Who Doesn’t Love a Graph With a Spike?
My Hockey Hotties post seems to have taken on a life of its own! The first sign of this was when a whole bunch of people I didn’t recognize left comments on that posting. I mean, I know that there are always a lot of people who read a given blog regularly but don’t comment, but it seemed unlikely to me that all these lurkers were reading me for years, just waiting to comment on my opinions of the attractiveness of various hockey players. Where were these people coming from?
The next sign was when I noticed a really drastic spike in my stats. Like, I usually have 50-100 views per day, but on Sept 26, I had 460. Wowsa! Investigating further1, I discovered that 237 of those came from “Puck Daddy” on sports.yahoo.com. And I quote:
Drafting a fantasy hockey team by how good-looking the players are. Sadly, Yahoo! has yet to install “beefcake” as a scoring category. [Not To Be Trusted With Knives]
I have no idea how Puck Daddy found me, but I’m glad he did!
And the third and final sign that Hockey Hotties was some sort of breakthrough posting for me was when I discovered that I was listed on the WordPress “Blog of the Day” under “Growing Blogs” on September 27.
Of course, the problem with getting a spike like that is the inevitable crash. What goes up must come down and suchlike. Today I logged into WordPress and noticed the pretty much linear decrease2 since 26 Sept:
Oh, those heady days of last weekend – we knew they couldn’t last forever!
On the plus side, Hockey Hotties has now been viewed 761 times – topped only by my about page, which has been around since I first put my blog onto WordPress. Hockey Hotties – Now With Photos! has only been viewed 106 times, which is a shame, because there are some damn fine photos on there. But I digress. Back on the whole stats thing for just a minute, I usually don’t pay too much attention to stats. I’m not into blogging for business3, so how many people come to my site isn’t a huge concern. It’s more like, “Cool! 100 people dropped by to hear about how often I wash my hair!” But once you get a taste of the big numbers4, it’s sad to see those numbers drop. Discussion of hot boys is enough to bring the readers, but apparently videoclips of me shredding Canadian election brochures is not enough to keep them coming back for more.
Also, I should point out that the whole point of compiling a list of the hottest men in the NHL was to be able to draft a hockey pool team that I wouldn’t mind being trapped on a deserted island with. The draft for this hockey pool was supposed to have taken place after BarCamp on Saturday but a bunch of the people who were going to take part bailed. And thus, no draft.
But fear not, people who love hockey player hotness! Darren is now going to run a virtual draft for the hockey pool. And so the team of hockey hotties will come to be! And you can be sure that I’ll provide you with detailed info about which hotties end up on my team, and I’ll keep you appraised of their hot, goal scoring5 action all season long!
1a.k.a., scrolling down on the WordPress Stats page
2I guess blog postings about decidedly boring historical British Columbian Premiers just isn’t as excited as blog postings about hawt men. Who knew?
3Which is a *really* good thing, because I’d be starving if I were.
4Those of you who get 460 views per minute may guffaw now.
5Or goal saving, in the case of my goalie. Who I really, really hope will be His Hotness, Mr. Rick DiPietro. Rawr!
Comments |2|
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I don’t usually talk about stats (as you know) but since I am trained as a quantitative researcher, I gotta say, I love me some stats! I should write about hotties to see if I get lots of views! 🙂
Even if short-lived, Beth, congrats on your high traffic! It will go up again, I am sure!
As a statistician, I have to agree with (and quote) Raul – I love me some stats. And adding a graph to your post, not *that* is hot.
I think it’s also interesting that ‘How often do you wash your hair’ comes in right after hockey hotties. You should do some further analyses to decide which posting topics bring the largest response. I’m curious what the result would be if you were to post about hockey hotties hair washing habits. Or maybe just hockey hottie hair.
On a side note, I have a hard time saying hockey hottie hair. Weird.