Blogging by numbers
It’s time to dig deep, and peel back the layers on Reading in Bed. Yep, we’re looking at blog statistics*!
When you check your blog stats and realize no one is reading your carefully crafted, 2,000 word review of an obscure backlist book
I recently hit a significant milestone over on YouTube. 500 subscribers. Halfway to an almost-medium-sized-Booktube-account, still absolutely nothing in the larger YouTube ecosystem.
YouTube is all about the “like and subscribe”, but bloggers don’t really talk about follower counts or number of likes. I can easily find out who the big Booktube accounts are (or try the new Booktuber Catalog on Discord, learn more here), but it’s difficult to get a read on book blogs (there’s this list, but it doesn’t differentiate between corporate entities – like, yeah, Book Riot is riddled with typos, but it’s not *actually* a blog).
So in the interest of opening up a dialogue, and because I’m nosy as hell and hope that some of you out there decide to share a bit, here’s a peek at where I’m at with ye olde bloge:
First things first: In sevenish years, I’ve racked up 107K views and 66K visitors. My best day ever is still the day I was a guest on The Candy Show on CBC (which has since gone away, but she’s on Booktube!)
Okay, this graphic (above) is fascinating (to me). It’s one of the only ones I can get to show me back to 2011. I pulled some decent numbers in 2013-2015, and have been coasting since, despite a couple months-long breaks and far fewer posts.
Followers on WordPress is… a fucked up stat. WordPress is trying to tell me (and you, it displays this on my homepage) that I have 2,726 followers, but that’s including my Twitter followers, (“Social”), which it insists on including if you link your Twitter account. Actually, I have 990 followers, and damn right I will celebrate if I hit 1,000, even though it’s not the norm in book blog land!
And well, since we’re being nosy, and since I mostly talk about books on other social media, here are some other stats from around the internet:
Nine years on Twitter, 1,735 followers
Seven years here on WordPress, 990 followers (listed properly on the stats page!)
Five years on Instagram, 339 followers
Three years on YouTube, 517 subscribers
So, book bloggers, spill: how many years have you been at it, and how many followers do you really have? How many are email, how many are WordPress? Do you ever feel like everything you do is futile? Just kidding, kind of!
*Keep in mind that when I say “blog”, I mean WordPress blog. Yeah, I’m a WordPress snob.
Reading in Bed 
It looks like your other social media accounts – you tube and twitter – are not driving traffic to your blog which is interesting. I wonder why that is…
My stats are pretty sad in general, which does make me wonder why I bother. Oh wait, I know-the free books!!!! LOL
I’ve got about 550 followers on twitter after a year, 1000 wordpress subscribers after 5 years, and like…30 followers on my youtube channel, which I don’t update regularly and never watch other people’s videos, so really that’s my own fault. And my instagram account is personal use only so I won’t bother mentioning it.
That’s pretty good! Come back to YouTube one day 🙂
i know…..I’m also debating trying to make a facebook live video!
I’ve hated that they’ve obfuscated the older stats. You can get to them playing with the URLs but it’s hard to remember what I do each time.
Oh I miss the old admin page too! I used to have a sneaky way to get there but I’ve forgotten it 😦 I don’t know how to copy an old post anymore.
I still use /wp-admin to get to the old dashboard. Try that and see if it works.
My stats are a hot mess since I started my blog in 2006 on Blogger, switched in 2009 to WordPress, switched back to Blogger in 2011 and back again to WordPress in 2012. I don’t suppose I can blame them for incorrect numbers! But, the numbers puzzle me all the same. I had a huge following on Blogger, and much smaller stats on WordPress, but I’m the same person. With the same blog and content. So, I don’t really believe numbers anymore, and I try not to get caught up in stats. I remember getting all fussed about Google Page Rank, which they took away and have since brought back. All I really care about is relationship with the bloggers I care about.
Very true and wise. I still wanna hit 1000 subscribers tho 😎