Interview with Indie
His Blog: The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy
URL: indeterminacy.blogspot.com
His audience: persons from all walks of life who like to read quality fiction–bloggers, high school and college students, people in the creative arts, and people who work with language in their jobs–his blogroll reflects his audience
Thing to note when you visit: the interactivity; the connection between Indie and his readers; the quality of the content; the special features and unique ideas

1.4 Synchronicity in Numbers

Indie approaches his blog as a business as well as an art. He keeps track, as much as one can, of who’s coming and how they get there. In the world of writer’s blogs his numbers are high. His blog carries a Google Page Rank of 5. A generous spirit, Indie was willing to share his stats with us and generated a stat graph to go with them.

Indie, how do you keep track of the visitors who come by the blog?

I use a stat counter to gain an idea of how many people read my blog, but unfortunately I have no way of knowing how relevant these results are. My blog is syndicated which means it is possible for people to see the photograph and read the content without coming directly to the site. These are readers I know nothing about. Because blog-installed stat counters only count hits, there’s no way to tell how many people actually read it and how much they are interested in the content.

Sometimes a person will drift in via a Google search, and then spend a half an hour or longer clicking through the archives. I like to think they are reading the stories, although it’s quite possible that they’re merely glancing through the photos.

What do you do, and how much time do you spend on building up readership? Do you use traffic exchange services? How do you expand your own blog reading?

I don’t have as much time these days to visit all the blogs I like, so my chances to read and comment are sporadic. To let people know I’m out there, I occasionally enter my blog in the Blog Battles at Blog Explosion. But in general, I think that exchange services offer only superficial traffic. Lately BE has been heavy-handed about expelling blogs that discuss/evaluate other exchange programs. I’m beginning to wonder about them. (See the censorship of Sarahtampa .)

I sometimes come across wonderful blogs that quickly come into my favorites list. Two recent examples include shtikl.com and soulkin.com.

How many visitors stop by each day?

The stat counter I have currently registers roughly 150 to 250 page loads a day. Checking the last 100 page references I see that a third of these are referrals through search results. Another third come from links at other blogs or sites, and the remainder just show up somehow.

What percent do you think are repeat visitors each day?

My stat counter uses a cookie to record regular visitors, but I know that the system is not entirely accurate. Often I’ll check my statistics and notice a friend’s visit, but he/she doesn’t show up as a repeat visitor. My stats for last week fluctuated from 20-40 repeat visitors per day.

What is your most visited day of the week? Does readership change through the year?

Tuesday through Friday are about the same. Weekends and Mondays drop off slightly. I don’t know about changes specific to time of year. Traffic has increased slowly but surely since the time I began blogging. Daily readership drops off when I’m on vacation (not posting).

The most heavily visited days were March 4th (1521 unique visitors / 1973 page loads), followed by March 3rd (1161 unique visitors / 1637 page loads).

Someone had mentioned my blog at a portal– metafilter.com. The two posts of March 3rd received two comments from new visitors, one positive, one negative. And there was one guestbook entry. It’s interesting to note that out of over 2600 visitors only three left comments. Shows how hard it is to get people to comment? Or is it a general tendancy to lurk?

Can you point us to your most visited stories?

March 4th: Karla Had Just Been Kissed

March 3rd: Vance and Vera Invited an Inflatable Man

Indie knows the numbers and he knows that they’re not an exact reflection of what’s happening. The numbers are simply one more piece to the puzzle. They help us sort out the anamolies and focus in on the patterns over time., leading closer to a picture of who our readers might be.

What patterns do you see in your blog’s numbers?

–ME “Liz” Strauss