Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

January was my first full month with my writing website. How did I do?

Back in December, I decided to get real about my writing in 2024 and set-up this website. It took a couple of days to get the rough shape of the website in place, and then a couple of weeks to get my writing uploaded.

On December 19^th I pressed the launch button and was live. 

And didn’t tell anyone.

Surprisingly, I still got 15 visitors that first day.

Of course, that’s the challenge with any stand alone website, isn’t it?  How do readers discover that you have the website, and hopefully subscribe?

The following day I posted a launch announcement on rachelfivehundred.tumblr.com and that triggered a flow of traffic to my website.  I knew that posting my Big Moxie challenge stories would also help readers discover the site since the links were live on Writing & Junk and I posted the usual announcements over on the associated Discord which is really popular.

Over the course of the holidays, I also updated some of my profiles to confirm I’d no longer be posting there and updated my AO3 profile to mention the creation of the website.

So, how has the website performed?

Well, here’s my stats for December and January.

December: Visitors: 555 Views: 2711

These primarily came from a mix of referrals from Writing and Junk (142) and tumblr (120).  There were also a handful of WordPress referrals (29) and a couple from elsewhere.

I posted 5 reviews, 2 stories and 1 article.

The two stories (A Different Path and The Only Choice) made up 9% of the total views, with the reviews and article garnering less than 1%.  It would be interesting to look at visitors per story, but that data isn’t available on my current plan.

January: Visitors: 1430 Views: 6239

Once again, these primarily came from a mix of referrals from Writing & Junk (68) and tumblr (64).  But my WordPress referrals went up (66) and again, there were a couple from elsewhere.

I posted 3 articles, 3 new stories, 1 poem, and 1 review.

The three stories (The Unwoven Tapestry, Temporal Blues and Rebuilding Broken Monsters) made up 4.9% of the views, with the rest garnering slightly more than the previous month, 1.9%.

Additionally, I posted links to other old stories across tumblr and at the Discord, and these constituted 2.4% of the total views.

The top five stories viewed in January were:

• A Different Path, Harry Potter
• A Step to the Right, Harry Potter
• The Unwoven Tapestry, 9-1-1
• A Marauder’s Plan, Harry Potter
• Temporal Blues, NCIS

General Statistics

So, where are the vast majority of views going?  Well, some are going to the navigation pages with the Fanfiction page in the lead there.  But most are going to my historical works, especially the two Harry Potter stories in the top five (perhaps not surprising as one appeared in the Latest Scribbles and one is pinned to the top of that page).

Through December and January, I averaged 203 views and 45 visitors per day.  Additionally, in December and January I gained 40 subscribers. I’ve noted that people are less likely to like or comment here so far, but comparatively that makes sense given not everyone who visits on AO3 leaves kudos or a comment there either, and I’m bad at including a reminding nudge at the bottom of a post.

Is it worth it?

In terms of gaining a readership and community, when I pressed launch, I just hoped that there wouldn’t be zero views and visitors, and that I managed to gain some subscribers, so I very much count this as a success! I had hoped for maybe one donation to help support the cost of the website and my original writing, but so far not even a £1 tip towards a cup of tea. Ah, well. Maybe one day.

Of course, I am still posting over on AO3 for the time being, and when I posted links on Writing & Junk, I provided both options for readers.  A Different Path here has 9.9% of the views overall that it has on AO3, but again, that’s not too shabby a showing I think for a website less than 2 months old.

I also have to acknowledge that I have had a huge advantage in already having a fanfiction presence; that my writing has an established readership in fandoms which are popular. I had an existing tumblr with a small cadre of followers even if I was bad at posting there regularly. Still, building a website presence and encouraging readers here rather than where they are used to reading my work is going to take time.    

In terms of having a home for my writing which gives me a place to post anything I want to write – that has been a huge success for me over the past month. I’ve really loved the experience of getting inspired to write the poem And I would walk and being able to post it somewhere where it did get read and enjoyed by others.

Overall, I’m just proud that I’ve started this journey and I hope my readers come with me.