Babbling about site stats

[rusty_halo]

Since my site is a fairly popular Spike site, I think that by looking at its statistics, one can extrapolate some general trends about Spike fandom (especially the fanfic side). Of course, my site is skewed toward the segment of Spike fic readers that happen to visit my particular site, so that should be kept in mind.

I've compiled some statistics and my analysis of what they mean. These are just from January 12 - January 29 2004, since I lost all my old log files in the server move (stupid fucking ipowerweb). The good side is that they represent what people have been seeking most recently; the bad side is that they can be easily skewed by, say, someone posting a link in a popular forum that then gets clicked often and skews the results in that direction.

The top 10 stories are Spike/Buffy stories; the top 10 authors are all predominantly Spike/Buffy authors.

The top pairings:

[Hits since mid-January: Percent of total pages visited: Pairing]
23021: 5.03%: Spike/Buffy
12260: 0.44%: Spike/Angel(us)
8356: 0.34%: Spike/Xander
4422: 0.06%: Spike/Dawn
2839: 0.04%: Spike/Willow
2678: 0.08%: Spike & Dawn
2321: 0.02%: Spike/Fred
1990: 0.02%: Spike/Tara
1265: 0.02%: Spike & Xander
1261: 0.02%: Spike/Wesley
1191: 0.02%: Spike & Willow

(Spike/Buffy is almost twice as popular as any other pairing; Spike/Angel(us) has replaced Spike/Xander as the second most popular pairing. S/B, S/A, and S/X are the three big Spike pairings with large followings. Spike and Dawn -- both friendship and sexual/romantic -- also still has a surprisingly large following, given that their last meaningful interaction occured more than two years ago. And Spike/Dawn romance seems to be more popular now that Dawn is older. Spike/Fred--once an obscure pairing that very few people considered--now has a bit of a budding fanbase.)

The top time periods:

1498: 0.04%: Post-Chosen
1459: 0.02%: Post-Destiny
1081: 0.05%: Alternate Universe
902: 0.04%: Post-Gift
812: 0.01%: Post-Harm's Way
808: 0.01%: Post-Fool for Love
727: 0.01%: Post-Something Blue
721: 0.01%: During Something Blue
629: 0.01%: Early AtS Season Five
627: 0.02%: Pre-Series

(No real surprises here, except that the predominance of Something Blue--a comedic episode from four years ago--is most likely so highly represented because people are seeking fluffy Spuffy fic.)

The top themes:

2382: 0.09%: Romance
1761: 0.03%: Hurt/Comfort
1527: 0.06%: Humor, Parody, and/or Fluff
1469: 0.02%: Webmistress' Choice (hee! I have influence!)
1404: 0.08%: Angst
1403: 0.02%: Threesome
1135: 0.03%: Post-Soul Insanity
1082: 0.02%: Soulless Redemption (Yay!)
1030: 0.01%: Time/Universe Displacement
909: 0.03%: Horror/Darkfic
881: 0.01%: Crossover

(I'm sort of surprised by the popularity of hurt/comfort. I guess the "romance" category shouldn't surprise me, but it kind of annoys me anyway. Stupid pairing-obsessed Buffy fandom.)

Ratings:

10758: 1.40%: NC-17
953: 0.09%: R
809: 0.02%: G
755: 0.05%: PG
256: 0.01%: Not Rated
173: 0.02%: PG-13

(No surprises about NC-17 and R, but PG-13 used to be a lot more popular than this. And why is "G" rated so high? It used to be last.)

Fiction by Length:

2386: 0.10%: 30,000+ Words
819: 0.04%: 10,000 - 30,000 Words
818: 0.02%: Works in Progress
495: 0.06%: 1 - 1,500 Words
354: 0.02%: 5,001 - 10,000 Words
292: 0.04%: 1,501 - 5,000 Words

(The longer the better, pretty much. Though the very shortest stories also seem to have a bit of a following.)

Most common searches by multiple categories:

584: Spike/Buffy, NC-17
192: Post-Destiny
88: Spike/Angel(us)
86: Spike/Xander, NC-17
84: Spike/Buffy
77: Spike/Buffy, Post-Chosen
77: Spike/Dawn, NC-17
67: Spike/Drusilla
63: Spike/Buffy, NC-17, Post-Chosen
62: Spike/Buffy, Romance
61: Spike/Buffy, NC-17, 5,000 - 10,000 words
60: Spike/Dawn
59: Crossovers

The moral of the story is: if you want to write a really popular story, it should be post-"Chosen" NC-17 epic-length Spuffy romance.

Of course, I probably won't archive it. But don't worry, plenty of other sites will.

According to the little stats thingy on my homepage (which only tracks visitors to the homepage, but has logs for the past year):



Visits to my site peaked in May 2003, with the BtVS series finale and the publicity surrounding it. Visits then went steadily down until they perked up again in October 2003, when Spike returned on AtS. Visits then proceeded to go steadily down once again, which suggests to me that AtS began losing Spike fans almost right away. Though it could just mean that they went to another site that archives more Spuffy. ;)

The extreme decrease in site visits (I'm getting about 70% as many visits now as I got in May 2003) is probably due to several factors:

1. General decrease of interest in Buffy fandom when the series ended.

2. Summer lull -- even those people who returned for Angel in fall were likely to lose interest over the summer.

3. I stopped archiving most works in progress, which used to bring in the most visitors. (I stopped mostly because I couldn't keep track of them all, and a lot of them took directions halfway-through that didn't work well for my site, so I figured it's best to wait until a story is finished even if it does mean many fewer site visitors.)

4. I started archiving more slash. I got a lot of complaints over this. Stupid homophobia.

5. I started archiving less Spike/Buffy. Most Spike fic readers mostly read Spike/Buffy.

I do still archive S/B regularly, btw, just not as often as I used to, and the S/B I archive tends to be angsty rather than fluffy. This is because
- fewer people are writing good S/B; a lot of writers have just moved on
- I'm not interested in S/B and don't read it for enjoyment; I'll only read it if I respect the writer or if someone actively submits it to my site
- Warning: Spuffy bitching. Stop reading now if it will upset you. Just my personal opinion, etc. I absolutely do not buy that post-S6 Buffy could possibly have loved, cared about, or valued Spike on his own terms without vast amounts of therapy and personal-growth. All canonical evidence indicates that he was simply a useful thing to her and that she was pathologically incapable of recognizing the value of anyone but herself or someone who does something for her. She might have missed his constant boot-licking post-"Chosen," but she sure as hell didn't miss him, and I'm certain she's not mourning him. I get really sick of the sappy fluffy Buffy-as-Mary-Sue, crying her eyes out missing her twu wuv Spike, wish-fulfillment Spuffy. (Even though I'll still, very occasionally, archive it if it's written very well otherwise.)

Comments

Re:

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Burning out the love is the route I took in SPV, but that's been stalled by aggressive woman eating bunnies for other stories and Wes's fixation on Fred on the show. He's messing with the wonderfully painful Wilah aspect that's crucial to the story. Bad Wes! No biscuit.