Searching for Clues! · 8:29pm June 20th
Well, that was a disappointing release.
As of this time, The Conflict has less than 100 views. The last story I wrote to garner this little attention was To My Uncle, but I was expecting that one to not draw many eyes. It stars two characters from a series over a million words long that are both OCs, so by default only the people who knew the series were likely to give it a look. The Conflict, on the other hand, stars Lightning Dust and Aria Blaze, both of whom have their own pockets of popularity in the fandom, and is its own standalone story. I figured I’d at least get something.
But rather than whine about it, I’d rather ponder the question of why. What is it about The Conflict that drove most readers away? This is the kind of thing authors need to understand, so it warrants a serious examination. I have a few theories…
My first theory is that the story is about a fight between two popular characters and happens to have the death tag. The risk of their preferred waifu getting offed in a violent manner may be enough to turn people away by itself.
The death tag in and of itself is something of a red flag (no pun intended) to many, a sign that the story is going to go to dark places that many don’t want to exist in their magical lands, whether they be of pony princesses or high school girls. There may be a suspicion that the advertised fight is going to be to the death (spoiler: it is not).
Both of these things might have been alleviated had I thrown in some notes about the use of the tags, but I elected not to do that because (from the view of my monitor) I had managed to get the cover blurb to fit neatly alongside the cover art. No extra lines poking down at the bottom, just a neat side-by-side view of cover and blurb. I like doing that with my stories if I can help it. But maybe that was a mistake. Perhaps I should have added notices about the exact nature of the story and why I chose the tags I did, rather than relying on its Teen rating to lighten the blow.
Speaking of tags: the Profanity tag. I added it because the characters curse on occasion, though it's not at all what I’d consider excessive. I find myself wondering if I needed it at all. I mean, between the two of them Lightning and Aria cuss maybe five times in the whole story. I think I only put it in there because of a suspicion that people might complain otherwise.
Another thought: this is a commissioned piece. Does that matter? Being as I’ve only ever written two commissioned works before and both went ignored by the wider FIMFiction community, that could be a factor (although the first one was To My Uncle, so it had far more going on that may disqualify it from this consideration). I greatly enjoyed writing The Conflict, I consider it one of my better stories (hence my disappointment), but whenever I see that a story is commissioned I often question whether the author was into it at all or just writing it for a quick buck. If an author isn’t into what they’re writing, the story often suffers for it. Given my own experiences, is there a stigma against commissioned stories out there and I’m only just now confronting it?
Then we get to the cover art. I keep saying it’s a shallow but important aspect in any story, and that remains true no matter how much anyone wishes to deny it. The cover art for The Conflict was commissioned based on a scene in the story, and I was quite pleased with the work AmazingPuffhair did for it (seriously, they nailed it on the first sketch). Then I saw it in the New Story list on FIMFiction and realized two things. First: it really stood out with its dark tones, but in the tiny thumbnail version it wasn’t clear what was going on. This could either make someone skip it, but it could also make someone check it out just so they could see details properly, so I can’t say if it’s a good thing or not. But what it definitely is is dark, and I realize now that this may have had an impact on a potential reader’s expectations. After all, if the cover is dark, why wouldn’t the story be too?
There is also the matter of the story’s length. 17k words is nothing for someone like me, but for a lot of people that’s long. I didn’t want to release it in pieces because the two main chapters are meant to be read in any order, but perhaps I should have to ease that particular issue.
I can speculate about this all day, but in the end it’s not me that’s not reading the story. So at this point I’d like to stop and ask for outside theories. No, I’m not saying “please read my story!”, but I am asking people to look at the cover page and speculate as to why they wouldn’t read it. Again, this is all important info for any writer trying to get noticed on FIMFiction. Maybe for my next review blog I could discuss anything pertinent I might have (re?)learned from this.
On a lighter note, it really says something that I can still have a new, original story (as in not affiliated to an existing series) come out and it draws no crowds at all. Let this be a lesson to all of you: having a high follower count is no guarantee of success.
That’s it for today. Check in next week for Fluttershy practicing her powers of reformation, Octavia in mourning, and Adagio Dazzle taking to Monopoly like a boss.
The Olden World
8.86% (179,088 / 2,020,718)
Mother of Invention
6.56% (10,305 / 156,998)
Rekindled Embers
5.26% (42,137 / 800,873)
Blogs Completed Through:
14-NOV-2024
(Blogs are currently scheduled up to this date. Any requests made as of this blog will have to wait until at least after this date.
