WORDPRESS BLOG STATS ARE BOOMING

WordPress has some great messages. They are very encouraging.

My favorite is:

Your stats are booming! chrismcmullen is getting lots of traffic.

Your blog, chrismcmullen, appears to be getting more traffic than usual! 103 hourly views – 29 hourly views on average.

A spike in your stats.

It would be cool if Amazon KDP did that for self-published authors. Just imagine logging into KDP and seeing one of these messages:

• Congratulations! You just sold your 100th book.
• Way to go! You just received your 10th customer review.
• That’s a new record. 1000 pages read today.

It would make self-publishing even more engaging. It would help motivate you to keep up the good work.

In an industry where negativity is difficult to avoid, it would help authors remain a little more positive.

Amazon has an opportunity here, if only they would learn from WordPress’s fine example.

I love blogging. I enjoy the positive messages that I receive from WordPress.

1000 BLOG VIEWS PER DAY

Those booming stats—100 views per hour (temporarily)—helped me reach a new milestone.

Today, for the first time, I had over 1000 views in a single day.

I’ve been averaging around 500 views per day recently. It has steadily grown and continues to steadily grow.

My previous best had been a little under 900, and that was when I had the amazing good fortune for Amazon KDP to link to one of my posts on Twitter and Facebook. That was over 6 months ago. It’s taken half a year to equal that feat on my own.

I had been averaging around 300 views per day back then, so 900 was nearly triple the norm.

For several months prior to that, my best had been 432. Those 432 views came when WordPress selected my poem of clichés, Once Upon a Time, to be Freshly Pressed.

The great thing about my new best, exceeding 1000 views, is that this time hundreds of views didn’t come from a single source.

This marks my 7th consecutive day of at least 700 views, so it comes with some consistency, rather than one oddball day. The last two days were both very close to 900.

WHERE DOES YOUR BLOG TRAFFIC COME FROM?

Another great thing about WordPress is that you can see where your views are coming from.

Knowledge is power, right? WordPress gives us a lot of that knowledge. I use that data to help blog more effectively.

Again, Amazon could learn something from WordPress. If Amazon KDP gave us more data regarding book traffic, conversion rates, etc. (obviously, without giving so much as to sacrifice customer privacy), we could use that information to sell more books. (I betcha Amazon would like for us to all sell more books. Whatcha think?)

The number I see here is this: 594 views came from search engines. In a typical day, 400 people discover my blog through search engines who previously didn’t know anything about me (or my books). My blog started out very slow, just like everyone else. My blog is still young, too. I meet many other WordPress bloggers whose stats are far more impressive than mine are. (And they are such good sports that they will congratulate me in the comments section when they themselves are averaging hundreds more views per day than I am. It’s an amazing community.)

Another thing I notice is that 164 views originated from Facebook, but only 1 came from Twitter. (What do all those retweets tell you?)

The person who linked to my blog from Kindle Boards: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. (While only 5 visited my blog from that link today, there were many more than that from Kindle Boards yesterday.)

Just imagine if Amazon told you that 150 of your views came from Facebook, 50 came from Twitter, and 600 came from BookBub (while you had 200 sales). We could learn so much if we didn’t sell in ignorance…

Don’t get me wrong. Amazon is amazing. I love Amazon. (Seriously, I wrote a love letter to Amazon and published it on my blog.)

Amazon has done many amazing things for authors, including indie authors.

So why not ask for a few more favors? Seems like a win-win situation…

Several views also came from my WordPress followers. Somehow I have over 6000 amazing followers.

Many of my daily views come from one very generous and courteous follower, Chris the Story Reading Ape. The Story Reading Ape is an incredible supporter of readers and authors alike. I very often get the second most referrals directly from the Story Reading Ape’s blog. Thank you very much, Chris the Story Reading Ape. 🙂

Thank you to everyone who has viewed my blog, and a double thank you to those who have ever liked, reblogged, retweeted, or otherwise shared any of my posts. I greatly appreciate it.

At WordPress, you can even see literally where you blog traffic comes from:

WORDPRESS BLOGGING TIPS

If I can do it, so can you.

See this post for 21 blogging tips.

ONE MORE REASON I LOVE AMAZON KDP

As you may know (if you follow my blog, how can you not know it?), Amazon KDP recently changed its policy to pay KDP Select authors for Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime borrows based on the number of pages read.

This is the reason that I just had 1044 views of my blog.

The change in Kindle Unlimited policy is a new and hot topic.

I’ve been blogging about it since the change was announced.

I’ve also blogged about Kindle Unlimited and related topics several times in the past, so I already had search engine traffic under similar tags and categories.

But ultimately, content is king. Write quality content that your target audience will enjoy (and which you will enjoy writing about).

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2015

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

• Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
• Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
• 4-in-1 Boxed set includes both volumes and more
• Kindle Formatting Magic (coming soon)

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

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