There’s a number of tools for evaluating how a blog’s doing traffic-wise, but I’m not sure why anyone doesn’t just use Google Analytics, which will tell you how many visitors, where they’re coming from, what pages they’re looking at, and much more. Much like SEO, this is something that could take up its own workshop, and we didn’t get much to explore it in class. Hopefully these links will prove an alternate entrance.
One of the things I caution students in the (my) blog class, tho, is that the numbers provided by analytics look a lot more precise than they probably are. Numbers like page views and unique users and such are notoriously fuzzy and should not be taken at face value. About the best you can get from them are relative trends — i.e., one blog post is definitely more popular than another by some squinty sort of margin.
Note also that Google Analytics et al. are not specifically designed for blogs, they’re designed for commercial websites. As such, stats like bounce rate are not meaningful in the same way.
Still, it’s definitely worthwhile to use analytics; you learn surprising things about your blog that way.
PS People are aware, right, that adding analytics to a site has an impact on overall performance — ? Not a big one, but it’s additive, and each little external call that you add to a blog site — analytics, feed burner alert, etc. — is one more little blip.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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WIP Snippet: Five Ways To Fall In Love on Planet Porcelain
Five Ways To Fall In Love On Planet Porcelain(From a story I’m working on.)
Over the years, Tikka’s job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain’s Bureau of Tourism had come to shape her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five which were distributed through the Bureau’s publications and information dollops: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain’s Clay Fields; Five Restaurants Serving Native Cuisine at Its Most Natural.
Today she was composing Five Signs of Spring in Eletak, her native city. Here along the waterfront, she added chimmerees to her list as she watched the native creatives, cross between fish and flower, surface, each chimerene spreading its white petals as it surfaced, white clusters holding golden centers, tendrils of golden thread sending their scent into the air along with the most delicate whisper of sound, barely audible over the lapping of the sound’s water.
The urge to pose beat along every energy vein of her silica body, but she resisted it. She would remain alone this spring, as she had every spring since she had made her vow and inscribed it in the notebook where she kept her personal lists, under “Life Resolutions,” #4 under “Keep myself clean in thought and mind,” “Devote myself to promoting Porcelain’s tourism,” and “Fall in love.” The third item had been crossed off at the same time, in vehement black pen strokes.
"Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart" Posted on Patreon
I just posted the first story from the Patreon campaign over there as well as mailing it out. It’s a story set in Altered America, a steampunk version of 19th century America that I’ve been working in recently. If you read Raapacini’s Crow, which appeared on Beneath Ceaseless Skies this month, it’s the same world.
19th century America is one of my favorite historical periods, and I’m looking forward to bringing in some of my favorite figures as characters, such as Lucy Stone, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Victoria Woodhull. You’ll find a somewhat altered Abraham Lincoln as well, who has made a terrifying choice in order to win the Civil War, one that will affect the country for decades, possibly centuries, to come.
The story is inspired by the television show, Wild Wild West, which was steampunk back before anyone knew the term. The pair of Pinkerton agents in the story have already appeared in one other story, and I suspect there’s plenty more of their adventures lurking in the wings.
Here’s the first few paragraphs:
Frenzies of gingerbread adorned the house’s facade, but it was splintery, paint peeling in long shaggy spirals that fuzzed the fretwork’s outlines. The left side of the house drooped like the face of a stroke victim, windows staring blindly out, cataracted with the dusty remnants of curtains.
Agent Artemus West thought that it would have given a human man the chills. He glanced back at Elspeth to see how she was taking it, but her face was chiseled and resolute as a fireman’s axe.
“You all right?”
She swabbed at her forehead with a bare forearm, leaving streaks of dark wet dirt. “Thank your lucky stars you’re mechanical and don’t feel the heat,” she rasped.
Hot indeed if enough to irritate her into mentioning that. He chose to ignore it.
The house sagged amid slumping cottonwoods, clusters of low-lying trees, their leaves ovals of green and pale brown. Three stories, and above that, two cupolas thrust upward into the sky, imploring, the left one tilted at an angle. The wind whistled through the fretwork, a shifting, hollow sound, like a jug’s mouth being blown across. There had once been a flower garden towards the back. Weeds had claimed most of it, but the papery red heads of poppies blazed among the tangle. The sky stretched high and blue and hollow overhead.
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One of the things I caution students in the (my) blog class, tho, is that the numbers provided by analytics look a lot more precise than they probably are. Numbers like page views and unique users and such are notoriously fuzzy and should not be taken at face value. About the best you can get from them are relative trends — i.e., one blog post is definitely more popular than another by some squinty sort of margin.
Note also that Google Analytics et al. are not specifically designed for blogs, they’re designed for commercial websites. As such, stats like bounce rate are not meaningful in the same way.
Still, it’s definitely worthwhile to use analytics; you learn surprising things about your blog that way.
PS People are aware, right, that adding analytics to a site has an impact on overall performance — ? Not a big one, but it’s additive, and each little external call that you add to a blog site — analytics, feed burner alert, etc. — is one more little blip.