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I'm getting to it, I swear!
Life is not allowing for a great deal of horseword time at the moment.
All of these factors could have for sure played a part. One other one I think for sure hurt it a bit was the time/day you released it on. Last Saturday was the final day of submissions for the Dialogue-only contest, and any final day for ones that get quite a number of submissions (this one had over 90 I believe) results in a tighter choke point of a New Stories column (Saturday had 33 stories). Stories for said contest all suffer if they don't get to stay in the Featured Box, and others just plummet. As far as traffic from curious people browsing the front page, anyway.
I also remember reading some EqD articles on good story descriptions, titles and cover art a one point, and they did indeed stress being clear at the preview size used on the home page, especially for mobile. At least, being clear enough to pique looking further, and as striking as that cover art it, it feels too derivative in framing when that small, I think.
It's hard for me to comment otherwise, as the story, ah, isn't one I would be likely to read anyway. But those two aspects would have played a part for sure. Myself, I would also advise not being over-cautious with warning tags – in these lighter years for the site, if the story is clearly heavy from the outside and T-rated, no one's gonna comment about the lack of a Profanity tag off a few swears
While all the things mentioned do play a part in its reception, I think the bigger part that plays for all stories on FIM is statistics, which I didn't notice you mentioning anything about. The time of day in which the story is uploaded/the day of the week, how long it stays at the top of the "New Stories" section for visibility's sake, how many groups it was featured in and if it was promoted anywhere else like in group forums/discords, etc. Stuff like that. Having a big following helps, but if your posted story gets overshadowed over night when everyone's asleep with group posts and other random miscellaneous feed things like story submissions to certain groups, then that visibility drops considerably. It helps visibility to slowly drip those chapter submissions every day so that the story can refresh in the "Recently Updated" section, AND so that anyone following it can be notified about more often increasing a psychological sense of FOMO for anyone who bookmarked it to read it later and has yet to read it.
I think it's less that it flopped (judging purely on the likes to dislike ratio), and more that it's just not being seen. Some would say that it's all a matter of luck. But like most things in life, luck can be manipulated with enough time and effort. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease", or so the saying goes.
Also, another unfortunate thing which I state with no definitive proof and this is all just theoretical conjecture on my part is this: As you mentioned, the length of the story also plays a key role. Big chapters don't lend to the digestibility of a story. Anything above 3k words is like taking a gambit. I hesitate to say that this is due to short attention spans from the common reader since I'm not trying to insult anyone, because the truth is much more complex as everyone has their own reading and writing speeds so time commitment is a thing that most people consider. But as I've learned from professional writing of young adult fiction, statistics are important and you need to keep all of those things in mind when trying to sell something. The same principles apply here I fear.
It's on my list. But as for why... my immediate guess is that the red tags are red flags, associated as they often are with edgy juvenile writing. "Action" stories may also not be many people's favorite in general. And thirdly, and this is based on nothing but my own speculation about my own experiences, maybe posting a >10k story all in one go makes people think "I don't have time for that right now, maybe I'll add it to The List". Maybe posting one chapter at a time would have made it easier for people to brave.
ETA: As the others say, commissioned stories are also sort of a red flag. Your followers... well, *your* followers might be here for the reviews first of all, but after that people follow for your stories, rather than stories someone else paid you to write.
I personally elected to pass on it because it was a commissioned story. I don't know how much leeway Sunset_Shimmer83 gave you. Because while I'm obviously confident you can write a compelling narrative, I don't know if they can, and for all I know they gave you an outline to work off of, for good or ill.
I remember seeing this and thinking Yeeah~ maybe. Maybe later. Because the premise was interesting.
It features a background character and a spin-off villain, though, no other popular main characters are tagged.
I guess that was the main reason. That and the image.
When I'm in the mood for a clop-y story I'm kinda ok with anthro, but two human characters that have practically nothing to do with FIM's main story arc ... that's a hard sell.
I come here for the pones, to read about cute fluffy horses doing horse things - or badass things ... but this is too niche to just bypass my ginormous read-it-later shelf.
5787573
Honestly, this. The biggest factor for my fics getting traction is usually how long it stays in the New Stories tab. I say usually because The Perfectiest Plan sat in the Featured Box for almost 6 days, and I think it got pushed out pretty quickly. I wrote a blog about my complicated feelings about a cute-fic I wrote in an afternoon doing far better than my current longfic project that I pour days into per chapter when both are Chrysalis fics, but FimFic has its demographic.
