“Hindsight is 20/20.”
-fucking duh
One of the fundamental keys to pragmatic philosophy is post analysis of what did an action or course of actions accomplish. Not just did it accomplish what was intended but what else were to affects of the given action.
So let’s look at how this blog preformed in 2019 and 2018.
2018
visitors: 27
views: 43
2019
visitors: 1,224
views: 1,610
likes: 89
comments: 4
Most popular article: Vox Day is a Gamma
Views 849
Likes: 0
Most successful Article Launch: Why your independent comic will not make you rich.
Views during launch week 55
Lifetime: 80
Likes: 0
Most liked article: I have a pattern of breaking myself
Likes: 7
Cost of maintaining website $107/yr
RoI: $0
converts to sales: $0
What I’ve learned about SEO (search engine optimization):
Vox Day is a Gamma is my best preforming post because it appears on the first page of google. Electric Boogaloo also appears on the first page of google.
The Vox Day article leads to more articles about Vox Day’s male hierarchy and while the post has no likes it does lead to a retention (where the user explores the website or additional posts) of about 1 in 7 from an SEO click.
I think with both the VOX Day and Boogaloo posts the reason they rank high in SEO is because they are niche topics but there is not much competition or direct explanation for what exactly people are talking about when they bring these topics up.
Also the terms are hyperspefic
Boogaloo is slang for an outrageous sequal but is used by the An-cap community in America to talk about 1776 two point oh or a second armed revolutionary war. Someone in the depths of 4chan decided to make the change in terms from referring to armed revolution to obfuscate the term. So whenever anyone comes across the term Boogaloo who isn’t in the know they will either disregard the term or search google and not really find a good answer. [Why are people talking about a terrible sequel?] My short story may answer the question. IDK but it’s my best guest.
Gamma refers to a male behavior type and class. Vox Day is an author/blogger/streamer/etc. While his following is mid-tier 30k subscribers, 2k average live viewers, 7k-10k post live-stream views.
With numbers like that he bans 2-3 people personally per show from participating in chat. Then calls them a gamma. I suspect that is when they search and try to find out what he was talking about. Also I got a comment relating as much.
This article receives about ten hits per week.
I wish I had a little more information like time spent on page or scrolling of user to see if the article is being read or not. But because it does roughly lead to an exploration every seven visits, I can only assume it’s being read once per seven views.
I think the take away here specifically about SEO is that definitions of slang and articles about influencers have a high chance of ranking high.
But that chasing or designing content to hit these things will still yield a terrible RoI.
What I’ve learned about twitter and reddit
Most successful Article Launch: Why your independent comic will not make you rich.
This was the most successful launch because I really built this article to both say nice things about the subject, make critiques, and include a lot of links to relevant things. But by @ing the subject on twitter. I think that @ drove his close social network to discuss the article amongst themselves.
The subReddit r/comicbooks pushed another thirty viewers to the article. But there was either no data or no interaction with embed hyperlinks, which makes engagement a difficult metric. But RoI and sales were still Zero.
What I’ve learned about engagement and likes
I think that WordPress has a high (Perceived) barrier to get people to sign up and engage on posts. Which means that only other bloggers and people pushing their presence on WordPress are likely to engage on a post, but that engagement does not lead to exploration as the WordPress readers just go back to their feed to read and like another article or post before finally getting around to their work.
Why this year held much higher views and traffic.
I don’t think that WordPress is a good place to push my books and I am still very focused on building a decent RoI in the form of a back catalog of Quality content. My first two books are garbage but My third book at .99cent is good value and will (should) drive sales of four or more post issue three quality at a price point of $10 eBook $15 paperback on amazon. For a total return of $32 per reader captured or satisfied with my .99cent offer.
Which could make writing a full-time job at 1,000 captures
My hope is for 10,000 captures so that I can hire full time writers / editors / marketers and launch a pulp press studio. To produce a new episode of ContractMan per month.
Going Forward
I use these blogs as a start to my writing week. They work well for this purpose. I write better having already accomplished something. In December I tried writing a blog post every day for a little bit but I didn’t find that helpful. I think I will continue to write one to two posts a week this year and keep it just for me.
I don’t want to spend time making my posts beautiful, it takes too much away from building my back catalog. I would like to have a better looking home page that directs more people to read samples of my books but until I have someone who is willing to help me with that I won’t be spending energy there.
I also would like to have some sort of index for the categorizing of my articles. I think it will be useful in the future. But right now not worth the time investment. I still have to finish 120,000 words before to June to meet my book quota.
Well Good in 2020
with love,
hngyhngyhppo
Oh and future 2021 don’t beat yourself up you tried Semper Optima. And this year you’ll do even better.
hngyhngyhppo 