I like starting the month with a look back at what things were popular around here, and how much I got read, and all that. It’s a nice long article and it doesn’t take me being all that creative or anything. I don’t know. It works.
By the way, if you’d like to follow my blog, please do. You can do it in a way that doesn’t show up in my statistics by adding it to your RSS reader. For methods I know a little more about, you can use the button on the upper right corner of the page. Unless I do try out a new page theme and that button moves. Also, I’m also @Nebusj on Twitter. Each new posting gets a mention there, at least.
So what was readership like around here the first month of 2019?
It was a busy month, with the greatest number of page views around here since June. 3,343 page views from 1,830 unique visitors. There’d been 2,866 page views from 1,632 visitors in December, and 3,077 page views from 1,732 visitors in November. I haven’t had this many unique visitors since May 2018. To what do I credit this? The obvious thing to credit is a couple mentions in the Comics Curmudgeon. Not on the main page, but from commenters who used my plot recaps to help people confused by the story strips.
Maybe I should push my story recaps more at these sites. It feels intrusive to mention someplace I don’t regularly comment, though. Also many of the commenters have less patience for the story strips than I have. But maybe commenters would forgive story strips more if they could see, like, that something which seems out of nowhere was set up months ago and they just forgot or missed it.
Still, the number of likes rose to 183, just barely more than I’d had any month back to March 2018. I’d been in this 165-to-180 zone most of last year, dropping to 150 in November and 137 in December. The number of comments was up to 70, from December’s 44, and November’s 88. There’s clearly no pattern anymore except that there’s not a lot to talk about.
What were the popular posts around here in January? Nothing posted in January, for one. What did make the cut:
This suggests what I ought to do this year is go through all the syndicated newspaper comic strips, write a post “Is the comic strip Mother Goose And Grimm ending? Why does Funky Winkerbean look weird?” (or whatever) and watch the page views roll in.
My post popular piece actually published this past month was What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Who Are These Guys Mark Trail Is Punching? October 2018 – January 2019. This is a good lesson in how important it is to track who Mark Trail is punching. My most popular long-form piece was In Which I Cannot Honestly Say I Dodged A Bullet Here. This is a good lesson in how important it is that I just point at stuff that’s happening and call that humor.
There were 68 countries sending me readers in January. There had been 61 in December and 66 in November. So I’m in a sixties mood. But here’s the country list:
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 2,460 |
| India | 173 |
| United Kingdom | 96 |
| Canada | 92 |
| Australia | 67 |
| Germany | 42 |
| Sweden | 27 |
| New Zealand | 24 |
| Italy | 22 |
| Philippines | 22 |
| Denmark | 18 |
| Norway | 17 |
| American Samoa | 16 |
| France | 15 |
| Mexico | 15 |
| Poland | 15 |
| Spain | 15 |
| Finland | 13 |
| Romania | 12 |
| Taiwan | 12 |
| South Africa | 11 |
| Thailand | 10 |
| Croatia | 9 |
| Japan | 8 |
| Malaysia | 8 |
| Netherlands | 8 |
| Singapore | 8 |
| Switzerland | 8 |
| Slovenia | 7 |
| Brazil | 6 |
| Czech Republic | 6 |
| European Union | 6 |
| Hong Kong SAR China | 6 |
| Ireland | 5 |
| Uruguay | 5 |
| Argentina | 4 |
| Chile | 4 |
| Israel | 4 |
| Russia | 4 |
| Indonesia | 3 |
| Portugal | 3 |
| South Korea | 3 |
| Turkey | 3 |
| Armenia | 2 |
| Cambodia | 2 |
| Georgia | 2 |
| Hungary | 2 |
| Puerto Rico | 2 |
| Ukraine | 2 |
| Bangladesh | 1 (****) |
| Bulgaria | 1 |
| Colombia | 1 |
| El Salvador | 1 (*) |
| Greece | 1 |
| Guernsey | 1 |
| Iraq | 1 |
| Jamaica | 1 |
| Kuwait | 1 |
| Latvia | 1 |
| Lithuania | 1 |
| Malta | 1 |
| Nepal | 1 |
| Nicaragua | 1 |
| Nigeria | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1 |
| Serbia | 1 |
| Slovakia | 1 |
| Tanzania | 1 |
There were 19 single-reader countries in January. There had been 12 in December and 16 in November. El Salvador was a single-reader country last month. Bangladesh is on five months now for being a single-reader country. Huh.
The Insights page tells me I start February with 111,870 page views total, from 61,588 unique visitors. In January I published a total of 18,290 words. I’d had an average 590 words per post (my 2018 average was 639 words per post). There were an average 1.7 comments and 5.7 likes per post.
And the important material. All my story strip plot recap posts should appear at this link. The comics I expect to summarize over the coming month — barring some surprise or fast-breaking news which bumps something — are:
- Gil Thorp (11th of February)
- Judge Parker (18th of February)
- The Amazing Spider-Man (25th of February)
- Alley Oop (3rd of March)
I am expecting there will be comments made about Alley Oop, when I get there.
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