Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Looking at how my website did in its first quarter

At the end of January, I posted a log examining how the first couple of months on the website had gone, and I’d thought I’d do another log examining the whole first quarter of the website.

Previously a consultant by trade, I do believe that data analysis is a useful tool to see what’s working, what’s not working so well, and try to implement improvements in line with goals – especially if your business or livelihood depends on that performance achievement.

Equally, though, I don’t want to get too data obsessed and tie my happiness and mental well-being to whether my WordPress stats are pointing with a happy green arrow up when looking back over the past 7 days or pointing with an unhappy red arrow down.

Data is a useful tool, but it is only one part of the puzzle.

To recap, when I think about my goals for the website in this quarter, they are really summarised by:

• Gain some traffic and subscribers
• Write and post what I want to write    

And there was a stretch goal in there to maybe see if anyone would donate to the website.

I am aware that these are not SMART goals which I’d expect in a business environment, but while I’m refocusing my career into writing, I’m not planning to set myself hard targets around it while I am establishing myself.  Yes, goals are useful and there is plenty of evidence to support people who make goals achieving the things they want more than those who do not, but SMART goals can sometimes become toxic and I’m all about being kind to myself these days. 

So, with that said, I’m likely to make this type of look into the data a quarterly thing rather than monthly going forward.

Data Highlights

Q1 New Posts: 26 Q1 New Post Views: 7683

Type of post	No of posts	No of views
Articles	6	220
Fanfiction	10	6601
Fiction	0	0
Poetry	2	77
Reviews	7	53

Most popular post: A Jump to the Left – Chapter 1, 2827 views, Most popular fandom: Harry Potter, Most popular tag: Harry/Hermione

Q1 Top 5 Website Stories Overall:

1. Harry Potter – A Jump to the Left – Chapter 1
2. Harry Potter – A Step to the Right
3. Harry Potter – A Marauder’s Plan
4. 911 – The Unwoven Tapestry
5. NCIS – Married to the Mob

What does the data tell us?

Traffic

You can see from the chart that the traffic peaked around February 17^th.  This is when I was listed on the main Evil Author Day listing collated by Jilly James and on the EAD Dreamwidth site. While there was an upturn in traffic after the posting of the fics onto Discord and tumblr, there was a huge uptick with the majority of the referrals coming from the EAD listings for the rest of February.  I also saw an uptick in referrals from WordPress itself possibly triggered by the sudden popularity of the website for subscribers. 

Interestingly, where I have multi-part or multi-chapter fics, I can see from the data that people will read one part and maybe not find the second or third parts.  I’ve made a note to go back and see how easy it is to click through.  Maybe I need to make sure I’m signalling how to get to the next part better.

Subscribers

Given the massive jump in subscribers after the EAD posting and the sheer views A Jump to the Left has garnered, I really underestimated the popularity of A Step to the Right and how many readers would be willing to subscribe to read the next story. 

Yes, I did deliberately make A Jump to the Left subscriber only as a thank you for people who had subscribed and shown their support to the website that way.  But I want to assure people who prefer lurking online and who do not want to subscribe that once the whole fic is ready it will not be subscriber only. 

However, I may continue doing future exclusives for subscribers only as continued thanks for supporting the site.

Writing what I want

I am thrilled that I posted as much as I did.  This is probably the most writing I’ve posted over a period of 3 months for a very, very long time.

I’m particularly pleased that my poetry is finding an audience.  I don’t think I’m the best poet ever, but I love writing poetry and writing more of it has switched on the poetry inspiration muse.

The reviews don’t really garner many views, but I’m not a professional reviewer and don’t intend to become one.  I’ll continue to write them as I enjoy it and if people read them great.

What seems to have also found a little bit of an audience are these writer’s log posts. If you are reading, I’d love to know if people find them a useful insight.   

Is this a good performance?

Absolutely YES!

I said back in January’s log that I really didn’t have a target in mind when I pressed launch, I just hoped that there wouldn’t be zero views and visitors, and I stand by that!  This performance in respect of traffic and subscribers in my first quarter is just really heart-warming for me.  I’m not unaware that I owe a lot of that to getting my fic listed on a popular listing, and that I have an established readership in popular fandoms.

I’m also enormously thrilled to have my own space to post what I want to write.  That has been a huge win for me.  I’d like to focus in and write some original fiction in addition to the poetry and that’s going to be a focus for Q2 of my website.

I noted in the last log on data that there weren’t that many likes and comments, but that has definitely changed with the increase in traffic – and all likes and comments are definitely very appreciated!  Still no tip to buy a cup of tea, but maybe that stretch goal will be achieved in time too.

Overall, just very happy with the performance of this first quarter with my writing website.  Now, on with the next quarter!