Views Per Day

[BobbyBrandt]

I don't know if anyone else is interested in this stat, but a few months back I started tracking the number of views that a story receives on a per-day average. This serves multiple purposes for me, not the least of which is the ability to see how activity on one of my stories influences activity on others.

(As an interesting sidebar, my three I/T stories have an average V/D of 338 while all my other stories in other categories have an average V/D of 16. This further illustrates the draw of the I/T category)

Does anyone else track this stat, and how do you use it?

 

[alohadave]

I track weekly, just to see what kind of activity my stories are getting. I figure the standard deviation of the view changes and figure out the z score from that to see if the weekly views are 'normal'.

If there is a spike in views, I can see how far out of normal it is.

One week I saw that one story was way above normal for views, but it didn't really tell me much because I had no way of finding where the views came from or what caused them.

 

[KeithD]

No, I write rather than track.

 

[djrip]

I look at stats every few days and sometimes I go, oh that one looks like it changed a little...

 

[Emotional]

How old of stories are we talking about?

My last had 5000 the first day, but only 3500 in the 7 days after that.

My popular older story in Romance averages 227 a day vs my unpopular one in Novellas averages 40 a day.

 

[NotWise]

A lot depends on how you're getting the number. If you divide the number of views by the number of days the story's been up then you'll get a number, but it won't mean much. The viewing rate on the first day is very high, and that has a huge influence on the average. Daily viewing rates stay elevated for a month or two on new stories, but then they decline to a much lower, roughly constant viewing rate.

The views that older stories get currently varies from a low under 2 views day to a high of 34 views/day. My lowest rates are in Sci/Fi and the highest rates are in I/T. Not only do those readers hit new stories hard, but they also keep the traffic going afterwords.

Four to six views/day is pretty typical for older stories in other categories. A couple stories in Romance are above that; one pulls in 14 views/day, and the other (on the top list) gets 15 views/day.

If you post more often than I do or have more name recognition, then I expect the numbers can be higher.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've been tracking view data for all my stories for six years, but not quite in the way you have, if I understand what you are saying. Every few days or so I download my story stats and copy them to an Excel file. I track how many views my stories have received on a daily basis since the last download. I've never bothered to figure out a daily average for a story since it was published.

The numbers go up a lot if you keep publishing regularly because by doing so you attract new readers and each new publication will give at least some boost to your other stories, especially if they are in the same category.

I can't think of a way that I meaningfully "use" this data in any way. I find it interesting to know how my stories are doing, relative to one another. Category choice makes all the difference in terms of views. I haven't published anything in almost four months, so my numbers right now are all "background" numbers that hold fairly steady and are uninfluenced by new stories. Incest stories received almost 3.5 times more daily views than non-incest stories.

Views are all over the map, and can be influenced by many factors. Most stories' daily views tend to decline over time, but they can begin to creep up again if they make their way onto toplists or similar story lists. That happened to my story Late Night on the Loveseat with Mom, which was published six years ago and now receives more daily views than it did three years ago.

 

[ronde]

I don't really track the number of views per story, but I do look at how stories in a particular category are doing relative to other stories in different categories. The number of views, favorites, votes, and comments tell me if I'm writing what my readers want.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

A lot depends on how you're getting the number. If you divide the number of views by the number of days the story's been up then you'll get a number, but it won't mean much. The viewing rate on the first day is very high, and that has a huge influence on the average. Daily viewing rates stay elevated for a month or two on new stories, but then they decline to a much lower, roughly constant viewing rate.

The views that older stories get currently varies from a low under 2 views day to a high of 34 views/day. My lowest rates are in Sci/Fi and the highest rates are in I/T. Not only do those readers hit new stories hard, but they also keep the traffic going afterwords.

Four to six views/day is pretty typical for older stories in other categories. A couple stories in Romance are above that; one pulls in 14 views/day, and the other (on the top list) gets 15 views/day.

If you post more often than I do or have more name recognition, then I expect the numbers can be higher.

Yes, I use an Excel formula that tracks from the date published to the current date. That establishes a much longer trend that allows for easy recognition of spikes or drops.

The data seems most informative when I post a new story and then watch to see how it influences views of older stories as new readers, drawn by the new story check out the rest of my library. Using it to track and maybe even graph views on individual stories from their first day of posting can be done, but it doesn't hold as much value to me.

For me, it's all about discovering and analyzing how one story being posted influences another story over time, especially if they are in different categories.

 

[oneagainst]

I've got a sheet with daily stats across all stories, tracking each day. I'm going to get through to the end of the story cycle and try and post the graphs - should be November. I think it's going to show some interesting stuff, such as votes to views, but also the effect of crosslinking/backlinking stories - in particular I want to see where the uplift went when I pushed out that first LW story, the entire story network lifted.

Or I could just turn the raw data over to @EmilyMiller - she's proven to be a data octopus.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I've done some tracking as well. Mostly I was interested in the daily average and how much it increases when I publish a new story. So far my findings show my views double when I post a new story and non-con is a far more popular category than I'd have thought.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I've got a sheet with daily stats across all stories, tracking each day. I'm going to get through to the end of the story cycle and try and post the graphs - should be November. I think it's going to show some interesting stuff, such as votes to views, but also the effect of crosslinking/backlinking stories - in particular I want to see where the uplift went when I pushed out that first LW story, the entire story network lifted.

Or I could just turn the raw data over to @EmilyMiller - she's proven to be a data octopus.

I’m an [ex] Biologist, not a Statistical guru.

Em