The Danger of Stats
You probably aren't reading this LiveJournal of mine if you aren't already aware that A) I am a graphic artist and B) I am a musician. (Neither is my official profession at the moment - sadly - but that's another matter.) In fact, what few readers remain at the moment are probably acquaintances of some sort.
My creative output has been light and spotty for a while now, and as such I haven't felt the need to do a lot of heavy self-promotion. Why go to the trouble of trying to increase traffic to my web presence when there's not a lot new to see?
I have a primary website, stop-him.com, which is horribly out of date. I have a music website, platzangst.net, which also needs some work. Slightly more active are this very LiveJournal, and two "community" sites - by which I mean they're hosted on sites dedicated to gathering communities of "artists" or "musicians" together*. My deviantArt page is stophim.deviantart.com, and my "band" Platzangst is hosted at platzangst.bandcamp.com.
I've detailed all of that because of this:
All of these sites track the traffic they receive. If I were motivated, I could look up what sort of hits my "main" site was getting. My deviantArt page shows me some stats about things like how many people look at it and what the most looked-at pieces are in my gallery. The Platzangst Bandcamp page shows me even more details - what songs are being listened to, whether or not they get played through to the end, whether they're played on the website page or off an embedded player elsewhere - and the page itself gathers some stats, such as where a visitor comes from. If, for example, I have a link to the Bandcamp page in the "signature" that gets posted whenever I make an entry on some public messageboard, and someone clicks on that link, then that visit will show up in my stats listing, with a note telling me where the link was that brought the visitor to my page. If you click the link I made above, it would tell me it came from "stop-him.livejournal.com/61801.html". The only time there's no such note is when the visit is made directly to the site - no link, someone either has it bookmarked in their browser or they enter the address manually.
Platzangst on Bandcamp has been getting a light but steady trickle of direct hits for a while now. A few a week. It's easy to speculate that it's one or two of my online acquaintances who like my music and check on what's going on every so often. Hell, maybe someone I've never met has discovered my music entirely on its own merits and checks in for updates ha ha the poor waiting fool. But direct hits suggests a familiarity with me or my work - you don't need to go to some other page to get to mine, you go right there because you know where it is.
And this is where the mystery comes in.
Because what fascinates me about stats is when there's some radical change for no apparent reason. When I make a rare post on, say, Warren Ellis' Whitechapel message board, as I did when I came out with the Our Corporate Strategy album, I can expect a certain increase in traffic. It makes sense. Put the address out in more places and in front of many more eyes, you get more potential response.
What seems to make no sense is when - say, August 21st - Bandcamp notes thirty-one direct hits on the Platzangst page for that day. Scanning the records for the last 60 days, the next highest amount of traffic in a day was eight hits. Other than that, it's little dribbles of single-hit days, a few with 2 or 3, a bunch where just nothing at all happens.
So I look at 31 hits and wonder just what the hell was going on that day. On Twiiter I mentioned making an album of timestretched 80's hits. Did someone think it would be posted that same day? Other than that, I can't think of anything I personally did to trigger such a frenzy. That's the danger of these stats - the blanks they leave are more tantalizing than the info they provide. Was it just one person constantly checking in all day? Was it an assortment of fans of which I'm unaware? Something in between? What were they looking for? I mean, thinking of it as one person is kind of frightening, that level of attention. Makes me wish I had a new album out NOW so I could put it up and satisfy the poor crazed soul on the other side of the Internet.
I am working on the album, incidentally. Soon, but not immediately. Relax, mystery fan.
*Yes, I realize that anyone who pays attention to the Internet for more than 12 minutes is already aware of this phenomenon and is probably familiar with the community sites in question. I just mention it to point out the difference between sites that are ostensibly my responsibility and sites that were free for the taking...
My creative output has been light and spotty for a while now, and as such I haven't felt the need to do a lot of heavy self-promotion. Why go to the trouble of trying to increase traffic to my web presence when there's not a lot new to see?
I have a primary website, stop-him.com, which is horribly out of date. I have a music website, platzangst.net, which also needs some work. Slightly more active are this very LiveJournal, and two "community" sites - by which I mean they're hosted on sites dedicated to gathering communities of "artists" or "musicians" together*. My deviantArt page is stophim.deviantart.com, and my "band" Platzangst is hosted at platzangst.bandcamp.com.
I've detailed all of that because of this:
All of these sites track the traffic they receive. If I were motivated, I could look up what sort of hits my "main" site was getting. My deviantArt page shows me some stats about things like how many people look at it and what the most looked-at pieces are in my gallery. The Platzangst Bandcamp page shows me even more details - what songs are being listened to, whether or not they get played through to the end, whether they're played on the website page or off an embedded player elsewhere - and the page itself gathers some stats, such as where a visitor comes from. If, for example, I have a link to the Bandcamp page in the "signature" that gets posted whenever I make an entry on some public messageboard, and someone clicks on that link, then that visit will show up in my stats listing, with a note telling me where the link was that brought the visitor to my page. If you click the link I made above, it would tell me it came from "stop-him.livejournal.com/61801.html". The only time there's no such note is when the visit is made directly to the site - no link, someone either has it bookmarked in their browser or they enter the address manually.
Platzangst on Bandcamp has been getting a light but steady trickle of direct hits for a while now. A few a week. It's easy to speculate that it's one or two of my online acquaintances who like my music and check on what's going on every so often. Hell, maybe someone I've never met has discovered my music entirely on its own merits and checks in for updates ha ha the poor waiting fool. But direct hits suggests a familiarity with me or my work - you don't need to go to some other page to get to mine, you go right there because you know where it is.
And this is where the mystery comes in.
Because what fascinates me about stats is when there's some radical change for no apparent reason. When I make a rare post on, say, Warren Ellis' Whitechapel message board, as I did when I came out with the Our Corporate Strategy album, I can expect a certain increase in traffic. It makes sense. Put the address out in more places and in front of many more eyes, you get more potential response.
What seems to make no sense is when - say, August 21st - Bandcamp notes thirty-one direct hits on the Platzangst page for that day. Scanning the records for the last 60 days, the next highest amount of traffic in a day was eight hits. Other than that, it's little dribbles of single-hit days, a few with 2 or 3, a bunch where just nothing at all happens.
So I look at 31 hits and wonder just what the hell was going on that day. On Twiiter I mentioned making an album of timestretched 80's hits. Did someone think it would be posted that same day? Other than that, I can't think of anything I personally did to trigger such a frenzy. That's the danger of these stats - the blanks they leave are more tantalizing than the info they provide. Was it just one person constantly checking in all day? Was it an assortment of fans of which I'm unaware? Something in between? What were they looking for? I mean, thinking of it as one person is kind of frightening, that level of attention. Makes me wish I had a new album out NOW so I could put it up and satisfy the poor crazed soul on the other side of the Internet.
I am working on the album, incidentally. Soon, but not immediately. Relax, mystery fan.
*Yes, I realize that anyone who pays attention to the Internet for more than 12 minutes is already aware of this phenomenon and is probably familiar with the community sites in question. I just mention it to point out the difference between sites that are ostensibly my responsibility and sites that were free for the taking...