Well, it’s probably time I laid out our 2016 year-in-review post, because that’s the thing to do in January, and because I like numbers. So here we go!

The Big Three Numbers

The Big Three stats for 2016 (Views, Visitors, Likes) once again buried the previous year’s numbers.

2015:

• 2,432 Visitors, 3,754 Views, and 544 Likes

2016:

• 3,788 Visitors, 5,505 Views, and 1,021 Likes

Holy crap, those Likes. Either we’re getting better at writing or we’re starting to find a real audience here. Probably both. It also helped that our 2016 Visitors eclipsed our 2015 Views, a goal I had been eyeing over the final few months of the year.

Top 10 Posts in 2016

Our top three pages for Views have stood strong from year to year…

1. My Hozier review (posted 12/14/2014) – 2,120 Views in 2016
2. Our homepage (first published May 2014) – 1,023 Views
3. And my Halestorm review (posted 5/8/2015) – 308 Views

…are far and away the biggest chunk of our 2016 traffic, making up 62% of our total traffic.

Now, maybe it’s not fair to include the homepage in there. So excluding that, Hozier and Halestorm brought us a full 44% of our Views in 2016. That’s 44% of our traffic for the year going to two posts I didn’t even write in 2016! That’s crazy.

As a side note, my Haiku Sunday series earned 311 Views in 2016, a full 5% of total Views. I think that is significant, even if it combines all 52 haiku I posted in 2016, as well as a few I posted in 2015 that somehow still got views.

Here’s how the rest of the top 10 shook out:

4. The Warden of Everfeld (posted 7/24/2016) – 90 Views, most of which came from Upwork when I was looking for a freelance cover designer.

5. Short Story Challenge – “First Day of Work“ (posted by Marcy Erb on 12/8/2014) – 62 Views

6. About Us page (published 2/25/2014) – 49 Views. So that’s good I guess. People want to know what we’re about.

7. Strange Birds + Grandpa vs. Prowler + Dead Sara = The Best Rock Show I’ve Ever Seen (posted by me 8/6/2016) – 47 Views. This post also did quite well when I posted it to Facebook.

8. Marketing Your Novel: Where to Begin? (posted by me 9/20/2016) – 33 Views

9. Gut Reaction: THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir (posted by me 11/8/2015) – 29 Views

10. December’s Theme – I’m Late, I’m Late, For A Very Important Date…. (posted by Jessie 12/4/2015) – 29 Views

Do you notice anything in particular about this top 10 list? First of all, there is a precipitous drop-off from #3 with 308 clicks to #4 to 90 clicks. No other post even comes close to sniffing 100 Views for the year.

What’s also interesting (read: sad) is that only three posts published in 2016 cracked the top 10 for total views this year. That’s something I’d like to change. One could argue that this indicates the strength of our archives, and that is encouraging, but I think it also demonstrates that many of the posts I anticipated would do well this year simply did not.

For instance, after my debut Marketing Your Novel post gained 27 Views in September alone, I had high hopes for my marketing series. Since that post, however, my subsequent four posts in that series have gained 31 clicks combined.

The question in my head is, did I overestimate the impact those posts would have on traffic? Or has that content already become stale?

I hope it’s the former, but the upcoming months will tell. After all, all of our stats dropped through the holidays, because that’s how the holidays work. So maybe the marketing posts will be more popular as people are gearing up to meet their goals for 2017. Or maybe our more regular schedule will now lend itself to more consistent views on recent posts.

Well, I was going to delve into our top posts per month in 2016, but I think I’ll just save that for another time. Needless to say, that list is much more intriguing in terms of what was popular month to month for us.

Steve D