Guest Blogger Prize Winners
July 8, 2008 by John Hewitt
Before I prattle on about the contest let me just announce the winners:
Most Page Views — $250
Lillie Ammann, author of Get Rid of Ugly Wordiness: How to Cut Your Novel Down to Size
Random Drawing — $50
David Jace, author of Writing as a God
As many of you know, June was guest blogging month. As part of guest blogging month, I offered a $250 prize to the author of the blog entry that gathered the most direct page views. The direct page view, of course, is only one way that articles get read. Some people read articles through a newsreader. Other people read articles as they appear on the home page of the site or through a category page if they are interested in a particular topic. There is no sure way to tell exactly how many people read a particular article. Direct page views can only measure the number of times people load a page. Even if a person loads the page, they don’t necessarily read the article.
With all that said, we had a very clear winner for the contest. The average article received about 500 direct page views in the seven days that followed publication. Almost every article stayed within 100 hits of that figure, one way or the other. Lillie Ammann’s article, however, received almost 14,000 hits the first week. That same article went on to rack up 29,000 hits after 30 days.
How did that happen? StumbleUpon. The article was well-reviewed by the people on StumbleUpon, and good reviews translate into page views. That is the power of social media. Now, did every person who loaded the page read the article? I doubt it. StumbleUpon works by feeding new pages to members. The members of StumbleUpon don’t know what page is coming up next. They don’t specifically request the page, so they don’t know before they see the page if it will interest them. StumbleUpon readers generally look at the headline, and if they like it they read the article. If they don’t, they move on.
I want to thank all of my guest bloggers again. It was great to see so many different voices and ideas gathered together. I plan to revisit the topic of guest bloggers again in a few days, just to give my thoughts on the experience and perhaps propose a new policy for having more people write for the site.
Related links
- Looking for Guest Bloggers -- $250 Prize (0.500)
- Site Update With Gusto (0.500)
- Tuesday Mini-Rants (0.500)
- Why PoeWar? (0.500)
- Five Lessons Poets Can Learn From Henry Rollins (0.500)
Contact John Hewitt
Writing Content and Web Consulting
Email: hewitt@poewar.comPhone: (520) 261-6104
LinkedIn: poewar
Twitter: @poewar
Facebook: pwar2
Many congratulations to Lillie and David! (Wow, Lillie, that sure was a lot of page views! You have obviously more than earned this prize!)
And many thanks to you, John, for providing each of us with a wonderful forum for our work–along with a fantastic opportunity to compete for your two most generous prizes!
Jeanne
Woot, good stuff!
John, did you get a lot of new site subscribers from this contest?
Tom Johnsons last blog post..Quick Reference Guides: The Poetry of Technical Writing
John, couldn’t you let us know how many hits each article had? I’m very curious about this. I’ve ever been a stats freak and the fact that I had no idea how well (or not so well) my post was doing was driving me crazy.
Thank you for the opportunity that you gave us! In case you open your doors to more guest posts, I’d love to write for you again.
By the way, I remember that you had offered to write guest posts for us too…
Karen Zaras last blog post..Create Fresh Content By Recycling Your Promises
Congrats to the winners! I thought it was a great opportunity, and I appreciate the chance to get my writing out there.
hanas last blog post..murphy’s law
John,
Wish I could figure out how to get that many page views on my own blog!
Thank you for the opportunity to guest post. I was very impressed with the quality and variety of the articles. I read and enjoyed every one.
[...] announcement at John [...]
@ Lillie, congratulations! Now I expect your next article to discuss the secrets of web traffic and social networking
@John, as others have said, thanks for the opportunity to participate in the contest and letting me recycle my Dune material. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, this guest spot helped me get a trial gig over at GreenZone Online so I am very grateful to you and your community here at Writer’s Resource Center!
@David, don’t spend it all in one place. Wait, I forgot that gas is $4 a gallon. Go ahead and spend it in one place.
Morgans last blog post..Poets, Shamans, and the Land
Karen, if you’re a stats freak, you should check out Woopra. I just posted about it here: Woopra — Enough Live Site Stats to Write a Dissertation.
Morgan,
I never remember to stumble posts I like; maybe I’ll pay more attention after this.
I wish I knew enough to write about web traffic and social networking. I am a total dunce about social networking … and as for traffic, that one post here has probably had more page views than my entire blog has had in the two years it’s been online.
@ all
Sorry for the delay in an answer. I swear I posted a comment last night but for some reason it didn’t load (probably user error).
@ Jeanne
What I received was far greater than what I gave.
@ James. They do have good stuff at Woot. I believe today they have the Kingston 2GB Micro SD Card with Adapter – $5.99.
@ Tom
I added about 50 new subscribers over the month of June, which I consider to be a healthy figure.
@ Karen
it would take me a couple hours to go through everyone’s stats but I looked at yours and you received 441 hits in the first seven days. Yours would probably have done better but you hit the 4th of July weekend on the far end, which probably lowered traffic. I see your post is getting a little traffic from StumbleUpon though. I would bet that you are only a few good reviews from going viral. As for my guest blogs. I’m working on them.
@ Lillie
You never know when StumbleUpon will take a liking to you.
@ Morgan
Thats wounds like the perfect gig for you. Congratulations!
@ Tom
I’m going to have to check that out as well.
Is it just me, or is StumbleUpon really complicated (I mean, compared to Digg and its clones)?
Jane @ What About Moms last blog post..Sugar and Sugar, and Everything Nice
I have never found it that complicated. Are you on Firefox of Internet Explorer?
Firefox. I asked a friend for a tutorial and she was quite helpful. I guess it was that I was expecting it to be more like Digg (I use Kirtsy, actually), and when I can’t master something quickly I tend to get rather frustrated. Who knows where my kids get it from?
I hope your man meatball creation goes well!
Jane @ What About Moms last blog post..Sealing Wax and Cabbages, and Why a Recession Might Be the Best Thing for America