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indriWell, I've had webstat thingies up at my site for a couple of days and I've been finding the results quite interesting, even though I've far too little data for a proper statistical sample.
I have a much better idea now of how people find my site. A small but not insignificant proportion of visitors are people who aren't looking for fanfic at all, but want sites on British breakfast cereals or are googling combinations of words that just happen to match a story. For example, some poor bod in India was looking for "smooth breakup marriage" and wound up with Honeymoon. But the majority of people are looking for fic. Quite a few find my site by googling the titles of stories I've written, which is nice as it suggests they've read and enjoyed a particular story and have decided to go looking for more. But the largest proportion of people come via fic archives (especially All About Spike), award sites and rec lists.
The countries of visitors have varied a bit more than I expected. Often, the stat counter can't tell where someone is from or just lists it as "Network" but the remaining data shows that the majority of my visitors are from the US, UK and Australia, with other countries including Belgium and Saudi Arabia as well as that lost visitor from India. I'm surprised by the number of hits from US Military sites.
I seem to have about twenty visitors a day, of which a couple are looking for something else entirely. Most only look at a couple of pages per visit, but one or two might nose around for longer. Of course, I can't tell how many people actually read the stories in front of them. Maybe it's fifteen a day or a hundred a week, something of that order, which is pretty cheering, especially as I suspect most of my readers read me on archives sites elsewhere.
I have a much better idea now of how people find my site. A small but not insignificant proportion of visitors are people who aren't looking for fanfic at all, but want sites on British breakfast cereals or are googling combinations of words that just happen to match a story. For example, some poor bod in India was looking for "smooth breakup marriage" and wound up with Honeymoon. But the majority of people are looking for fic. Quite a few find my site by googling the titles of stories I've written, which is nice as it suggests they've read and enjoyed a particular story and have decided to go looking for more. But the largest proportion of people come via fic archives (especially All About Spike), award sites and rec lists.
The countries of visitors have varied a bit more than I expected. Often, the stat counter can't tell where someone is from or just lists it as "Network" but the remaining data shows that the majority of my visitors are from the US, UK and Australia, with other countries including Belgium and Saudi Arabia as well as that lost visitor from India. I'm surprised by the number of hits from US Military sites.
I seem to have about twenty visitors a day, of which a couple are looking for something else entirely. Most only look at a couple of pages per visit, but one or two might nose around for longer. Of course, I can't tell how many people actually read the stories in front of them. Maybe it's fifteen a day or a hundred a week, something of that order, which is pretty cheering, especially as I suspect most of my readers read me on archives sites elsewhere.
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Date: 2004-07-17 05:03 am (UTC)Heh, this is great! One day I hope to read an article on How I Discovered Fanfiction, wherein the writer explains that they were trying to find out who invented weetabix for their kid's school project and stumbled across this great Spike story. And the rest, as they say, is history.
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Date: 2004-07-17 09:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-17 09:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-17 05:53 am (UTC)Of course anyone who only reads you on "All About Spike" is missing out on the Cardboard Giles blog, which is a delight. Pity you didn't continue it into S7.
I can't remember where I first discovered your work; I have a feeling it might have been through LiveJournal.
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Date: 2004-07-17 08:58 am (UTC)Once I've done the Illyria fic, I'll be returning to S7 Giles, but it won't be comedy, given what transpired later on. A pity really, since I had enormous fun writing comedic Giles.
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Date: 2004-07-17 09:19 am (UTC)Can't your S7 Gile start out comedic and then turn deliciously dark? I read a most unusual point of view the other day (but of course I can't for the life of me remember where) - the person was arguing that S7 was truest to Giles's character, and that she'd felt all along that he was hiding aspects of his personality from Buffy, and in S7 we finally caught a glimpse of that side of him. And it makes sense, if you think about his early history. You don't get from Band Candy Giles to Tweedy Giles if there isn't an element of putting on a costume.
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Date: 2004-08-19 06:22 am (UTC)(Sorry for the extremely belated response.)
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Date: 2004-07-17 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 05:59 am (UTC)Trouble is, I think that deep down, Cardboard and Pod Giles are one and the same. And AUs scare me. Interpolation feels easier to me. S7 had very serious problems but I think a lot of the difficulty was execution. We didn't need the stupid Guardian person or Caleb and we didn't need the Deus Ex Machina. All we needed was some coherent storyline for the FE. (I even liked most of the Potentials.) So if I were to rewrite S7 it would look remarkably similar, I'd just tidy up some things they weren't able to take care of fot the reasons you give above.
Glad you liked CG though -- I'll let him know :)
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Date: 2004-07-17 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-17 07:52 am (UTC)What you do is you register at someone's site and they give you a piece of code that you add to each webpage you want monitored. Every time someone looks at the page thereafter, it triggers a call to their website which they record and collate. You log in to their site to see your stats. The stat providers vary by what and how much info they provide and what the catch is.
I've been using webstat.net, which was chosen randomly from among those offering free, "invisible" hit counters. Many of the hit counter companies provide a free service but expect you to paste in an ugly graphic at the bottom of each page to advertise their services. The invisible counters don't show up at all and the company makes their money some other way, although I haven't worked out yet how webstat.net do it.
I'm just adding some more code from statcounter.com because they provide more detailed information, such as which pages have been viewed. The downside is that their website crashes my Safari browser (but not IE) and they make their money by giving you pop-up advertising when you check stats. I'll no doubt report on the more detailed info when I have it up and running, so I can let you know how it works out.
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Date: 2004-07-17 04:52 pm (UTC)The most depressing part is watching the readership fall off from chapter to chapter of a longer fic. It happens with both of my serial fics, although the funny thing about Offerings is that the middle chapter with the biting scene has many more hits than any of the others.
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Date: 2004-08-19 06:21 am (UTC)Note to self: do not post a fic chapter by chapter. Preserve the illusion.