Blog Statistics: January 2017

This is going to be a boring post filled with numbers and me prattling on about the health of the blog, where I'm at in relation to my goals, and my immediate goals for February. If you're not down for that I'll have some more role-playing content available later today (probably). Otherwise, let's crunch some numbers.

Right, so the first thing that I want to look at is the performance of posts published in the month of January by Page Views only. This will give me a bit of raw numbers to observe.

 Page Views Only

         | January | February

2013 |                |

2014 | 12,848   | 13,359  

2015 | 11,066    | 16,429

2016 |  5,843    |    688

2017 |  7,093     |

Now at first glance it's tempting to scream out that I've jumped the god-damned shark and that Dyvers is dead because it isn't hitting 2014 and 2015 levels in January and February; but those numbers are deceptive. So let's look at total posts over that same time period.

Total Posts

         | Jan | Feb

2013 |       | 

2014 |  71 | 63

2015 |  37 | 42

2016 |    6 |  1

2017 |  23 |

The increased volume of posting in 2014 and 2015 definitely explains the overall increased page views during that time period. But it also brings up one of my early worries about the blog: consistency. When I first started working on the blog I had an incredibly prolific posting schedule which increased my overall views, but I had a very uneven viewership on those posts. I could have one post hit 792 views in a day and the next one would only hit 89. So let's take a moment and look at my Average Page Views per Post because I think that's going to be a bit telling.

Average Page Views per Post

         | Jan | Feb

2013 |          | 

2014 |  181  | 212

2015 |  299 | 391

2016 |  974 | 688

2017 |  308 |

Looking at those averages for the 2014 and 2015 bears out the trend that I had reported at the time: that Dyvers is seeing a consistent and steady growth in regular readers. 2016, were it a regular posting year and not so abysmally updated on my part, I believe would bear out that same consistent growth trend. As it stands now 2016 instead shows an inflated view pattern born on the backs of regular readers who checked back for new updates that didn't come as they had in past years. 2017 though continues that steady growth that was expressed in the previous years. 

In past updates I have always been able to look at Google Plus +1s as a way to evaluate my readers engagement with the blog, however, since the update to Google Plus it appears that I can no longer have confidence in the Plus 1 marker as it doesn't capture +1s given across different locations (for example, if I share a post directly with my stream and then in one of the communities). Thankfully I still have my comments section on the blog and it has been very enjoyable to see all of you commenting there since I started posting regularly again. I'll just have to keep an eye them to see where you guys are at as far as the blog is concerned until I find a better way to judge how you're liking what I'm putting out.

Now I've got to get back to plotting the end of the world in my campaign. Talk to you all later.

1920 - Final Charge by Jakub Rozalski