What’s in a million?

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Clint

This past weekend, at least according to the WordPress site stats counter, Zombie Ranch experienced its one millionth pageview. It’s a mark I saw approaching and figured would be hit by the end of the year, but I think this is better since it means by the time December 31st rolls around we should have enough extra views to maybe account for all the refreshing we’ve done ourselves during various edits. And the possibilities of inaccurate counting. Maybe.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a nice feather in the cap after two years of operation, but oy vay for the varying totals you can get from different tracking sites. Sometimes the numbers are off by dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, and it’s extremely difficult to tell what your actual audience level is. We don’t have one million loyal readers by any stretch, nor have we had one million unique visitors since we started. I do believe, guestimating between the various trackers, that we have had unique visitors in the hundreds of thousands by now, but again, how many of those made a run of the archive? How many got hooked and are going to actually come back week after week? There are sites like comicrank.com that purport to calculate the last total, but it seems like there’s always going to be a certain amount of fuzziness involved in the math.

To be a starting webcomic creator is to exist largely in the dark in terms of audience, not really ever knowing how “well” you might be doing. You’ll try, and it’s certainly not entirely worthless to go over your metrics, but at some point you’ll realize no tracker or ranking site is really going to give you the picture on its own. Too much variance. Too much “who?” and “why?” to try to factor together. And yet there are ad networks out there that won’t let you be a part of their roster unless you get X amount of visitors in a day. Hopefully whatever tracker they’re using to determine that errs on the generous side.

I feel like reaching this milestone of a million views does count for something, but what counts for more might be the number of people actually responding to that news. It’s those little personal lights in the dark, the connections, even if it’s as simple as “Congrats! Good on yer!”. The anonymous gentleman who came by our table at Long Beach Comic Con this past weekend to declare he read Zombie Ranch every week, religiously, and couldn’t wait to find out what happens next — that’s the sort of thing I really feel like celebrating. So thanks to all of you for that, everyone who has ever tossed a sincere thumbs up in our direction as we chugged along. Thanks a million. 😀

11 thoughts on “What’s in a million?”

  1. yornma

    I really like the webcomic… it’s very interesting to see what happens next and I like the concept of the zombie ranches. Keep it up 🙂

  2. Clint

    Thank you, yornma. We got your message on the contact form as well, so we can doubly celebrate your enjoyment 😀

  3. Andrew

    You already know what I have to say. 🙂

  4. Nightlyre

    Pageviews are always a bit of a funny stat, though I tend to trust Google Analytics to have it pretty accurate. I don’t think they count the spambots and such. Plus, as your archives grow, the pageviews will naturally do the same, as new people read through them all for the first time. We decided not to announce when we hit 1 mil, but it was a good feeling all the same! Still, I agree that a comment is worth about 10,000 pageviews… so congratulations! I enjoy following the story.

  5. Clint

    All very true, especially the part about the archives. As the archives grow, your visitor/pageview ratio will get farther and farther apart, at least assuming they don’t “bounce” (although getting them not to bounce is arguably an accomplishment of sorts).

    So I announced on our facebook page and here since, like you say, good feeling, but I’m saving any broader announcements for when we get the 100th story page up. There’s a milestone that tracking doesn’t matter on at all!

  6. Gillsing

    Congratulations on all those pageviews then! 😀

  7. Clint

    Gillsing, thank you, you’ve been one of our most vocal fans. Not only that, you’re proof of a continuing international audience! 😀

  8. ZomBnonymous

    I continue to be impressed by your webcomic and it’s themes. I remember how I had found this site randomly and after reading the first couple pages I stuck the URL in my favorites. I’m sure there are sites that can boast higher page views or server traffic but there’s only one Zombie Ranch as far as I know and if tomorrow is the zombocalypse, I’m getting some cowboy boots.

  9. Clint

    I like to think that when all’s said and done and all the elements considered, we have something pretty unique going on, something both zombie fans and non-zombie fans can get into. Even if the ingredients are familiar, it’s all about how you put them together.

  10. ZomBnonymous

    I find that the fact that it’s set after the world has dealt with the zombocalypse and settled back into a routine gives it a different vibe. It lets you know the characters have seen and probably done things that you didn’t get to see just to survive. It leaves a lot more room for character development and story expansion based on the respective incidents that lead each character to have certain personality traits or flaws. Some of the history has been hinted at or explained but there are some really diverse characters in the story that we don’t know much about or how they got to where they are now and as any good writer knows, mystery always keeps people coming back. This work has all the ingredients to be a long lasting and very successful story and I look forward to what I might read in the future.

  11. Clint

    I’m saying thank you an awful lot in this section, but I’ll say it again. I’m particularly glad to hear that we’ve accomplished a sense of diversity in the characters without having to get really explicit about it, because I was very much hoping that was the case. Since I always intended Zombie Ranch to be a very character-driven story, it’s pretty important!

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