Anyway, another big factor is one you already mentioned: the cover. It's very mobile unfriendly unfortunately. I think it'd get reads off a physical shelf since the atmosphere is eye-catching, but so much detail is lost in a thumbnail. Even opening it and looking at the cover at full size, I have no idea who they are without looking at the character tags. Even then, it's only because I know Lightning Dust's eye color.
Let me put my speculation cap on for some other theories. Thee title doesn't really grab my attention. It's easy to remember, but it isn't very memorable. It's honestly just "The" that's doing that to me though. I think have it be a verb "Conflict" rather than a noun "The Conflict" makes it a little too defined by the title alone. It's just one conflct. The short description reinforces this notion.
Most cynical take would be more about who isn't there as an EqG fic: Sunset Shimmer. I'm not sure how popular EqG fics are outside of her since I personally don't read much content from it, but I do know I see a lot more Sunset than the Sirens. While I do like Sunset, she does feel like one of the signal flare characters on the site that attract people.
This one won't help much overall, but I'll tell you what I recall thinking when seeing it. While I haven't been reading much these days since I mostly write and study Japanese, I just wasn't in the mood for a thriller this weekend when I saw it. I was curious enough to click through since your name was attached, but that was mostly because I thought it might’ve been for the Dialogue Only Contest, and I was keeping an eye out for the competition to see how many heavy hitters I'd be up against. When I saw the word count, I knew it wasn't for that. Then I saw the EqG and thriller tags, and I decided "maybe later" since I don't usually read EqG or thrillers. Genre is often the culprit for me. It's also why your Bulletproof stories have been sitting in my read later for a long time. I have to be in a mood for a western since I'm not really interested in the genre otherwise.
That's about all the speculation and anecdotes I got. Fimfic giveth and taketh away.
Clearly you missed the most important character tag of all:
Anon
Personal Comments First: Although I often read shorter new fics close to their release in an attempt to help those stories, I have a lot of longer fictions prioritized and this was not a topic I was particularly interested in. I added it to my "Read it Later" list when it was released; however, it may take a while to get around to reading due to its length. Stories under 7,000 words are read quickly--everything over that number slowly accumulates.
General Comments:
1. It looks like a choose your own adventure when your first two chapters are "Path A" and "Path B". This probably shrinks your audience. And then it shrinks the audience again if people read a little more and realize it isn't a choose your own adventure story.
2. The thumbnail is extremely muddy. That did not dissuade me but it looks really ugly. The larger version looks fine, but the small version makes one want to avert one's eyes. The small thumbnail may be worse than no picture at all.
3. It looks like a grim slasher-thriller. These do have an audience on the site, but it's probably a smaller audience.
4. It is Equestria Girls. == Smaller audience.
5. A chapter about "Authors Notes" may annoy some people since the site has an "Authors Note" function.
6. Title Chapters are ultra-bland. If they were exciting, they might have been able to raise additional interest.
7. As interesting as some people find those two characters, they're not particularly popular. And, among people who follow them, I suspect people follow Lightning Dust for "shipping" or the Rainbow Dash rivalry stories, which this is not. Thus, although there are fans of both characters, the story does not seem like it is probably providing what people expect to/intend to find for those characters.
8. I am not sure that releasing it piecemeal would have helped enormously since I see only 12 people are 'tracking' it on their 'read it later' lists... that seems extremely low. Of course, it may have picked up more visibility from showing up on multiple days, but given your amount of followers--something about the work may be turning people off from checking it out.
9. "Don't know if I pulled it off though"--as written in your story description--screams "I probably messed up and this isn't worth anyone's time to read." That type of humility does not dissuade readers on all stories though--some slice of life or humor-based stories use that humility and still succeed. But, this is a serious story, so its readers may not be so forgiving.
Bottom Line: It looks like a hardcore choose your own adventure violent thriller about two less-popular characters by an author who wrote it on a commission and doesn't think it's well written... and it is longer than something someone can 'dip in' to during a commercial break on TV or a short subway ride, so it is an investment to check out. To get the full experience, one cannot just read the first chapter. One has to read the second chapter too since they are advertised as a package deal.
Good luck and best wishes. I intend to read it some day.
