And not enough readers to go around?
This is a topic that has just recently come up and I figured I would offer my two cents into the debate. As most of you know, there are literally hundreds of spanking blogs out there for your entertainment, and it seems that more and more are cropping up. There have been blog owners who have said that they no longer get as many hits from certain sources, however I don’t think that tells a story within itself. Indeed, my series of blogs would tell the same story, however, it is merely the links being distributed elsewhere.
So before I start, let me show you the stats. I have broken it down to show the yearly visitors that two of my blogs have received. It seems to be a better baseline to use a certain period as opposed to a day, a week or a month, though I guess you could break this down yourself by quarters. Here is the total number of visitors for each year for both THE HOUSE OF RICHARD WINDSOR and SPANKING PICS. I also rounded everything up to the nearest thousand.
Richard Windsor:
2007: 261,000
2008: 403,000
2009: 395,000
Spanking Pics:
2007: 133,000
2008: 323,000
2009: 320,000
Through the thick and thin of it all though, when you compare 2008 to 2009, once my blogs had become established, there is very little difference in the overall totals. So let me break it down and show you the examples of 3 sources of visitors over the years. First of all, direct visits to the site per year.
Richard Windsor:
2007: 18,000
2008: 50,000
2009: 47,000
Spanking Pics:
2007: 11,000
2008: 27,000
2009: 21,000
Then the numbers supplied by Chross each year.
Richard Windsor:
2007: 26,000
2008: 103,000
2009: 121,000
Spanking Pics:
2007: 29,000
2008: 75,000
2009: 72,000
And finally, search engine visitors per year.
Richard Windsor:
2007: 16,000
2008: 20,000
2009: 34,000
Spanking Pics:
2007: 12,000
2008: 58,000
2009: 92,000
Again, you have to take the baseline of the years 2008 and 2009 as my blog had become established by then. Now there are some small differences between direct visitors and visitors sent by Chross, but they are either up or down differences. The real difference comes from search engines, in which the visitors to both sites have increased by a whopping 60 to 70% on the previous year, and just based on the first two months of this year the total is still increasing. Just based on these 3 sources alone, they sent an additional 30,000 visitors to Richard Windsor from 2008 to 2009, yet the overall total between 2008 and 2009 is actually down 8,000. The same 3 sources sent an extra 25,000 visitors to Spanking Pics from one year to the next, yet the overall total was down by 3,000.
So what is this telling me? Well first of all it doesn’t matter where these visitors are coming from, each year I am getting roughly the same total. The 34,000 extra visitors that search engines provided to Spanking Pics simply replaced other links that dropped off in total. Now I could compare every single site but I think it is pretty obvious that most links coming in would have dropped, while a few would have increased. The bottom line is that I am happy with the numbers because I think that pretty much tells me two things. Firstly, there is a clear baseline as to what my reach is, which is roughly 1,100 visitors per day, per site (that is where spanking pics currently is as well despite the numbers above saying that it is slightly below that). Secondly, and most importantly to me, there is no significant drop off from one year to the next. Clearly I am getting the same audience which I therefore translate to mean that the reader is content with the product I am putting out.
Now then, the $64,000 question, why do the visitors coming from some sites drop off dramatically, and why does the overall readership of some sites steadily decline. I’m not an expert by any means, but I do have my opinions on the topic.
Let’s start with blogs sending traffic to you and why they decline. I think there are a few reasons for this and the first is pretty obvious, Chross has developed a blog where people know that they can find what they want. Now of course they are going to his site first and foremost for the content that he presents, whether it is archived or the ever popular ‘Spankings of the Week’ feature. If you take this site for instance, people who go to Chross who also like this site will select the richardwindsor link once they have viewed his material. They were coming to this site anyway, it was just how they got here was the key. Now because I didn’t get that visitor from any number of the sites that link into me, it isn’t because they are less effective, it is because they found a place to it that they are more familiar with.
In essence I agree with the comments I have read, Sara first mentioned it and recently Bonnie added to it. When the Spanking Universe was created, it DIDN’T increase the readership on a global basis, it merely redistributed where links were coming from. Bonnie’s last comment on the subject was that there is a certain amount of people who read spanking blogs, the only thing that changes is how they get to the source. So I agree with the theory that the Spanking Universe isn’t sending more traffic to websites overall, it is merely replacing in part how people are getting to their destination. What I do disagree with though, is that the Universe is taking away visitors from sites.
