Wargamer's Odds and Ends: Fun with Statistics

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Fun with Statistics

I just looked at some of the reports from Blogger and found some interesting things.

Posts
In the past month, I ran a sale on my scenario books. This post pulled in 434 views. Significantly more than any other post during that same timeframe. A request for help on identifying Soviet tanks grabbed the number 2 spot with 220 views and old posts dealing with the launch of those scenario books that were on sale grabbed 131 for In the Name of Roma and 98 for The Coming Thunder. All time, the two biggest posts were for The coming Thunder with 2047 view and In the Name of Roma with 1063 views.

This completely makes sense as I have tried to push those particular posts more. But where did all of these come from? Believe it or not, the top referring site historically is the Miniature Page with 3177 referrals over the life of the blog. Despite their "entertaining" fights over the squabble dejure, they still seem to command the largest audience out there. But in the past month, it has been beaten out by several other sites. The number one referral was some Russian site that looks like a hosting page - http://www.xolodremont.ru/.

Number two was http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/. I really like this site. It allows anyone to post a news story for free. TMP used to let you if you were a supporting member. Now you have to be an advertiser. While the rates are not crippling for most, a scenario author who just wants to break 100 copies sold per self published book is not able to afford it. When I asked the editor about it, I was not entirely happy with the brusk dismissal that I received.

Next was from TooFatlardies.co.uk. This is no surprise since they are the guys who write the rules I use to base my scenario books on. Definitely a friendly audience for me. The Miniatures Page has dropped to Sixth place for the past month. Google seems to have risen above that.

So what does it all mean? Well, not much. It is just interesting. Its interesting to see that the draw from TMP is shrinking while Tabletop Gaming News is growing.