I can only speak for myself, but for me, there's a sort of synergy* between the immediately visible elements of a story that go into my decision to put it into the "Read Now", "Read Sooner", "Read Later", "Wait for a Review", or "Don't Bother" categories. And honestly? It's usually a snap decision.
I'd like to add somethin helpful, but I typed out a long reply and then realized it was completely personal and not helpful at all at grasping the overall situation. Ditto to most of what Mike said.
I will say that the cover art combined with the description and fist two chapter titles positively screamed "10k words of anime fight scene" to me.** I think there's a hard divide between interest in and avoidance of that sort of thing.
----------------
* I hate that word, but it really is appropriate here.
** And I am fully aware I may be objectively, factually wrong about that.
In my experience, tags like Death don't dissuade people from reading the story much, but they do predispose readers toward downvoting when they do read it. it being a commission may have a knee-jerk effect of turning people off because it's being written to suit a specific person, but then aren't most stories written to specifically suit the author? It can be hard to write someone else's vision. I say that from experience, having gotten two way too specific requests the last couple of Jinglemas rounds. Profanity also doesn't seem to dissuade readers, at least the tag being on the story, though actually getting into the story, I imagine the frequency and gratuitousness could have an effect. But again, maybe on whether to downvote or quit partway through, not whether to read it at all. I do put profanity tags on if I'm using f-bombs at all, but some people feel like even that doesn't necessitate it, no matter how many there are. 17k may be a bit long. There was a time it wouldn't have mattered, but these days, it seems to if it's a one-shot. You might have considered breaking it into chapters and releasing it a bit at a time. I tend to make a story chaptered if it'll run much more than 10k, since readers seem to prefer smaller bites . How small, I don't know. I often go for chapter lengths of 3-8k, but some readers say shorter is better, like 2-4k. But if the story doesn't lend itself to being split that way, you don't have much choice.
My policy for stories that come into my feed from people I follow is this:
It's not that I don't like the story -- on the contrary. It's just that ADD is a bitch and doesn't allow me to read stories when I spot them in my feed no matter how much I like them. And if a story exceeds 5k, I'm less apt to read it. (I nod at the hypocrisy since one of my stories has chapters ranging from 10k to nearly 30k.)
I do like the cover, though it's hard to tell that's meant to be Lightning Dust on the right. My mind went to edgy Manatsu Natsuumi at first from the hair strands. I could only tell it was Lightning Dust because I peeked at the tags.
Also, I remember seeing something that said 1PM-11PM EST are the peak publishing times. More specifically -- speaking from personal experience -- from the 3-8 range is where you want to be if you want to get traction.
There's also the fact that it was the tail-end of the Dialogue-Only Contest, as noted. You can't beat the inevitable Last-Minute Contest Rushes that occur with every contest, and that goes double for a contest promoted as a site post like the Dialogue-Only one. Non-contest fics stick out like sore thumbs.
5787569, 5787573, 5787577, 5787579, 5787581, 5787589, 5787592, 5787601, 5787612, 5787629, 5787653, 5787757
Thanks for all the responses, guys! It's been interesting getting all this feedback, some of which I did not expect. The one thing that most annoys me about all of this is that damn contest. I swear this specific issue has happened to me multiple times in the past year. I don't have the data to back that up, but I distinctly recall this exact thing happening to me on more than one occasion. I won't go so far as to call it the primary culprit, but I can't imagine it wasn't a significant one. This makes me wonder if there shouldn't be/isn't already a dedicated service for showing contests and their final dates so that authors like me can avoid such things in the future.
Regardless of that, the other reasons were worthy of note and I'm glad to have brought the subject up. A few more specific responses:
5787577
I actually did consider the time of day when releasing the story. I'm not sure that the oldschool rules apply to this anymore though. It used to be that releasing on the weekend in the afternoon was the best time, but that was back when stories fell off the New Story list in less than an hour. Nowadays there's a high likelihood that a story will stay on that list for 24 hours or more (unless there's a goddamn contest due date!), so I chose to release in the mid-morning thinking that would give me the best long-term visibility.
I don't doubt that chapter length is a factor, but 3k strikes me as low. I'd say 5k is a more likely cutoff point. That's going purely by personal observations though.
5787579
Heh. "Edgy juvenile writing." Yeah, I know those sorts. You'd think I'd have enough of a reputation to avoid that kind of reaction, but meh, it's not like everyone on the site has read my works before. Kind of a disappointment considering that, if anything, The Conflict is the opposite of that.
