Coming off the heels of the most successful Quarter to date for the blog I predicted that no quarter for the remainder of the year may match it. This one certainly did not. Unlike previous months there were more unexpected stoppages in posting than at any point since the blog began.
There were two major events that occurred during this time period that affected my ability to post articles to the blog: my Uncle Don died in August; and I was without internet access for much of September (see Shush! The Two Year Old is Listening! for more). Combined these two events lead to a full month of days without an update (31 days). That the absence of so much daily content from the blog affected the total views for the month cannot be denied, but that was not the only reason for a lower page view than the previous quarter. The largest draw of this quarter, by far, was the Basic D&D series which was abandoned when it became clear that the updates would be coming too regularly for me to do an adequate job with the project. Additionally the lack of any completed series in this quarter decidedly hurt the draw of the blog as those projects are consistently the most followed and reread. Moving away from covering any news items with the blog saw a slight downturn in overall traffic but not enough to be considered a major reason for the decline in page views.
Disappointments
By far the biggest disappointment for me was the Underdark Wars
game that I attempted to run. I foolishly thought that it would take up
a few moments of my time here and there and was not fully prepared for
the amount of attention it required. Still, I was having a ridiculous
amount of fun with it but then my internet was gone and I just have lost
all enthusiasm for it (as have almost all of the players).
I learned a lot from the experience and before I attempt something like
it again I am going make sure that I have all of the major things sorted
out before I launch. So that means that the map, rules, and community
will all be established first. Accomplishing those three things would
have drastically improved my time management and enjoyment in the game;
and I think that it would have helped keep the game going. The other
thing I'm going to do is appoint a secondary referee who will rule
whenever I'm not available so that the game never drags or has any lulls
in play.
Highlights
I had two articles published on EN World that have done very well in my estimation. The first, Ten Blogs Everyone Should Be Reading, has garnered 164,231 page views since it was first published on August 31, 2014. The second article, Ten Gaming Blogs That Will Make Your 5e Games Better, was published September 30, 2014 and has picked up 26,676 page views in about 24 hrs. I've seen a slight increase in traffic from both articles but due to the dearth of new content coming from the blog the influx was not sustained.
Adsense continues to plug along steadily increasing its revenue month over month, but the lack of new content definitely slowed its potential and decreased what revenue was generated.
Performance on Established Goals
Posting Schedule: I continue to have a daily posting average even though I have not actually posted on every single day. After witnessing the impact of missing so many days on the blog it is clear that for the continued growth of the blog I need to ensure that an article is posted every day.
Comment Response Time: Like the posting schedule this too was completely missed during this quarter. I don't like not responding to people who actually enjoyed a post I've written enough to comment on it. So this upcoming Quarter will see a return to the 24 hr response time window for the majority of comments (sometimes people don't need me to answer them so those won't have one).
Statistics of Note
| Month | Google +1s | Comments | Page Views | Total Posts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July | 488 | 251 | 7,725 | 30 |
| August | 541 | 340 | 7,552 | 47 |
| September | 327 | 125 | 3,891 | 20 |
Days Without a Post: 37
Total Page Views: 19,168
Q2 vs Q3 Performance
| Q2 | Q3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Total Posts | 163 | 97 |
| Total Comments | 1,575 | 716 |
| Total +1s | 2,087 | 1,356 |
| Total Page Views | 35,366 | 19,168 |
Difference Q2 v Q3
Total Posts: - 66
Total Comments: - 859
Total +1s: - 731
Total Page Views: -16,198
Adsense Revenue
Days Active | Revenue Generated
107 | $23.60
While Adsense is not bringing in a ridiculous amount of money that I can put into a huge pile and swim in like Scrooge McDuck it continues to improve month to month (excluding September) which speaks both to the ad placement and the bits of tinkering I've done with them.
Closing
I cannot express how much I appreciate everyone who comes by the blog and enjoys it enough to leave a comment, share it with their friends and communities, click on an advertisement, or just drops a plus one. It means a lot to me that you guys and gals have enjoyed the blog and I really hope that I can continue to provide you all with the sort of things that keep you coming back time and time again.
Thank all for coming back to this blog and keeping me going!
Hmm... maybe I should post my numbers and compare them to d20 Dark Ages in its last few months...
ReplyDeleteI think it would be cool.
DeleteI am amazed by you ability to post daily.. I don't know how you do it.
ReplyDeleteTenkar told me once that the way that he does it is by thinking about what he's going to write about when there's spare time (like in the shower or on the commute). I took that advice and started keeping a little notebook nearby where I write down what comes to mind. It's helped a lot.
DeleteI've been trying to take a similar approach, but September was a complete loss for me -- only 3 articles in 4 weeks. While I tend to write exclusively long-form articles, this is still terrible output for my purposes when my intent was to update about twice a week.
DeleteHopefully, I can recover some velocity this month, as I have several irons in the fire, but nothing publish ready yet.
Have you noticed that having multiple things going at once improves your overall work or does it seem to detract from what you're trying to put out?
DeleteI think it actually helps in the creativity of what I do publish, but it can hamper my output volume because I am not as focused on a single article.
DeleteI have about 3 ideas that are no more than a few sentences at this point, but they've been in that state for most of the summer. On the other hand, I published a lot of articles that I think were reasonably good in late summer, so perhaps those ideas just need the time to percolate. September was just a busy month with the kids and work, so the output stagnated.
One interesting thing to note, my critiques of WotC products send page views through the roof. In the articles I published this week, they have already done more traffic in the first 2 days of October than I did in all of September.... My traffic is about 1/2 what your traffic is, but October should provide a decent spike.
It appears I made ENWorld's news page. I was wondering where all that traffic originated.
DeleteI find when I try to post too often my content quality drops so I try to keep a steady 3 posts a week minimum.. I'm not a great writer like alto of you fine folks. I I have to be careful not to rush head long into mediocrity.
ReplyDeleteOh, does that means Underdark Wars is over? :(
ReplyDelete--Dither
Nope, just delayed until the start of the new year. I just posted an update on the community. :)
Delete