I think I’m doing this blogging thing all wrong. I like to think I’m writing about game design here, with a side order of pith, pomp and pique.
According to the statistics, though, one of my articles is a clear favorite (as in, easily twice as many hits per unit of time compared to anything else I’ve written):
…ah.
Yeah, the James Cameron halo effect is stronger than anything of substance I have to offer. Maybe I should review Inception? (tl;dr version: Ooh, nifty! Cool GFX. Freaky wife. Great heist flavor. Choose Your Own Ending.)
Kinda puts what I do here in perspective, just in case I start thinking I’m all that and a bag of chips (Boulder Canyon Rice and Bean Chipotle Cheddar chips, of course… man, those are good). So Gordon? At least this little blog has pretty much no effect on the industry.
This actually doesn’t bother me, since I’m not blogging to change the world, but it really did strike me as odd that the Avatar article would be the one with the most total hits. (It’s even topping older ones that have been around for two years or more.) In fact, sometimes it’s a game I play; try to top my daily hits on that article with one of my more traditional articles. So far, I’m not doing so well.
Oh, and while we’re at it, here’s my WoW Armory profile (conveniently not updated since the 10th). Feel free to tell me I’m doing that wrong, too. I promise to keep on doing whatever I feel like anyway.
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FCC Disclosure: I am in no way, shape or form in any sort of financial standing that would benefit in any way whatsoever from people going out and buying every single bag of those marvelous chips. I would, however, be saddened if there were none left for me.
Eh, my most-viewed post (I think – I’d have to check) is the one with the Man-Candy pic of Hugh Laurie. Not even remotely related to MMOs or gaming even.
Can’t blame my readers there. Mmmmm, Hugh Laurie….
My most viewed post is from a wow.com link. I think they misread my post or were playing a very careful irony game with me. Notable spikes included a post titled “naked draenei in blizzard fan art”.
Ultiamtely what I take away from all of this is that the gaming blogosphere is big, the MMO blogosphere slightly smaller, the WoW blogosphere even more so, and my reader count… That would have been a convenient time for some easy html tags to make my type really tiny.
I just checked out that Avatar Art post soley to boost those numbers further! I’ll do it 20 times a day if you really want to fudge the numbers. As an accountant, I’m really good at those kinds of things.
Post hit counts can be odd beasts. I have two posts that get three times more traffic than any other because they show up in Google searches, so while they do get a lot of hits, I’m not sure that they really get a lot of reads.
Question is: why are you writing? If you’re writing to get the maximum number of hits, then MMOs aren’t going to do it for you. Write about pornography if you want bigger audiences. But, then you have to consider the quality of that audience….
Don’t think you’re special, though. Take a look at my posts in August of this year and see which one got the most views…. Hint: the one with “porn” in the title.
Ysh, I have to wonder how many of those are repeat viewers.
Klep, I’m pretty sure my reader count is, well… easily encoded in 8 bits. Maybe I should be writing about NES games.
Gronthe, I’m flattered, really. And very amused.
BK, that’s the most puzzling thing. How in the world does someone get to my little corner of the web when searching for “avatar”? And yet, I get at least a dozen hits a day recently on that search alone. Baffling.
Oh, and Brian, I’m definitely not writing for hits. I’m writing because I enjoy it. I just couldn’t help but comment on the weirdness of the hit pattern. Odd stuff like that makes the math geek in me perk up, and it hits my funny bone at the same time.
Heh, I’d have been surprised if that post of yours *didn’t* get the most hits.
My post that seems to get the most hits is “EVE-why I quit.” Maybe a few people are looking for justification to get out of it. EVE can hook you even when you aren’t doing much or having much fun.
Sometimes I get more out of an “I quit” article than out of a gushing fanboy ramble. It may or may not dissuade me from being interested in the game (EVE is one that definitely seems to bring out strong feelings), but quitting posts tend to be relatively informative.
…but yeah, I’m sure there are people looking for confirmation that their desire to quit isn’t total madness.
I think I found out your problem – provided in your links. Your level 10 tauren has a talent build of 0/0/0.. so.. does that mean you have no talent(s)?
=)
KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE!
Oh, the talents I don’t have, they are numerous…
That character is level 18, so he has a few, but the Armory isn’t updating. My other character I had thought to link to hasn’t been played since the 4.0 patch blew up the talent system, so his talents have been reset.
…yeah, I’m a talentless hack.
It’s odd how the articles that are not your own first choice end up being the ones that get attention eh?
For the longest while, my ancient TBC-era “how to get a flying mount” article drove way more than expected traffic, but then I actively buried it.
By the way, I find it so much easier to read the blog of someone like yourself, in writing more / less for yourself. When people try to feed their traffic, I’m less entertained.
Maybe I’m just voyeuristic, lol. Okay back to your daily business, carry on, don’t mind us the audience over here.