As a RPG gamer, I always think that the first few levels are intentionally easy, but having past the first ten level ups, things get more difficult.
- Level 1: set up the blog
- Level 2: Publishing the first review
- Level 3: Getting the first views from readers through search engines
- Level 4: Publish 5 reviews
- Level 5: Publish 20 reviews
- Level 6: every day a hit – constant traffic
- Level 7: first follower
- Level 8: Publish 50 reviews
- Level 9: 5 views daily
- Level 10: Publish a guest review
- Level 11: Schedule a review
- Level 12: Attract a pingback
- Level 13: 50 ARC Reviews
- Level 14: 500 Likes
- Level 15: 600 Posts
- Level 16: 1000 Likes
- Level 17: One is fine, two is better
- Level 18: Be elite
- Level 19: Reblogged
- Level 20: 100 Followers
- Level 21: 750 posts
- Level 22: Reblog a post
- Level 23: 100 ARCs
- Level 24: 100 daily views
My last Level up! 100 ARCs has been more than a month ago.
100 unique visits each day on average is a huge jump when I look back at earlier level-ups:
- Level 6 was a constant traffic,
- Level 9 noted 5 views daily.
- Last year at this time was around 30 hits daily.
That’s a nice development, right?
Digging a little bit deeper, I find that most hits come from search engines often leading to a dozen posts. I like that, because it shows that old posts are still relevant. Unlike a news blog, even the first one hundred posts are as valid as they were when I wrote them, they don’t loose validity.
Fresh posts attract some 20-30 views, and that’s where the action is. Comments and likes target these newer posts and I love staying in discussion and touch with you, folks!
While I said “100 visits on average”, it is still a way to go to have those 100 hits each and every day. Fridays and Saturdays are slackers and still need some love.
Thank you for your support and your interaction, it’s a blessing and I feel all the positive vibes streaming through the blog.
How many views do you get? Blow me away with those numbers 😀
Reißwolf 
I used to get those numbers at one point, but after an absence of 1.5 years the views dropped to like 10 daily and are now back to like 30 daily. When I post something, it jumps to double that number. A big difference is that I no longer review movies and those movie reviews still bring in much larger numbers than sff book reviews.
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Posting generates views! Not posting leads to lower numbers. You can take a break for a while and people come back. That’s great, because there’s no need to get exhausted, one can take a break!
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Yah I used to post like 2 or 3 times a week and lots of movies. That brought in the views. Now, I post 1 or 1.5 times a week and I stopped caring much about the numbers. I still look at it because I like seeing people find the old reviews, but I just focus on building up a library of book reviews now. I also don’t do all those book haul or wrap ups or mailbag Monday or what have you. Funny thing is that I may have lower numbers now but my interaction with other bloggers is much higher than it used to be.
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I just started those monthly wrap ups, it’s still an experiment. I noticed that I nearly didn’t remember what I’ve read last month. Those wrap ups feel like a retrospective or the done column in a Kanban board.
Other than that, I only have this level up fun tag which is low frequently. I like how it leads to meta musings about blogging.
Why did you stop blogging about movies?
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Oh I have no time for it. I watch a lot of movies and for most of them I feel hard pressed to say anything more than a single paragraph. Also, I still have not fully recovered my focus since the burnout, so I have to keep the blogging at a lower intensity. Right now I am reading a lot because I’m at home looking for a new job for my reintegration into society, but the burnout changed my priorities a lot. I pulled down the blog from a major activity to an add-on for my hobbies like reading.
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I didn’t know about your burnout. That explains it totally. I feel with you, having lived through that horror last year!
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We have talked about it 🙂 but it is why I couldn’t blog for more than a year. I suspect that when I start working again that my post frequency will go down again to maybe one post a week or even less. There’s no way to know. But it is not so important for me. I just like it that if someone googles a review for some old book, that they end up on my site. And most of my daily views come from Google searches.
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See, I‘m still forgetful like hell 😬. Concentration sucks, as does sleep.
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Do the wrap up generate more views than a review? I’m always puzzled when I see those by other bloggers, they seem to get lots of comments/likes, more so than reviews, and I don’t really understand that.
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I have only two wrap ups. I just checked and found that they get 20-30 views just as other posts, same with comments or likes. I guess they are a filler of sorts for other blogs, just like those tags „stacking the shelves“, „waiting for Wednesday“. One cannot write a post each day about books, and those regular posts are a way to keep readers’ attention. I don’t intend to do them.
I didn’t clear my mind how to continue with the monthly wrapups. I kind of like looking back the last month, as I often forget what I‘ve read. But they are heavy work and yet another duty.
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I always wonder who has the time to read all that filler. Maybe some readers don’t follow a lot of blogs.
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I look into some of them, but not from all blogs. It’s more about the chat afterwards 😁
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If I get 20 views per post that that be a popular one. I cannot imagine 100 per day! I usually only check stats at the anniversary time. I went back and looked today cause I was curious. I have a core group that comment and like things. The rest may be bots. Arrr!
x The Captain
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That’s similar here: 20-30 views for new posts. But you surely get views for older posts, don’t you? Those are driving up the statistics in my case.
May the bots be with you! Use the bots, Luke!
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Congratulations, nice stats! We do get there, occasionally, but our average for 2020 was slightly over 40… and it was by far our best year.
I also like the fact some of the older posts still get some love. A few years ago most of our traffic came from German (almost exclusively) readers interested in Ola’s post on Astrid Lindgren… it lasted for a year or so, and it’s still our most popular post ever…
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Pippi Langstrump! 😍
I exactly know who visits from Poland, dear piotrek 😁 Big Brother is watching you! Same for NZ 😎
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Maybe easiest to compare is last month? March had 1400 visitors and 2741 views. Better than March last year, but still down from the last few months of 2020, when I had about 100 views day easily. I can’t explain the slight slump. Maybe people are more online in the darker months? Or maybe it was a pandemic effect?
You do post daily, so it’s a hard comparison. I always wondered, do the short story posts keep attracting views afterwards?
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March had 2150 visitors and 3656 views.
That’s an interesting observation, bormgans! I noticed that October-January the views stayed exactly the same. December has seen a slump, especially around Christmas and New Year.
My interpretation is that this blog is still in an expanding phase and can’t be easily compared to a more stable blog.
Some short story posts from the last years lead continuously the statistics. Mostly from Ken Liu, then there is the Omela story „The One Who stays and fight“. But also the years old posts of Zelazny, Ellison, and Wolfe stories get their views. Maybe the blog has a USP in posting a review for single stories? I don’t know.
Daily posts are increasingly hard to keep up recently. I didn’t manage it in March. Let’s see how it goes in April.
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(new posts get about 30 to 100 views in the first week, depending on how obscure or not the book is)
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That’s far more than I see! Do your older posts attract views?
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Yes, some even daily. But that’s also in flux over the long run. My Recursion post got 6 to 10 daily views last year, now it’s about 2. Memory Called Empire and Piranesi were most popular last month, about 130 views each. Some others, like the Dune posts, get steady views of about 1-3 views each day.
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One never knows which posts get a hit. It’s a funny race! Your Dune posts are great and it’s good that they are being read 👍
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Thanks!!
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Congrats! That is a big accomplishment. Day by day, your blog is growing stronger and more powerful, muahahahahaha! 😀
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Thanks! I don’t have plans for world domination, there’s room for everyone. (Back there in the tiny cellar cupboard, harrr 😎)
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