Here are my thoughts on why readership declines, and because my two blogs that I spoke about have also slightly decreased, I think it applies to these as well. Firstly, if a blog adds a link to a new blog, that is one less chance that the visitor is coming to your blog. Now it may seem absurd to think of it as one link, but one that one link becomes 20 and is spread out over 300 blogs, I think it has some validation, that is now 600 opportunities for people to look elsewhere. Going back to Bonnie’s point, yesterday I added 100 new blogs to the Universe, but I don’t think that it will increase the links going out, rather it will decrease the amount of hits going out because it is now spread over 100 extra blogs. I do agree that there is a cap on the number of spanking readers, and when you weigh in the fact that everyone has a time constraint, it only stands to reason that each blog will get less visitors simply because now there is more to choose from. That doesn’t just apply to the Universe, it applies to all blogs that add links.
I think it is safe to say that sites that routinely show spanking pics will always get visitors, after all that is what a significant portion of our readership is looking for. The controversial part of my theory though applies to blogs that have more of a written concept, it is my belief that if people like what you have to say and the way that you present it, they will find some way of getting to your blog to read it. If they are apathetic to what you write about, when they discover a writing style that is more to their liking then that is quite possibly a reader you have now lost on a frequent basis. Again, we aren’t talking just about a single reader here, we are talking of 100’s, possibly 1000’s, and with new blogs popping up all the time it is quite conceivable that the traffic one gets will now be lost due to people finding another blog more to their interest.
The bottom line is, if this very site was to start losing its readership, I wouldn’t look for reasons as to why that is happening any further than the site itself. If I produce a product that maintains the interest of the reader then I needn’t worry where people are coming from, they will make it here somehow, and thankfully the numbers shown above appear to show a steady status quo. If, however, my readership started to decline, there could only be one reason for it, and that reason would be that my site simply doesn’t appeal to the viewer anymore and/or they have moved on and found something else more to their liking. It isn’t an absurd thought because new blogs are cropping up all the time and the reader only has a certain amount of Internet time to view what they want to view. Without a doubt that has already happened I am sure, I have just been fortunate enough that every reader I have lost I have also been able to gain a new reader in return, hence why my numbers have pretty much stayed the same from year to year once the site established itself.
My belief is that a website that already has an established core readership will always have one, clearly what they are presenting is what people want to see. If a website stopped linking to me I don’t think I would lose that reader, that reader would simply access my site by a different avenue.
So what are your thoughts? Do you disagree with me? Or do you have any further input to what I already said?
Interesting study you’ve done there Rich.
However, I wouldn’t say there are too many spanking blogs — as if it would be right to discourage anyone thinking of starting a new one to think twice about it.
Each writer has his or her own voice and finds an audience for that perspective and viewpoint.
Perhaps some blogs that appeal to me are not the most popular in the spanking universe. And I’d guess you’d know a bit about which blogs are most popular too, as you’d have access to outgoing links from SU.
I suspect your thesis that we’re not adding new readers to the pool at any dramatic rate is likely accurate. Not that there’s anything much that can or should be done about that.
You didn’t mention how many spanko bloggers stop blogging and close up their blogs. I know there have been a few that I’ve followed and probably more that I hadn’t even noticed.
I look forward to your rant about aesthetic appeal; that should be an interesting discussion.
Cheers,
Karl
Hi Richard,
interesting thoughts – and I think they are true, but – only – after your blog has reached a certain popularity or standing, of course.
On search engines:
There is a simple reason why hits from search engines are likely to increase over the years.
You type a lot of words, posts and articles – you are more likely to be found thru a vast variety of search terms. Just think of Bonnie’s regular key word posts where she displays the funniest of them.
On the “pool” of readers:
I do agree though that – when you blog is popular enough – there is only a more or less maximum amount of people you will come to your blog, they will come via different routes, but in the end end up on your blog.
But…:
In case of minor blogs every external link on a popular site will increase their traffic of course, as those blogs are not (yet) part of the “regular patrol routes” of the spanking blog readership.
People might know them, might have visited them and even recall it, but these blogs have not yet received a status in which the reader just types in the url automatically or has it bookmarked – I think a lot of spankos have a fixed routine of visiting their favorite blogs noly as ddon describes it.
So I’m really happy about the side effect of my SotW links which sends a permanent flow of readers to blogs they normally might not visit.
My blog is sort of maxed out like yours, too.
The theory of Bonnie is very likely true from my point of view. You may of course always attract a small amount of new readerrs that have not stumbled across your blog yet. But the majority comes from the “experienced” audience which exactly knows which blogs it likes and visits and which not.
I personally am not really looking to increasing the stats any more, since I’m seriously afraid my host might start complaining…
There is a 100 – 200 visitor bounce up and down from day to day so that fits your theory pretty well.
