2013 Annual Report

Wahey!

It’s back!

WordPress’ friendly blog stats summary of the year that is now history. All conveniently packaged up to share with readers.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 64,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

And this time, I get to have a past year to compare it to.

Views

The blog has doubled its views in its second year, which is still kind of thrilling, even if the cynic in me says that’s probably mostly bots hitting old pages.

And they tell me that my writing has staying power! (Or I used up all my interesting topics in the first year or that’s probably still just bots.)

But the eternal optimist in me would like to thank my HUMAN readers who put up with my ramblings and appreciate at least a few of the posts that turn up now and again.

It’s a dartboard, y’know? Write and toss up enough posts and hopefully some will stick.

# of Posts and Pictures

Those have remained fairly consistent. I’m personally quite happy with that. Part of my rationale for starting the blog in the first place was to prove to myself that I could commit to a long term project and not get distracted by new shinies and then get lazy and slack off.

I’m on partial break for now, but I do hope to get back up to steam soon and get less lazy about including pictures in my posts again.

Let’s not call it a New Year’s Resolution, but more of a re-commitment, after I’ve taken stock of where I am this season and reorganized my life some.

(Chinese New Year is fast following in the western New Year’s footsteps this year and that is traditionally a period of mass cleanup and reorganizing BEFOREhand, since it is considered bad to sweep good luck out the door during the festive season. And it’s occurred to me that there’s a LOT of things around the house in desperate need of a cleanup from storerooms to wardrobes to terrabytes of data on computer hard disks. Argh.)

Popular Posts

To absolutely no one’s surprise – not mine anyway – the evil evil Liadri topped the stats as the most popular post of last year.

I remember watching that bar climb on the stats and shoot up to a way higher outlier than pretty much all of my other posts, confirming once again that if you are all about pageview whoring – write guides. Lots and lots of guides. Be a Dulfy, and monetize the heck out of your adverts, because there are a lot of people who a) Google up the answers before even getting started or b) get stuck on games and then Google.

Me, I’m more about writing what I feel like writing, in that moment and context. So yeah, expect guides only as and when I feel they’re appropriate (usually when I’m bursting to make a point or just want to share a particular strategy that worked after lots of effort on my part.)

Also completely unsurprising was the fact that the next two most popular posts were PSAs. Short, sweet, simple and as to the point as the usually longwinded me can make them.

“Here’s the answer to whatever you were googling for.”

Of course, me being me, they also do double duty as subjective criticism for “HEY DEVELOPERS, LOOK HOW NOT AT ALL OBVIOUS THIS IS.”

No, really, people are still looking for directions to the Blue Mountains a year later.

And those voting baskets… yeah. Put ’em on top of a floating airship in the sky with nary a label or signpost, except on a minimap that is better at showing stuff in two dimensions only.

Search Terms

Most are not excessively surprising.

Bookworm Adventures is surprisingly more popular than I thought. (It’s a good game though. And it’s a good post – in my not-so-impartial opinion – where I get to play with words. Lots and lots of words.)

I should really write more about the last, hmm?

(They must have been SO disappointed….

Searchers, don’t worry, besides one teeny safe for work cutscene in The Secret World, I believe the Grand Theft Auto, Dragon Age and Mass Effect universes hold out more hope. Mebbe Skyrim or Baldur’s Gate with mods? If you’re willing to go without the latter word of the pair, I recommend the hottest couple in GW2, Marjory and Kasmeer, and flex your imagination and fanfiction writing skills!)

Referrers and Commenters

You now know who you are.

I love all of you guys. In a totally platonic way.

Please keep it up. Make it a competition and beat each other, even. 😛

(Fer example, I know off the top of my mind that there’s at least two more reader-commenters whose names begin with R and one more whose name -sounds- like it should begin with R, that I appreciate too. And everybody else who I’m brain-blocked on at the moment. But y’all lost to the most prolific! Noooo…)

They’re the only way I can tell a human cared to read my drivel, rather than let my cynic tell me it’s bots.

If not for you, my valued readers…

…I’d still write…

…but I wouldn’t POST.

And that makes all the difference.

—

Thank you, one and all.

Here’s to another good year.

(After some house-cleaning. Aaaaargh.)