Friday 15 April 2016

One Year Old- Interesting Figures

Hi everyone, yesterday the blog turned one year old! During the course of the last year I have been keeping an eye on the stats for the blog to see what people are interested in and what brings them to the blog (but mostly because I am a vain, vain man).
 
I thought I would share some of the more interesting results of this with you today (at least, interesting to me. These numbers were from the period of 14 th April 2015 to 31st March 2016).

Referring Websites
The chart below shows some of the top sites referring to the blog.
 
As you can see, Google and Reddit make up the most traffic to the blog by far. Other popular referring sites include dakkadakka (where I post my battle reports), natfka (or Faeit 212), facebook and blogger. I also get a fair showing from Google+ where quite a few people comment and "+1" some of my articles.
 
As well as the main referring sites, I keep an eye out for any unusual referring sites that pop up in the traffic sources window. Some of these include:
I have no idea how some of these ended up as referring sites to the blog. I certainly didn't poke around too much on some of them to find out (no pun intended).
 
Search Terms
As well as keeping an eye on the referring sites, I also sometimes keep track of what google searches lead people to the site. Here are some of my favourites:
  • "harlequin battle report"- One of the first recorded search terms. The battle report between my White Scars and the Harlequins was the first 'proper' one on the blog.
  • "dark angels codex review"- without a doubt, my review of the new Dark Angels codex has brought a lot of traffic into the blog over the past year.
  • "St Andrews wargaming"- It's always nice when people look for you directly.
  • "zine tfout"- ........your guess is as good as mine.
  • "how do I use Ravening bikers effectively"- not sure if they found what they were looking for, but nice of them to look around.
  • "codex spaceman review white scars"- I really want there to be a Codex: Spaceman.
  • "what is the coat to command angel....."- the text for the search terms is limited, so I will probably never know what the end of this sentence was and what they wanted.
  • "chaos space marine girl"- never really thought of myself this way.......
  • "{0}"- again, no idea.
  • "40000"- I assume this was 40k based, but a part of me really hopes this person just wanted to know what 40,000 was.
  • "tit sexting pics"- This is the most recent one from March. I have no idea what I could have written for this to be a search that linked to the blog. I hope that he (or she, I'm not biased) was not too disappointed when they were referred here. I'm not sure he was able to access the special "Members Only" section of the blog though........... 
 
Page Views
The readership of the blog has been steadily growing over the past year. I was extremely fortunate to hit over 100,000 total views last month, which I was really stunned to get in less than a year. We all start off somewhere and I remember the days when I was really excited to get 100 views in a single week!



Some of the biggest page hits in a day were:
  • Rhino cake- 1417 views
  • The evolution of formations- 1931 views
  • highlight on Faeit 212- 2089 views
  • The evolution of vehicles- 2149 views
Battle Reports
I am extremely fortunate to have a great club nearby where I can get a game almost every week. I know that some people struggle to get a game in a month or even a few a year, so I know how lucky I am. Over the course of the last year, I have written up 50 battle reports, almost one a week.

Of the 40k battles, I have won 28 and lost 15, giving me a win rate of about 65%. This has been using a good mix of my armies and against a range of opponents as shown below.



So that's just some of the stats from the last year. Hope you enjoyed taking the look at them.

9 comments:

  1. I would totally be down for Codex: Spacemans!

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  2. Excellent stuff, though I'm very jealous of the continuing growth of your viewing figures, I'm stuck with about 8,000 as my high point and have dropped back a bit again recently. Guess I need to get back on the battle reports and unit reviews again!

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  3. I always find the stats interesting, especially the random bits.

    It's really good your doing so well, can't say I'm not a little jealous as I've been going for a year and a half and I'm only just reaching 2000 views total! Lol, oh well, I'm enjoying myself. Keep thinking about reviews and battle reports but when there are such good ones like yours out there, it seems a bit pointless.

    So, keep up the good work and I look forward to the next year's worth of blogs!

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    1. You should do reviews and battle reports if you want to, it's never pointless. Always good to see alternative takes on new rules or different tactics.

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  4. That's really some fun facts right there, though if you really wanted to branch out into tit sexting pics I guess I wouldn't mind too much if I may say so^^

    As for me, I found your website when I was looking for White Scars info, and I've been checking back for new articles a few times / week since then.

    Good job, and once again, congrats on the 100.000 and the 1 year aniversary!

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  5. First of all, congratulations! It is always good to celebrate and reflect a bit on the journey that you have traveled already. When I read your posts I wish I played 40k too so that I could provide some proper feedback. But at least I can let you know I am one of those silent supporters :)

    It was interesting to see different types of statistics too. I was wondering if you could possibly write a post with your advice to fellow wargaming bloggers about your experience so far and what do you pay attention to in particular in order to create such a successful blog!

    Cheers!

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    1. Cheers Swordmaster, I've got to say, your blog was also one of the big inspirations when I first decided to start blogging. I think the similarities are quite apparent when you look at our battle reports!
      I was thinking about putting together a post on my thoughts on the last year and what I have been doing with the blog. You never want to be egotistical and say "Here's how to do a blog!", certainly I've only been doing this a year and there are many out there with a lot more experience than me, but I thought about putting together some general advice for a someone thinking of starting to blog. Just things that I've found out over the last year or so. Thanks for the suggestion.

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    2. Hi corrm!

      It is a great honor to know that long time ago my own blogging efforts were an additional spark that helped to start your own fantastic blog!

      Now it is me who is drawing an inspiration because I feel the blog should add some more topics, even if my main focus is on battle reports.

      The good thing about the post I suggested is that it is simply about sharing your experience. When you post on various subjects the reader often sees the end result. But it is as well interesting how do you write, what makes you choose what you post about and what are your findings and lessons learned along the road.

      And you leave it like that to the reader to take what she/he wants to take. There are as many way to blogging as there are bloggers but what makes it all even better experience is simply to share it with others.

      Keep up the great work and I am looking forward to reading the post about your way of blogging!

      Cheers!

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  6. Lol those are some bizarre referrals :D

    Congrats on the viewing figures, that is a great achievement :)

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