I've been trying to post more or less daily here. I like the ego boost I get from seeing more page views, and I figure I'm more likely to develop followers and active commentators if there's always regular content.
I didn't manage to post yesterday. I started to write a post, revised it, decided it was crap, and left it sitting in drafts while I rethink the approach. I have two ideas I want to discuss: a) which DF templates work well, and which don't, and why some of the templates need some oomph via house rules or whatever, and b) some suggestions on improving the Bard and the Martial Artist. The first draft of the first article came off as pretentious and contentious and I wasn't sure I wanted to be besieged by commentators telling me that the Thief is consistently the most valuable template in their games (though honestly, comments are good, so maybe I should, and maybe I'll get someone telling me that a Shaman is their best template and I can be amazed). The second post I just haven't put enough thought into: I know I want to revise Enthrallment and Chi skills to better match the power level of Wizards and Weapon Masters, I just haven't sat down and researched it enough. Research takes time, and I could be catching up on Dragon Age II here.
The other thing I've noticed is that posting twice a day is a bad plan. I posted Talents for RPM, and followed it immediately with Saints and Ritual Path Mages in Dungeon Fantasy. Talents currently has 4 page views, and Saints has 14. While I'll grant that the second is a generally more interesting article, I think the culprit is more that Talents only showed up in people's blogrolls for about 10 minutes, and thus only my active followers even know about it. I'm sure it will get more page views over time, as people binge on my archives. Assuming that ever happens.
The takeaway, then, is that in order to maximize page views, I need to post daily, but I can't post twice in a row to make up for skipping a day. I'm sure that's a known thing that I could have read on a blog somewhere, but until I started this blog I've really been on the consumer side of blogging, not production.
Some of what you say I've also commented on, in my "Metablog" subject type at Gaming Ballistic.
ReplyDeleteA few things: daily posting isn't necessarily the best for hits. It's good for maximizing hits on certain things - say, commentary that's interesting but not going to generate a lot of repeat views.
For really heavy posts, such as my "skill levels for melee combat" or even the two posts I did on Jason's Krail concept, it's best to leave a day or so between posts, so that the title is in the top and on people's blog rolls longer.
In short I've found 2-3 "heavy content" posts per week, plus 1-3 "fluffy" posts, which can include actual play writeups, my "Apropos of Nothing" comment type makes for a good steady stream of stuff. Hitting 4 posts per week is pretty good.
Finally, if you want views, link like crazy to other people's stuff. I get a metric crap-ton of traffic from Peter's site, and I'm quite positive that if I'm on the map at all, he put me there. Dungeon Fantastic is a great place to start linking, and it will generate traffic and comment.
Bar none, though, the #1 source is Google+. I "share" my links with quite a few forums, and it's the source of four times more traffic than the #2 spot in Blogger's statistic page. And #2 is the SJG Forums, since I put a link to my blog in my sig file.
Finally: what I do is use the scheduling feature extensively. I tried to make a regular schedule (of which I only have really kept up Thursday is GURPS-day), but I write posts as I think of them, then publish them out every other day or so. If a topic hits (like the Krail posts) and generates a lot of views (nearly 500 in a 24-hour period and a few dozen comments), I push out new content to allow the interest in the first one to sustain.
Sorry, one more thing: I see that you DO in fact link to Peter's stuff - but the links are pretty indistinguishable from regular text, at least on my screen. I would suggest changing the link color if you can to something with a bit more contrast.
DeleteAt my wife's suggestion, I made the visited links green versus the light blue of unvisisted links, which should provide enough contrast without making the entire thing look washed out. I liked the light blue/purple/black for links, visited links, text but I can see how they might be a bit washed out.
DeleteI'd underline the links if I could but apparently that option went away in 1996.
The new way stands out great. Nice.
DeleteI shoot for three posts a week. I'm impressed with people who can keep up a faster pace than that.
ReplyDeleteThe most pageviews I've ever gotten in one day was 107, after Peter linked to something I wrote. He really does drive a great deal of traffic.
I've started following Doug's suggestion of writing stuff when I think of it, and publishing daily. I've got a lot of stored rants/thoughts to get out, so I don't think I'll run out of material soon. If nothing else, running a game is good for a pair of posts a week (comments on prep, comments on play).
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