got keywords that help them find anything useful? Don’t really know. Also, I don’t know how it’s counted if someone goes to the main page and reads a series of essays from that front page. And I haven’t got any idea how people reading through the WordPress Reader are counted.
These days I feel like I’ve got a good handle on writing well reliably. But given that, then I need to figure out how to let people who’d find my stuff interesting know that it’s here to be read. That’s a part of the game I haven’t got worked out.
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My views-per-visitor is also less than 2 despite my attempts of using tags, categories, related posts and various other attempts to get visitors to click.
I think visitors (especially those who arrive through search engines) are probably looking for some specific information and less likely to browse through my site.
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Yeah, I suspect that my readership is much like yours, with people who arrive by search engines, find something they’re interested in, and who then move on. I don’t quite have things that encourage archive-binging, although when I get a more serious essay series going that may change.
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I’m always so enamored with what countries my readers are from as well, so I’m glad to see that I’m not alone! :)
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I’m glad to know there are other people who at least look at this sort of thing too. I don’t do anything particularly useful with the information. Just complain that countries I have some personal connection to don’t read me. But I like watching anyway.
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