The Top 45 Black Gate Posts in October

Saturday, December 1, 2012 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

October was the most active month in the history of the Black Gate blog, breaking every traffic record on the books. The month’s top articles were accessed some 10,000 times each, and our new line of weekly Black Gate Online Fiction kept our webserver working overtime.

The most popular fiction posted at Black Gate in October was:

“The Whoremaster of Pald” by Harry Connolly
“The Duelist” by Jason E. Thummel
“The Quintessence of Absence” by Sean McLachlan
“A Phoenix in Darkness” by Donald S. Crankshaw
“The Daughter’s Dowry” by Aaron Bradford Starr

And the top articles of the month were:

The Top 40 Black Gate blog posts in September are here.

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Sarah Avery

Editor

11 years ago

10,000 times? Wow. I hadn’t guessed The disparity between the number of comments in each thread and the number of readers is mind-blowing. I had sort of gotten used to the idea of 50,000 people a month skimming over the opening paragraph of my post, pre-cut, but I’m not sure what to do with the idea that my best posts now get 65,000 skimmers plus 10,000 clickers.

Did you know that, when a Poet Laureate of the United States publishes a new volume of poetry with a major house such as, say, Farrar Strauss Giroux, the book is considered a roaring commercial success if it sells out a print run of 6,000 copies? Okay, it surely matters that nobody has to pay hardcover book prices to read a blog. Even so, I’m disoriented.

John ONeill

Author

Sarah,

Yeah, there’s a definite disparity between viewers and commenters. For example, our top September article was read 11,895 times, and received only 11 comments.

There’s also a fair gap between the very top articles and the rest of those in the Top 10. In October, for example, the top article was read 8,174 times; number 2 was 7,403; number 3 was only 5,511.

Also remember that for security purposes, you have to create a Black Gate log-in to comment. We had some 80,000 visits last month, yet only 13,178 total registered readers.

That’s not really a bad number, but it gives you an idea of what you true core audience is – those who read and comment.

That’s much less disorienting. My most-read blog post in any given month still has fewer readers than the latest volume by Billy Collins. Cosmic order is restored.

Thank you for the number-crunching and general demystification. I’m still learning my way around.