I also agree with Todd as I have noticed that time of year, weather etc also play a part of it. Summer time / holidays as I recall always sees a slight drop of visitors.
As to picture blog attracting more people:
True. For the long run you should find a good mix of both. Text blogs can be awesmoe, of course, but they take up more time / concentration to visit and read. Thus people will not – like maybe yours or my blog – drop by in a spare minute just to check if there’s a new post, knowing they couldn’t read the full thing anyway.
So to your theory:
“My belief is that a website that already has an established core readership will always have one, clearly what they are presenting is what people want to see. If a website stopped linking to me I don’t think I would lose that reader, that reader would simply access my site by a different avenue.”
I 100% agree 🙂
Cheers
Chross
Richard,
Good article with some excellent observations. Here are some of my own:
The most important thing to recognise when starting out doing a blog is that it is not good enough to simply do a “spanking blog” You have to do a spanking blog that has it’s own sense of place within the genre. Spank fans want something different. With my own blog, YEOWCH, I’ve tried to create a sort of community feel to it with regular posts, stories and comment about whatever is going through my head at the time. Way before I started a blog, I used to do a free site archive called Spankorama. I collected all my various spank stories together and stuck them on the site in a sort of magazine style format. Spankorama lasted about 3 years before the freehost went boobz up and at the final count it had clicked nearly 1.2million hits. It is only through discovering blogging that I’m back in the game. I have no doubt that people who knew me from my original website have continued to follow what I do on my newish blog.
YEOWCH has been going about 8 months now and despite the odd weekly drop in readers, it has grown steadily to average out around the 1,200 uniques per day mark. Like every spank blog, if I get a mention on Chross, my stats double in numbers – maybe even more. I get a steady flow of clicks from the Universe each day and have not seen any declines across the board.
The hard part of doing a blog is getting your voice heard. Like most spank bloggers, I’ve linked reciprocals with as many spank websites/blogs as I can. Sadly, trying to get linked with some of the bigger spank websites is like pulling teeth. To gain a wider readership, I’ve started thinking outside the “box” by trying to get listed in as many adult directories, link lists and link dumps as possible. Joining various adult social multimedia forums and commenting on various posts is another avenue for trafffic – I just add my blog url in a tagline or on my poster page. It’s no good being just a blogger, you have to be able to sell your blog and get people to come to it.
Getting noticed is hard work. But do you know what? It is great fun. The creative aspect of blogging is fantastically rewarding. My schtick is erotic xxx spanking stories. At last check, my most popular story has over 10,000 page reads. Knowing that people regularly visit my blog to read my fiction is great. That’s my motivation right there.
The fact I’m beginning to make some money out of doing it is a bonus lol
*
Ian.
Karl,
You are correct, I perhaps should have titled the post more appropriately because the last thing that I would want to do would be to discourage fellow spankos from starting their own site. You raise an interesting point as well because there are an awful lot of sites that just cease being. That is another reason for a loyal readership because they know that your site isn’t going anywhere.
Chross,
I, too, agree with you as well. Part of the technique of successful blogging using search engines is knowing what to put in your posts. Trust me, I am fully aware of that and I have used it for years 😉 Just put the super powerful search term “Spanking Pics” into google and you will see that two of my sites are listed in the top 5, that was deliberate on my part!!
Now I didn’t talk about blogs that have a small readership, but of course I couldn’t agree with you more. When I originally started my ‘Blog Love’ feature years ago, part of the reason for that was to send a bunch of new readers to a smaller site. There are also a lot of smaller sites out there that display their top referrers, so the impact that the Spanking Universe has on these sites is clear for anyone to see, it is either number 1 or number 2 on their top referrer list, it all depends on whether or not that German guy also links them 😉
Ian,
There is no doubt in my mind that your site was going to be successful, I have personally been a big fan of your writing for a long time now, no matter where I see your stories. Having sent out somewhere in the region of 200 messages trying to get people to join up to the Universe, I totally hear you in regards to getting that reciprocal link back. Now of course most people were delighted to accommodate, but a great many others never even so much as acknowledged that I wrote to them, that was very annoying. So now I have added them all to the Universe and if they don’t link back, then fuck ’em, I’m past the stage of caring, lol.
It reminds me of that French blog, the one that I call ‘Chross lite”. It took me several emails to this guy to finally get him to add my link right at the very bottom of his page. Why was I so obsessed with getting a link? Because the guy was raping my blog for his content and wouldn’t so much as give a link back to me, even though he was copying the material I was posting and making his own post the very next day with it. He still does it to a lesser degree of course, but at least my link is on his site, even if you need a set of abseiling equipment to actually find it 😉
I visit fewer blogs because Universe gives me a sample of recent posts, allowing me to skip stuff I don’t like, instead of actually going there to find out.
