What Can You Learn From Your Most-Read Stories?
Having Fun Juggling The Stats
I became curious about most-read stories when reading an article by Jan Sebastian 🖐👩🦰 — the link is below — that touched on what information can be gleaned from the stats that writers are able to look up about their own articles and stories.
I didn’t dig as deep as Jan, but here is a simple exercise that I found surprisingly interesting: I used the sort facility on the stats to find out which are my most-read stories and set out to see what I could learn from the result.
My Top 4
No 4: The most useful piece I’ve ever written comes in at number 4. Of course, “usefulness” is subjective; I am defining it in 2 ways:
- useful to others gauged by the amount and type of interaction and
- useful to me in terms of the income generated.
On both counts, this one has a big lead over everything else. Yet it only comes in at number 4, many thousands of readers behind the winner.
No 3: Coming in at number 3 was one of a pair of stories I wrote after a frustrating week where the local wildlife queued up to pose for photos, and I didn’t catch one of them. Maybe its popularity was amongst photographers who recognised the pain!
No 2: This was perhaps the biggest surprise of all. Culinary tales can be popular — check out Kris Bedenian for mouth-watering recipes that are easy to reproduce — but my culinary delight was nothing to compare to any of hers. It was the tale of a fruit & cheese scone with an accidentally acquired red hot kick, the sort no one would have been tempted to reproduce, surely.
And The Winner Is…
No 1: My most-read story (in the lead by many thousands over its nearest rival) is a short, fun piece that I wrote after watching a gang of small birds on a roof. I never did figure out why it became so popular.
Here’s Jan Sebastian 🖐👩🦰’s original article:
What Did I Learn?
I found this a fascinating exercise that generated a whole raft of ideas and potential explanations for why people read one thing over another. As to what I learned from doing this — well, let me digress for a moment before I answer that.
I wondered if other people would find this exercise as interesting as I did. Maybe they will… maybe not. However, I would love to know something about my fellow writers’ top 4 stories (by reads, not by views), so if anyone would like to have a go at this, please tag me so I can see how your collections compare to mine. Here are a few names that spring to mind.
Jan Sebastian 🖐👩🦰, Dennett, Susan Alison, Anne Bonfert, Kim Zuch, pockett dessert, Erika Burkhalter, Barb Dalton 🇺🇦, Pene Hodge, K. Barrett, Mia Verita, Louise Peacock, Maria Rattray, Linda Acaster.
I initially thought I might learn more about what I should write about. In fact, I didn’t. Thinking about it, the whole concept of what I “should” write is a whole Pandora’s Box that I have no intention of opening just now.
So, what did I learn? I learnt nothing — nada, zilch — but hey, that’s fine. I enjoyed the journey, and that’s what counts. I hope you enjoyed it, too.