Gob Smacking Stats on Short Stories in the Blogasphere

Where the brain whirrs ...



I've often wondered how short stories and poetry would play out in the blogasphere.

Would good quality original work in creative writing survive in the intensely stimulating environment of the net?

Would readers tarry awhile when with a click they could choose to move onto other worlds?

So in June I began launching my babies onto the web in Journeys in Creative Writing and came up with interesting results.

I didn't expect a huge explosion of readers for my stories and poetry, but a lot more people are coming than I would have thought. And I have been happy that the majority do visit again - and often.

Six per cent of people have visited more than 50 times each in the past month!

Mind you most don't make their presence known with a comment. More's the pity because I love feedback. No, they mostly visit and move on just like so many shadows in the night, as is the wont of the web.

Google Analytics tells me they've been around, however, so I have to believe it.

Google won't tell me how many blogs are in my group, except to say that there have to be at least one hundred (or many thousands). I must face the fact that I'm probably in the one hundred end of the scale.

My average visit is 7.54 minutes long when it is a mere 18 seconds for all categories of measured blogs of my size. All books and literature blogs in my category attract only 32 second visits on average.

The big number is that eight per cent of my visitors stay for 30 minutes or more! Take a bow June!

The differences in behaviour between nationalities is interesting. I'm getting visitors from many countries, which is gratifying. They've come from India, Canada, Hungary, Italy, Fiji, Thailand and Malaysia, as well as the USA, UK, New Zealand and Australia.

Australians actually spend an astonishing average of 11.32 minutes on my site with 3.1 pages viewed.

The USA, where I have half as many visitors, only stay 32 seconds and look at 1.33 pages. UK people pause for 1.19 minutes for average of 1.60 pages.

I can understand that Australians would be more interested in my subject matter (being mostly Australian), but the others do keep coming back ...

Does this point towards a theory that the attention span of some cultures is waning, or perhaps that they've become trapped into doing everything at a great rate of knots?

It seems that readers enjoy my stories when they do come.

I suspect that my biggest enemy is the huge number of rubbish writers out there. People surfing the net have perhaps given up on finding decent fiction in the blogasphere.

However, I must come to the conclusion that short stories are not dead, but alive and kicking. That the blogging community is very happy to pause a while and take in some good old fiction - if it's decent quality.

Human beings are a fascination.

And there's nothing arrogant about me. I just know I can write!


Have any other web writers had some interesting experiences they'd like to share?
And please pause a little longer to read my re-write of The Emperor's New Clothes - below.