Deep down, I knew I wouldn’t repeat April’s four-thousand-plus page views. Not that my readership doesn’t seem to have risen to a new plateau since Roy Kassinger discovered me. (I don’t see a reason they should be connected, but the correlation is there.) Just that April saw a couple weird spikes of readership that I think were freak events.
There were 3,414 page views in May 2019. That’s down from the 4,033 of April and 3,565 of March. It’s still a bit above the twelve-month running average, though. (That was 3128.2 page views, for the curious, which will be ‘me in one month’.) There were 2,058 unique visitors, down from April’s 2,418 and March’s 2,165. It’s above the twelve-month running average of 1781.6, anyway.
The number of likes resumed its dwindle; there were 133 things liked around here in all of May. There’d been 233 likes in April, and 176 likes in march. And that’s certainly below the twelve-month running average, which I won’t name here because every other month had more likes. It was 172.8. Which sees odd since I had at least one piece that really hit a nostalgic sweet spot, according to the comments I got about it. Comments were a bit more common, 24 in May. There were 10 in April and 24 in March. The twelve-month running average (this is going to become a new obsession, isn’t it?) was 47.7.
In all, 377 of my posts got some view in May. (The Home Page also drew views, but that’s not counted as any specific post.) The most popular posts were about what I would have guessed:
- What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? What’s With Edward’s Dog Not Being Seen? February – April 2019
- What The Heck Happened To Nancy and Why Does It Look Weird?
- What’s Going On In Mary Worth? How can you scam a Mary Worth character? January – April 2019
- Is the comic strip Henry ending? Is the comic strip Hazel ending?
- What’s Going On In Prince Valiant?
I expect comic strip plot recaps to be my most popular thing. And something posted near the kalends of a month has the best chance to get readership counts. But I am surprised people didn’t just get the joke with Edward’s Dog of un-depictable ugliness. Maybe I’ve been better-primed to expect that joke.
And while it wouldn’t make the top five, one of my long-form essays was finally reached the top ten. Everything There Is To Say About Programming A Computer In The 80s was really well-liked, and I’m glad. It may not actually have a specific big laugh, but I think it has got that sort of humor that comes from knowing someone actually thinks like this.
75 countries, or country-like polities, sent me readers at all in May. That’s up from April’s 66 and March’s 69. That feels nice to see. 18 of them were single-reader countries. That’s more than April’s 16 and March’s 14. Here’s the full roster:
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 2,607 |
| Canada | 119 |
| India | 103 |
| United Kingdom | 90 |
| Sweden | 55 |
| Brazil | 46 |
| Australia | 43 |
| Japan | 35 |
| Hong Kong SAR China | 24 |
| Netherlands | 19 |
| Malaysia | 18 |
| France | 17 |
| Germany | 17 |
| Mexico | 15 |
| Philippines | 13 |
| Romania | 9 |
| Denmark | 8 |
| Indonesia | 8 |
| Ireland | 7 |
| Finland | 6 |
| Hungary | 6 |
| Italy | 6 |
| Peru | 6 |
| Spain | 6 |
| Turkey | 6 |
| Colombia | 5 |
| New Zealand | 5 |
| Nigeria | 5 |
| Portugal | 5 |
| Singapore | 5 |
| United Arab Emirates | 5 |
| Uruguay | 5 |
| American Samoa | 4 |
| Argentina | 4 |
| Kenya | 4 |
| Russia | 4 |
| South Africa | 4 |
| South Korea | 4 |
| Switzerland | 4 |
| Taiwan | 4 |
| Bangladesh | 3 |
| El Salvador | 3 |
| Kuwait | 3 |
| Norway | 3 |
| Serbia | 3 |
| Thailand | 3 |
| Venezuela | 3 |
| Austria | 2 |
| Israel | 2 |
| Jordan | 2 |
| Kazakhstan | 2 |
| Liberia | 2 |
| Nepal | 2 |
| Poland | 2 |
| Sri Lanka | 2 |
| Ukraine | 2 |
| Albania | 1 |
| Belgium | 1 |
| British Virgin Islands | 1 |
| Bulgaria | 1 |
| China | 1 |
| Ecuador | 1 |
| Greece | 1 |
| Guam | 1 |
| Iraq | 1 |
| Jamaica | 1 |
| Macedonia | 1 |
| Mauritania | 1 |
| Moldova | 1 |
| Myanmar (Burma) | 1 |
| Paraguay | 1 |
| Puerto Rico | 1 |
| Qatar | 1 |
| Réunion | 1 |
| Uganda | 1 |
This is a complete turnover in single-reader countries: none of those sent me exactly one reader in April. This is my first complete single-reader turnover in a long while. Possibly since I started paying attention to these things. And, of course, I am happy that anyone might read and, I dearly hope, enjoy what I write. I’m just curious why I should have so many readers in Sweden, Brazil, or India. Again, I’m happy to have you. I just feel like … really? I say anything relevant to you? I’d like to know what it is.
So my story strip recaps. All the story strip recaps should appear at this link. I do have a plan for the next several Sundays, if nothing happens that shakes up the orderly world of the twelve threads I follow. My plans are for:
- Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant (week of the 9th of June)
- Joe Staton, Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy (week of the 16th of June)
- Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley (week of the 23rd of June)
- James Allen’s Mark Trail (week of the 30th of June)
- Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth (week of the 6th of July)
Between the start of 2019 and the start of June 2019 I’ve published 149 pieces for a total of 92,272 words. 19,030 of these words were published in May. So, that’s 614 words per post on average in May — April had been 644 — and, year to date, an average of 619 words per post. At the start of May it had been 610 words. I told you those Wednesday little things weren’t working.
There’ve been 204 comments overall on the year, for an average of 1.4 comments per posting. That’s the same average as at the start of May, at least. 820 total likes, for an average of 5.5 likes per posting in 2019. At the start of May this average had been 5.7. But at the start of April the average was 5.5 again. Hm.
June began with my having made 2,311 posts. They’ve gathered 125,314 views from 69,657 unique visitors. And as mentioned, 377 posts got at least one view in May. 565 posts got some view in April, and 420 in March. I have no idea what these fluctuations signify. Most likely nothing. If I’m actually interested in how much of my archive is being read any month, I should probably look at, say, the number of posts that get at least five page views. Or some threshold that suggests it wasn’t just a mistake.
If you don’t think reading me is a mistake, thank you. You can be a regular reader by adding the Another Blog, Meanwhile feed to your RSS reader. Or you can use the “Follow Another Blog, Meanwhile” button in the upper right corner of the WordPress page. I’m on Twitter as @Nebusj, but I won’t feel jealous if you follow other people too.
And if it helps you decide whether to follow me, I try to start each month with a pair of rabbit pictures.
Share this:
Another Blog, Meanwhile 