Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Has having my own website been worth it?

Writer’s Log: The first year of my own website – is it worth it?

Last year in December, I set up Storytime as my very own writing website to have a place where I could share my writing. A year on, do I think it is worth having my own website? Let’s take a look at what the data says before I add some qualitative commentary to answer that question.

The Final Quarter – Q4 Year 1

My goals effectively remained the same from the previous quarter:

• Write and post what I want to write   
• Generate traffic and be consistent in posting
• Post an original fiction

My Fourth Quarter Data

Q4 Views: 31775, Average views per day: 262 (Q3 comparison: Views, 48908, Average, 532)

Q4 Visitors: 8383, Average visitors per day: 69 (Q3 comparison: Visitors 11483, Average, 125)

Q4 Subscribers: 29, Overall: 1348 (Q3 comparison: Subscribers, 442)

Q3 New Posts: 30, New Post Views: 1917) (Q2 comparison: New Posts, 20, New Post Views: 5801)

Most popular stories and tags remain the same – Harry Potter, and Harry/Hermione.

Thoughts on the Final Quarter

I definitely achieved my first and my third goals. I posted a lot of writing which focused on what I wanted to write about. But the biggest success for me this quarter has been to finally post up original fiction – 3 stories including The Case of the Vengeful Ghost, The Case of the Missing Witch, and a short called Hidden in Plain Sight. I am on my way with my original work.

The second goal of generating traffic and posting consistently has been very interesting. I posted the most consistently and regularly throughout the period, but as can be seen from the data, my traffic dropped quite heavily.

I believe there are a few reasons for this.

The first reason is that I made public at the end of A Jump to the Left that there is no more on this series until next year. I’ll be posting the first chapter of Another Dimension for Evil Authors’ Day and the whole story in August 2025. Fans of the series may feel that that they don’t need and want to subscribe at the moment.

The second reason I believe I lost some traffic was because in August soon after I posted the second preview chapter of A Jump to the Left, someone reported me for violating the terms of service on AO3 because I was stating in end notes that I had a website and about the second preview chapter. While I challenged the idea that the website is monetised and had put fanfic behind a paywall by asking for a subscription as subscribing here is free (monetisation was at the time the TOS restriction on directing to other sites/social media), I did follow the request at that time to remove all mention of the website from my AO3 posts.

The final reason I believe I lost traffic was simply WordPress stopped referring me as much. In Q3 WordPress referred me 1831 times, and only 410 in Q4. Why was this? I do not know. Perhaps it was the drop off in traffic overall which caused me to fall out of the algorithm or maybe it is also because I’ve been terrible about exploring other WordPress blogs myself. I remember watching a video on YouTube where they were talking about Instagram; that creator pointed out that social media sites expect creators to be social – so don’t just post your own stuff, go explore others. If that is a reason, it is a valid criticism, and I need to do better at going and supporting others on WordPress next year.

Perhaps it was one of these things, a combination of these things or none of these things. But it was disappointing to see such a drop off.

On a positive note, I still do spike to over a hundred visitors on days I post fanfic and share that via tumblr and the discord I participate in.

The First Year in Review

So, what are the numbers for the whole year?

Views: 173157, with 473 views average a day. Visitors: 37252, with 102 visitors average a day.

Not too shabby for my first year since I started from zero!

I definitely feel that my overall ‘generate traffic to be website’ goal which has been consistent quarter to quarter has been met, regardless of the drop in the last quarter.

This graphic shows the different types of writing I did over the course of the year which definitely demonstrates that I achieved another consistent goal which was to post whatever writing I want to post.

It’s also interesting to deep dive into the statistics a little more to look at all the posts I did this year and see what really attracted readers and engagement.

The most popular post for views was unsurprisingly the first preview chapter of A Jump to the Left posted in February. The whole story did not garner the same views even though it was three separate posts although it was also posted to AO3 at the same time.

The least popular post was the first review of What If. No doubt that posting it on the second day the site was live was probably in part why.

Leaving behind, views on their own, engagement (likes, shares and comments) has A Jump to the Left, the whole story, in the lead 116 to 111 (note: I removed all my own comments/replies from these figures). There are a number of posts, mostly reviews and articles which received zero engagement.

Fanfiction definitely leads on views and engagement figures as can be seen by these pie charts below. This substantiates to me that utilising my history and profile as a fanfiction writer is helping to drive traffic to the website overall.

However, what is really interesting is to look at engagement score as a % of views divided by likes/shares/comments. A good engagement score for a WordPress blog is between 1% -5% according to the Internet. The pie chart below shows the average engagement score for each category.

Here, the highest average engagement score is definitely split between articles and fiction. The post with the best engagement score is actually my Writer’s Log, A Novel Hangover. Wonderfully, my short fiction story Hidden in Plain Sight is in the top 10, and The Case of the Vengeful Ghost and its sequel have better engagement scores than even that first preview chapter of A Jump to the Left.

Will any of this alter what I post? No. I still intend to post what I want to write, but it does give me hope for the future success of my fiction. It also does mean that I will challenge myself on where I am spending my time writing though. I like doing reviews, but would that time be better spent editing my fiction or writing a few more short fiction stories?

Did I make any money?

The big question. I have been fortunate that a few people have wanted to support me financially as patrons and this has meant that the cost of the web hosting at least has been covered. However, I still need my day job – which frankly isn’t paying very well either at the moment as I transition my career, but who knows what 2025 will bring!

And lastly, the big, big question – is it worth it?

A resounding yes from me. I have loved having my own space to post up anything I want regardless of fanfiction or fiction, article or poem.

I’ll be doing an end of year writing review on the content of what I’ve written (what are my personal favourites, for example), and doing a look forward to 2025 in my Writer’s Log on 29^th December.

In the meantime, a big thank you to everyone who has visited, liked, commented and donated during 2024 and my first year. You have helped make this website a success and I appreciate every bit of support. I am definitely committing for no reason than that to do more to support other WordPress blogs in 2025.

End Note: Please like, comment or share if you enjoyed this writer’s log!