5787581
In this case they just gave me a premise – "Lightning and Aria fight" – and let me decide what that meant. So yeah, I basically had free reign to write the story as I saw fit. But I certainly understand why the whole 'commissioned work' thing would cast a negative light on things.
5787592
Huh. I'll grant Sunset is the poster child of the EqG fanbase, but I was always under the impression that the Sirens had a significant following all their own. That may just be my own bias towards them influencing my perceptions.
5787601
Clearly, I am doomed! My unwillingness to sell out and use this vastly overhyped and overused character shall keep me trapped in mediocrity forever!
5787612
I am genuinely surprised at that "choose your own adventure" angle you bring up. It was never intended to be that at all, and you'd think having only four chapters would immediately discount the very idea. It wouldn't be much of a CYOA if you could only make one decision.
Grim slasher-thriller? I get thriller, I did add the tag (though I continue to question if it was the right one to use), but slasher is part of the horror genre and that tag is clearly absent.
I get the "Author's Notes" comment, although I'd argue that the AN tool is often used in inappropriate/unnecessary ways and that if an AN is meant to be holistic to the story then it would be better served as its own separate thing. Still, I can't expect people to agree with that (humbly correct Southern) opinion.
I think your "piecemeal" comment is entirely incorrect. You don't release a story one chapter at a time for the sake of the people tracking said story, you do it that way so that new eyes can spot it in the Latest Updates list. The fact that only a dozen people are tracking the story is of no consequence to it getting more views.
Interesting that you see humility as a net negative, but I do see your point now that you bring it up. Perhaps that is something best left for the Author's Notes.
5787629
I find it highly amusing that it read to you as "10k words of anime fight scene", particularly because only a few days ago I wrote a long comment with tips about writing fight scenes, one of which was that the fight scene should not be the story itself. I'm also vehemently opposed to "epic anime/video game-style" fight scenes in literature; it might look cool on a screen, but on paper it always comes out as stupid to me. So yeah, on this point you were 100% off.
5787653
The story already is broken into chapters, I just made the (apparent mistake) of releasing them all at once. You'd think I would have learned my lesson about this by now, but I felt like it would defeat the point of the first two chapters being readable "in any order". Clearly, this was not sound enough reasoning.
One other thing I meant to say but someone else has partially covered is that you got buried in the rush of contest submissions, meaning you fell off the front page faster, and even ignoring that, depending on the contest, someone looking down the new stories column is going to see a bunch of same-y stuff. Harder to stand out and get someone’s interest. There are people who see that flood of contest stories and deliberately avoid it on principle, or worse, go downvote them all as revenge for…?
5787789
Yeah, I definitely feel now that the contest screwed me over, though I don't blame Bicyclette for that; it's at least partially my own fault for not bothering to check if any contests were ending that day. Which is hard to do when there's no single repository (that I am aware of) of contest information. I really am starting to think we need some site-wide service informing people when contests are ending so they can avoid this kind of thing.
I once spent a year carefully tracking my stories' vote ratios. One thing I learned is that a single downvote has a huge impact on a story's overall rating, vastly disproportional to that of an upvote. That's not the system's fault, it's just numbers. Once I became aware of that, I decided to never downvote a story, ever. I might downvote a comment every once in a while, but I won't do that to a story. It feels cruel.
5787797
I’d only downvote a story for very specific reasons, not because it didn’t suit my tastes. And I can’t remember the last time I did. Probably over 10 years ago.
If you look through the site posts, you’ll often see contest announcements, but it’d be on you to go into them to see when their due dates are. Bicyclette (btw, her contest still has several weeks to go, so while it’s possible you’re competing with some entries for it, I think the bigger issue is Perfectly Insane’s dialogue-only contest) tends to list other ongoing contests in any of her contest posts, so you could use hers to see if any major ones are current.
5787797
While probably not entirely accurate, the group Hall of Contests (and I assume an nsfw exists too) can be used to check for the biggest ones (and just clicking through each post for their deadlines etc.)
5787797
There’s always something I forget to say…
Interesting that you thought weekends were the best time to post. Someone (I think georg) once did an analysis and found the best time was early evening on Tuesday, though same time on Monday or Wednesday was close. Weekends were terrible because everyone was watching the new MLP ep and didn’t go looking for fanfic those days. Some of that may well have changed due to there being no new eps, plus the Tuesday thing was geared more toward what would get you in the feature box, which doesn’t make as much difference anymore, unless your following is small enough that nobody will notice it once it’s out of the new stories column.
