Write Now! A Quick Study of Unique and Return Visitor Trends to Three Popular Writing Sites
The number of unique visitors to writing sites changes over time. That’s a fact. Therefore, anyone who publishes to these sites may realize that they are not getting as many views this month or last compared to several months ago. Realize the market trends and adjust your strategy. You stand to reap the rewards.
Not to Explain Why
Don’t blame the ocean because the tide is going out, it is the moon that is causing this. With writing sites, sometimes it is easy to get massive numbers of views and a month later, an equally well-written article hardly gets noticed. The tide has gone out. Don’t take it the wrong way. This is not to explain why it happens, but to demonstrate that this is a real trend and therefore, it suffices the anxious author to either publish other genre or wait it out until interest in their work is realized. Losing heart and stopping writing is the wrong response. A well-written article or documentary on the internet will be found and eventually, viewed and appreciated. As a novice writer with his ear to the forums I hear the same things all the time. ‘My views are way down this month’ or ‘my revenue is not so much this month as several months ago, why?’ and so forth.
It’s Not You
Here is a statistical graph showing interpolated linearly of three rather well-known writing sub-domain sites of Triond.com, and the traffic they have received over the past year. The current month (March ’09) is not shown as the month is not over yet. In the graphic below, you will notice that the traffic changes drastically month to month over the previous year with three sites tested.
(screens captured by author from siteanalytics.compete.com)
I have had articles published at all three of these sites and have to agree with the aggregate findings shown here. While the monitoring site that I got this graph from does not have sufficient information on Writinghood.com (BLUE) I have noticed that articles I have had published there in recent months not fared so well. Where I used to get thousands of views, I now might get hundreds or even merely dozens despite the article being (in my humble opinion) well-written and informative. I can only hope that in time the article(s) will be found and receive the attention they deserve.
I did have an article at Trifter.com (GREEN) that did amazingly well in the month of December when traffic was high. I benefited from this influx of new and return visitors. My content was placed where the visitors were.
I have been having a run at scientific articles recently and noticed that the site Scienceray.com (ORANGE) has had increasing visitors for several months now and up to the present. This trend seems to be continuing and likely will show the same increase throughout this month too. Anyone interested in writing and getting many views should monitor such online viewing trends and write accordingly to place your content where the market is. Yes it is just that simple, write articles to appear where the most traffic is.
If you are writing poetry or publishing on writinghood.com and not getting the exposure that you want, try your hand a few times at a well-researched ‘science’ article and get published over on scienceray.com. Build your readership first and then you can write what you want (poetry, haiku, etc.) and perhaps your fan base will check out your other works. The important thing is to place your writing where it will be found, multiple topics and in multiple marketplaces. Leave a trail leading back to where you want to be found. For every article written there are hundreds or thousands of people out there that may be interested to read your words.
Three More Examples of Writing Sites at Triond
I thought to add another comparison of three more Triond sites and again, notice the upward trend for all three. Notice also that the volume of traffic for two of these sites are over twice as many viewers as the statistics from the first graph!
While Quazen.com (ORANGE) does have a marginal upwards trend, notice that Healthmad.com (GREEN) and Socyberty.com (BLUE) show a remarkable performance over the last year despite a flattening-out of viewership since January ‘09. Your best bet is again, write for where the market trend is. If you want exposure for your work try writing articles that will be published here.-I’ll see you there!
Basically, just do it! Write now!
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Tags: Blog, blogging, Internet Publishing, poetry, publishing, science, Scienceray, Trifter, triond, web logs, Writing, Writinghood
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March 23rd, 2009 at 7:35 am
Where can I see those graphs?
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:04 am
nice article
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:58 am
Good insight. I’ve noticed traffic volume does go up and down considerably. Patience is required (and for the impatient this is a good opportunity to practice). And you’re absolutely right — keep writing!
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:41 am
Wow. Great insight and data. Very impressive and I’m sure very helpful to writers. Well done
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Wow, I need to start monitoring this. How did you find the graph with unique visits? Sorry- I am not tech savy- LOL!
I dont have a number specific graph, but I have noticed the same thing just by looking at my pg view numbers. What is hot today, may not be hot next month. It is annoying to see a well composed article go to waste though
March 24th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Great insight. Didn’t thought of it as of any importance until after reading your article. Very helpful advice indeed. Thanks!
March 24th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Cool stuff – almost surprised that Triond let you publish this, but the info is in the public domain, I guess!
March 24th, 2009 at 6:43 am
They may pull it down at any time… and, it is published on writinghood…
March 24th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Great article! Thanks for the info.
March 24th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I really enjoyed this. This is a good example of thinking outside of the box to see how to target your articles. Good, timely advice. Thanks for sharing.
March 24th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
It makes FAR more sense to analyze the market trend (what are people interested in read?) and write to be where the traffic is, than the ‘click my articles/I’ll click yours’ mentality of getting views (”impressions”) which, while it DOES get numerical views, really does not create profit in the long run.
-I could say more but that is best reserved for the ‘private’ forums to be viewed by Triond writers only and not for public consumption…
March 24th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Great article Stickman…With reading this, I’ll have to track down some of those statistics.
Excellent article! Very informative.
Thanks,
-Fresh Writing
March 28th, 2009 at 6:33 am
Nice one stickman… I never thought Triond would allow something like this but its great…
March 31st, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Great article! I still say publishing articles on http://www.triond.com and http://www.bukisa.net is the best way to build a long-term income. Sure it takes a while, but you end up with an automatic recurring income for a long long time.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:11 am
I cannot take credit for it, -but gee… the new ‘visit trends’ graph on Triond user’s “Dashboard” is almost exactly the same thing and came about just a couple days after we published this. Now we can see in linear display how our respective published articles are faring. I am finding it very useful.
May 3rd, 2009 at 2:46 pm
That is a good tactic. We need to do things like these, think through trends and infer what to do. That will help a lot.