{"id":4833,"date":"2013-02-20T09:16:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T15:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=4833"},"modified":"2013-02-20T09:16:41","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T15:16:41","slug":"statistics-and-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2013\/02\/20\/statistics-and-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Statistics and Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AI’ve never been that obsessed with statistics. The times I’ve watched sports? I was never into stats. I can’t remember the last time I looked at the stats for The Juggling Writer<\/em>. I have no idea how many people have subscribed to my RSS feed or what my top articles are. I really only look at stats when starting something new.<\/p>\n

Gorilla Stats<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I recently mentioned the Men in Gorilla Suits<\/em> podcast<\/a>. Since it’s not even three weeks old, I check the stats on the site, just to see if anybody <\/em>is listening. I’m happy to report it’s doing better than I expected, so thanks to everybody who’s given it a listen.<\/p>\n

The audio files are stored at Libsyn<\/a>. I also store the files for the Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors<\/em><\/a> podcast there. While checking stats for Men in Gorilla Suits<\/em> — for the first time in probably over a year — I checked stats to see how Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors<\/em> is doing.<\/p>\n

I was surprised at what I saw…<\/p>\n

Is Anybody Listening?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors<\/em> never got a lot of listeners. I stopped checking stats a month or two when I wrapped up the final chapter, only checking on rare occasion to see that maybe <\/em>one person discovered it each month.<\/p>\n

When I checked last week, I noticed it’s getting more downloads than when I was putting it out. I put the final chapter out two years ago yesterday; in the last six months, people have been listening more than ever!<\/p>\n

Which brings me to reviews…<\/p>\n

Reviews Are Like Stats to Me<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I don’t really read reviews of the stuff I’ve written or recorded. It’s not that I can’t bear the thought of a bad review…it’s more that I’ve never made seeing what people say about my stuff a habit. So…knowing that people have been listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors<\/em> more than ever, I went to iTunes to see if anybody left reviews. The last time I looked, there was one.<\/p>\n

Not that there are tons of reviews there, but there are a handful of reviews about the podcast that I’ve never seen. Most surprising: a couple from the past couple months. There have been recent days where I’ve seen more downloads to the podcast in a day than the entire time I was doing the podcast.<\/p>\n

The Point of All This<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I really don’t have a point to all this, other than there are times I think about just doing my thing and sharing it with a select few.<\/p>\n

In recent years, I take pleasure from the effort alone and don’t really think about marketing and all the things one should do to get their work out there. When I tried doing the right things, I spent more effort than it was worth. Should you think that’s a snotty statement, I don’t mean that that it’s all about a return on my investment of time and work — I mean that I was spending time I should <\/em>have been writing (or enjoying life) on promotion.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to work on a blog entry before your novel and convince yourself that you’ve done work that mattered. Social media can be a distraction; if you open Twitter more than your manuscript, you know what I mean. This year, the work comes first, which is why I haven’t been blogging here as much as I have in the past.<\/p>\n

Lonely Work Has Its Rewards
\n<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Writing is lonely work. It’s nice recording a podcast each week with a friend. It’s nice getting back to juggling and other things I enjoy that I stopped doing when all I did was write and worked on trying to get that writing seen.<\/p>\n

And yep…it’s nice knowing people are out there — complete strangers — listening to a podcast I did that ended over two years ago. Reading that someone cracked up while stuck in traffic because they listened to me reading Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors <\/em>makes all I’ve put into it more than worth it. The friendships I’ve made through The Juggling Writer<\/em> and the occasional email I get about something I’ve written are nice. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.<\/p>\n

It’s not that I need to hear any praise, but I gotta confess: finding out people are still listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors<\/em> and enjoying the story makes the podcast I’m doing with Shawn<\/a> (and something else I have in the works) even more fun than if I just did it for the sake of doing it.<\/p>\n

I can’t say I’ll ever make checking stats and reviews a habit, but I’m glad I took a peek!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been that obsessed with statistics. The times I’ve watched sports? I was never into stats. I can’t remember the last time I looked at the stats for The Juggling Writer. I have no idea how many people have subscribed to my RSS feed or what my top articles are. I really only look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[24,34],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4833"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4842,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions\/4842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}