Statcows! Blogging Odyssey
In the same way that manufacturers have their cashcows, bloggers have their statcows: posts (whether already written or potentially in the works) that we know are certain to get lots of hits, etc. I haven’t been blogging for too long, but I’ve already noticed some trends in my own site that might be of interest to the curious.
Musical Statheifers
For this blog, K-On! posts have been a big statcow. Keep in mind that I only blogged the first 5 episodes of the series. As of this moment, 2 of my 5 most visited posts, and 4 out of my top 10 arere K-On! posts. The most popular one wasn’t even an episode review at all, but a post I did between episodes 1 and 2 (“While we wait for K-On! episode 2”). That’s in second place (I’ll get to first place below) and over 400 hits ahead of the third post, which is huge for this blog.
When I realized that I had nothing to say about episode 6 and each episode thereon out, I wasn’t very happy about it. I literally saw my hit count drop and drop and drop. It wasn’t a matter of principle that kept me from using my statcow, it was quite literally that I didn’t have anything to say!
My other statcow is posts related to Soul Eater. This statcow appears to be seasonal. The Soul Eater manga is ongoing, and new chapters come out at about the 10th of the month. So starting around the 1st of the month, all of my Soul Eater posts get more and more hits; the numbers peak around the 12th of the month and the drop dramatically, only to start again at the beginning of the next month.
Magical Statheifers
There is some cause for sadness here, as it’s pretty evident that people are madly looking for news or scans of the new chapter, and they’re accidentally clicking on my site. The clearest proof here is that even though I review each chapter about 3-4 days after it’s out, this post doesn’t get that many hits at all. It’s only the next month that people start running into it.
Statcows don’t include Leiji Matsumoto‘s works in their herd. This has deep repercussions on my blog, because a huge chunk (over 30%) of all my posts are Leijiverse-related. Only 1 (!) out of my top 20 posts is Matsumoto-related (and that one’s in 14th place). More glaringly, a full 13 out of the bottom 20 posts are Matsumoto-related.
The most curious of things is my most visited post of all, “How Mad is Soul Eater?”. On the one hand, as I’ve just pointed out, posts related to this series are statcows for me so there’s no surprise there. But there’s a darker, far more sinister reason IMO why this post is at number one. Here’s the image and caption I headed the post with:
Tsubaki + (Liz & Patty) + Kid = SEX
If you can stop looking at the image, and just focus on the caption, you will find that…well, let me put the caption itself:
Tsubaki + (Liz & Patty) + Kid = SEX
What I meant by = SEX here was that the characters (Tsubaki, Liz and Patty, Death the Kid) were cool, hawt, etc. Anyway, isolate the last two words and what do you get?
Kid = SEX
Now, guess what’s one of the top search terms people use to find my blog:
kid sex
Kritik der Animationskraft 
My two statcows are my post on architecture of utena and avatars: airbender. Everyday I get people searching terms like ‘deconstructive architecture’ or ‘zutara’ (zuko+katara, fangirl shipping, yea…) and end up in those posts…My third one would be my post on sex in Kanashimi no Belladonna for…obvious reasons…
GANDAMU.
I don’t post a tag cloud because people will see that I write more about Gundam than I do Macross (of course, there’s much much more material in Gundam, but still…) SHHHHHHHHHHH
ROFLMAO @ kid sex. My cash cows never cease to piss me off. Back on Euphoric Field, the posts that got the omst hits were either ones where I dropped a lot of names, or porn posts, and the porn posts were almost always searching for either downloads or images, meaning they were probably disappointed. The only regular posts that get really huge hit counts are silly, frivolous ones, or ones where I troll some popular show.
I’ve accepted that if I really, truly like a post, no one will ever read it. A lot of my favorite posts still have no comments or hits, meaning not even my regular readers were interested in them.
And our problems are similar, we both enjoy what have come to be ore obscure shows. Leiji Matsumoto, for all of his influence, is totally unknown to the younger anime audience.
That’s a very interesting descriptive analysis 🙂
Oh my… that top search is scary…
I try to be very careful with my tagging and avoid terms that might bring unwanted audience. Sometimes I get funny results though: recently a couple of searches were “sadistic anime girl” lol I guess it was related to Bakemonogatari 😛
It is sad that Leiji Matsumoto is not very popular on your blog 😦 Perhaps, that’s because new generation is not very familiar with him. However, I am sure those people who do find your posts about his works, appreciate reading them 🙂
kid sex… 😐 would’ve been fun if your post had a rickroll in store for these people 😛
anyways, I can totally empathize with you on the statcows and the not-so-happy situation where the posts you deem to be more worthy of attention isn’t really getting it. Guess it means you’re still on the way to getting your target audience, and there’s no way but up! 🙂
oh, and this is why stats shouldn’t be one’s inspiration for blogging. It’s quite misleading, and you’d probably become as shallow are those who are simply visiting your post for the wrong reason.
A lot of writers and musicians seem to have the same observation, that some of their favorite works got the least attention and some of their throwaways were the ones that got the most traction.
@gaguri
Sex is a total magnet, isn’t it. You should do on on architectural sex, blow them all away!
@ghost
I figure Gundam is a good friend to have, statwise. Are there people out there that only watch Gundam?? I almost get that impression…
@digiboy
Yeah, I remember you talking about this somewhere on your blog. It’s crazy how this works. But I guess if they come for something wacky just a few people might end up clicking on the posts you like to make it worthwhile.
@Kitsune
I think that’s the attitude I gotta take on Matsumoto, and keep pumping out posts. I do know of a couple of people who really like these posts (one of them is me, though 😉 )
@usagijen
yeah, of course, i don’t write posts that i don’t like, so I’m happy if people visit any posts…but if matsumoto was a statcow i’d be sitting pretty….you’re right, though, shouldn’t worry about stats.
@super rats
Totally. It happens to all of us artists 😉
I think there might be ‘pure’ Gundam viewers. There are people into Gundam ‘only’ for the model kit building hobby and watch very little anime at all (not even a lot of Gundam). You get all kinds of people within that fandom, and it never fails to fascinate me.
Macross fans are more laid back and casual I feel.
That’s the best ending to any post I’ve ever read. Good show.
@ghostlightning
So if you’re a gundam / macross fan, you’re some sort of manic depressive, huh. I hear lithium’s good for that.
@omisyth
It’s funny because it’s true 🙂