I would like even more spanking blog. I also would like someone to start a ‘SPANKING CHANNEL TV. 24 hours full of spanking material, from Spanking Movies, Spanking lectures, Spanking demonstrations, Spanking news, spanking soap operas, spanking sports, spanking arts, spanking quiz shows, spanking singers, etc.
Rich (and all),
OK, I’m a geek, but I find this exchange fascinating. I can see what readers do, but I often puzzle about the why.
I hadn’t looked at annual unique visitors in the way you describe until today. What I found surprised me. Even though page loads were down (which I knew), my visitor count for 2009 was actually higher than in either of the two previous years. This indicates that more people are coming to MBS, but they are not staying as long. This observation seems consistent with a community with many more quality alternatives.
On any given day, I believe the number of readers and the number of hours they have to consume our blogs is fixed. If there are more blogs from which to choose, we can conclude that, all things being equal, the average blog will receive fewer hits. But all things are not equal. As you point out, the established blogs will reliably carve out their shares.
So who loses out? I believe it is the little guys, the niche blogs, those just getting started, and those who are not quite as polished. If this theory is correct, it’s a real shame because many of those blogs present valuable perspectives not found elsewhere. These good people renew our energy and enthusiasm, both for spanking and for blogging. New ideas and approaches, once visible, attract new readers to our community. I suggest that we need their spark as much as they need our support.
So what can we do to promote the newest members of our blogging community? That’s such a good question that I made our weekly brunch topic (yes, it’s a shameless plug, but for a good cause). 😀
So, no, I don’t believe we have too many spanking blogs.
With warm regards,
Bonnie
Hi Rich,
Well, even if the popular consensus was that “there are too many spanking blogs,” there’s not much that could be done about it.
Somebody once said, “Xerox made everyone a publisher and the Internet will make everyone a broadcaster.”
Give it a few years and we’ll have 24-hour access to live Internet video feed from thousands of spanko basements across the globe. (Wayne’s World for perverts…)
That’s the democratizing effect of the Internet — everyone gets a voice, but we start to drown each other out in the process.
That’s OK though. It’s gratifying to see legions of spankos out there, letting their freak flags fly. Sure beats living in a vacuum, wondering “Am I the only one who likes this stuff?”
Cody
Colorado Spankers
Richard well done in your readership popularity yes they are all very good to rad some better than others i meant to read the spank blogs yes their are a lot but they are different girl spankees have them excellent a few have finished Beverlys has but that was her choice ,best wishes ,tim .
bloigs??? you know what I meant, I need to (ahem) clean my sticking keyboard…I just been viewing Punishedbrats…heh heh
I just want to say three things.
1. The number of people in the world is growing dramatically. That is why every year there are new readers of spanking sites.
2. I think the readership is reduced in each blog, because the writers growth is more higher (in percentage) that the population growth.
3. The quality of what is written or published is the main factor of success of a blog or site spanking.
Finally. Sorry about the summary and the language. I hope you understand my words.
Greetings
All I can say is I am 55 years old. What that means is that all through the major developmental passages in my life (childhood, adolescence, etc.. all the way through to my 40’s) there was nothing. One had to survive on looking up the word in the dictionary or seeing a round bottom displayed in an ad for blue jeans (remember that one for GWG jeans that went bum-bum-bum-bum).. That was it. In Canada spanking magazines were considered human degradation and seized at the border so adult stores had nothing. Total dying-of-thirst-in-a-never-ending-desert situation. You’ve really stop and marvel about how far we’ve come since then to the point where we are actually asking such a question. I’m gratefull for the internet and also the amazing work of bloggers. At the end of the day though, whatever the world’s right number of blogs is I wish I could have grown up in that horn-of-spanking-plenty world and not the desert. Young spanko people out there you have no idea howe lucky you are.
Are there too many blogs? Possibly, can there be too many blogs? depends. Every blog has its niche. As i said in an earlier topic i appreciate the links to other blogs as the search engines sometimes do not find them and i enjoy seeing new blogs. I admit i am more of a picture fan than a writers(or rants) reader and there is one other thing that has not been mentioned several of the blogs have viruses at the portal and so you do not go back there so the numbers might be off due to that fact.Another thing is sometimes spanko blogs will sometimes find the same thing to be of intrest and it is posted in many blogs and no one really knows which source posted it first or how many use the links and people just go there from the links. i also admit i just go to certain blogs as i am familar with their content and i enjoy the way they present it (Chross,CSR, Richard Windsor, Pixie) so i visit them often and then i don’t need to go to other blogs
Jim