I seldom look at the stats for my site. I’ve always just kind of let things fly, but since I’ve met the WP reader I have been thinking a bit differently. It appears that not too many of the readers actually go to the site and read, they just use Word Press Reader and scroll through. And nearly half of the readers use a phone or tablet.
So, as I previewed the different themes and possible looks, I realized that it may not matter. My fancy little random quote generator on the sidebar, my proudly displayed Northwich Warrior badge, the subscribe by e-mail button, I just started feeling kind of upset. But then I realized that all of my traffic does not come from wordpress.com and that I have many followers who were here, either from the beginning or from as soon as they learned about it and there are several people who have gone back to the very beginning and read every single post. Well, yeah, they’re relatives, but so what? Besides, I know they actually read the stuff, as junky and stinky as some of it was. Not all of it, mind you, some of the old stuff was of a higher quality than the new stuff, but they slogged through all of it.
Well, Herb, what’s in your craw? What is the bone in your throat, now? I got 15 likes the other day. On 15 different entries. From one person on the WP Reader. Really? You read 15 of my pieces in one day and liked every single one of them? Hmmm…
But, as I think on it, if the “like” button on WordPress.com reader is the biggest problem I have in life, I am pretty well-off and have nothing to be curmudgeonly about. I might even have to rename my Monday posts. I have more followers than I ever have and a core of readers that I know actually do read this stuff, many of whom I would not have if not for the reader.
I also would not have some of the commenters that I have, but there again, I have a few people who are with me no matter what. To me, it’s the comments that I enjoy, even on the occasions where we don’t see eye-to-eye.
But, all of my complaints aside, I have a great audience full of bright, intelligent people with exceptional taste in blogs to follow. And I am still going to keep messing with the themes and keeping my widget sidebar because I like it.
Comments
20 responses to “Curmudgeonly Monday – Odds & Ends”
It does seem sad that many readers never visit the actual site. But from my stats, I think most are actually opening it. Because my home page has many views every day.
I often get confused if the likes are real. For example, take my Garuka series. I get around 15 likes on each chapter. But I am sure I don’t have more than 4-5 readers who actually read it.
But I will take a fake like over no like. 🙂
Hmmm…well, that’s one way to look at it.
I believe the likes contribute to backlinks. Regardless of who fake liked and actually read, I can retrieve some data about what people find enjoyable. An example would be a story I wrote recently about James Rainport. The likes on that post were drastically reduced compared to other entries. Because it was posted at a similar time as the others, I can see it was not a favorite. I can see who is into the fiction and who likes the day to day life posts as well.
Personally, I read your site from the WordPress Reader as It is easy to get to on Android.
Great Read by the way!
Thanks for the input. I appreciate it. Yeah, reader is very popular with a lot of people.
Don’t worry, Herb, I wasn’t really worrying about blog visitors. You’re free to come and go as you please. But thanks as always for stopping by.
Thanks, Tony. I feel like we are old friends from way back.
I never use the WP Reader. And I “observe” that a good number of likes come from people who couldn’t fit reading their list of others blogs they follow each day in a week! Sometimes – especially in liking another’s comment – I use the like button to simply let the writer know I read their comment.I live out of cell phone coverage (in a sort of geographical hole) so don’t use a cell phone to look at blogs.
I usually click like after I’ve read the post or if it’s a photoblog after I’ve viewed the picture(s).
Herb this anonymous commentator is me – Bruce Goodman. I’m not sure why it thinks I’m anonymous.
That’s strange. I wonder if it’s because I have my settings to not require a name and e-mail address? I tried to turn everything down to make it easier for people to comment.
After your posting above I “fiddled” with my settings to try and find out what devices were being used. No luck, but I think I messed up the settings for everything else.
Yikes. I’m sorry.
One doesn’t discover things on wORDpRESS until one pokes around in it.
Maybe you could rename your posts mudgeonly Monday. That way you can still be halfway grumpy.
I like it. or Curmonday?
I think we’re getting somewhere.
It is kind of sucky that the mobile phone rendering of a WordPress post loses the sidebars. It’s understandable, of course, because of the limited screen ‘real estate’, but even so. I used to refer to things ‘over on the right’ in my posts, but I’ve learned not to do that anymore.
I do use the Reader occasionally, but whenever I do I always hit the ‘Visit’ link to visit the actual site. I think many WordPressians spend time trying to give our sites some individuality, and although, at the end of the day, it is the words that count, it still feels somehow disrespectful to me to read the words in the Reader rather than making that one-extra-click effort.
Thanks for reading this old post. I use the reader too, but I generally will right-click the post link and open the actual site in a new tab and read on the site. I know it is useful for conversations like this where I might have missed that someone commented on an old post.
It was my pleasure to read this old post. I’m just doing my bit as a ?Random Raider! 😀
Very nice. Thank you. I shall have to get caught up and go visit you again.