5787804
Hall of Contests, eh? I shall have to keep it in mind in the future.
5787806
I imagine weekends would be best simply because a lot of them are off work on weekends so they'd have a better chance of actually looking at FIMFiction in the first place. Not everyone is like me, having the site opened in a tab somewhere at all times. But as I mentioned before, I think nowadays the old rules are kind of bunk for a variety of reasons, the end of G4 being a primary one. Maybe someone better at that kind of thing than myself should do another analysis.
5787773
I missed the comment; I'll have to go read it!
EDIT: Some really good advice there!
It’s possible Thriller was an odd duck for people. I for one am not entirely familiar with it, and I find myself occasionally coming across it and immediately skimming past it with little thought.
I don’t have very much time to sit down and read, so when I go looking for stories, I tend to be very picky about what I spend what time I do have in terms of literature. If I don’t know what it is and I don’t feel particularly inquisitive, then I don’t have time for it. Varies greatly by my mood, how much energy I have, and how far out of my lane I feel like swerving to interact with stories that I don’t fall in love with at first sight.
Not sure how relevant it is here, and I’m sure it’s a complicated topic, but that’s where my mind went.
5787825
I remain unconvinced that "Thriller" tag was a good move. FIMFiction foolishly lacks the much more appropriate "Action" tag though, so I used "Adventure" and "Thriller" to try and get the point across. Clearly, it didn't work.
I just now finally looked at the story page. Were it me choosing something to read, what kills it for me is the really lackluster title. It just sounds really generic, which doesn’t bode well for the creativity of the content. Knowing you, I’d read it anyway, since that’s very unlikely to be the case, but it might turn some people off, and those unfamiliar with you wouldn’t know to give you the benefit of the doubt.
5787828
You're the second person to bring that up. My original plan was to call it "The Siren Stone Conflict", but I felt "The Conflict" was snappier. I can't say that either is all that great, but it is what it is and I'm not changing it now.
I think the title is okay, but it might have had something to do with it when combined with other factors. I personally think that it reads a lot like a movie, which is something that I’ve seen done very poorly historically, both here and in fanfiction in general, so I tend to be wary of that. I may also be biased in that regard. I’ve always been a picky reader, even when I did have more time.
Also the cover art is gorgeous. Just sat down and looked at it, it’s a nice piece.
5787773
Not necessarily. Exhibit A:
- Equestria Girls
- Romance
- Comedy
- Horror
Wallflower tries repeatedly to murder Sunset. She doesn't expect Sunset to flirt back. Hearthswriting 2021. You get to choose the ending!Exhibit B:
- MLP: FiM
- Slice of Life
Petunia Paleo digs up dinosaurs in the badlands of the American West.My point was you have nearly two thousand followers. If only 12 of them added it to their read it later list, then releasing the story over multiple days is not likely to nudge your numbers up much because that suggests it is an appeal issue rather than a visibility issue. I think from Ghost Mike's thread on active followers that over 60% of yours were still active??? I do not have the link at hand. If at least 50% of those follow you for stories rather than just reviews, you should have a built-in population of readers--many of whom should tag your story as "read later"--of around 600.
I agree that being in the latest update column provides a chance for stories to get more views but it also seems to help 'sub-10 vote' stories far less than 'over-10 vote stories'. There is a significant population of the site that waits for stories to reach at least 10 votes before taking a look at them.
5787880
Putting Paul back into the tool Rambling Writer wrote (as the one in Monday Musings #113 are a month only by now) gives us:
I would say, I would only consider followers online in the last week to be truly "active", in so far as they will see things you post in their feed. Myself, I feel those online in the last day is a direct barometer of all the people that will definitely see any blogs or new story one posts; for blogs, that represents your audience pretty directly in proportion to potential views, as people will casually click and read a quick blog, long as its for that audience.
Stories, well, they're a different story (
) what with all the aspects discussed below in terms of appeal, and the time investment for one of this length. Never an exact science, especially with subject material like this.
5787962
Thank you for the precise numbers!
I generally agree with your comments on the 'last day'; however I think 'last three or four days' is a better metric. We do not have that number but an estimate could be derived from dividing the last week statistic.