Entry tags:

hit count meme, memes, writing

Ooh, apparently people are doing that AO3 hit count meme again and it's been just a year since the first time it went around, so that means comparing stats! This year has seen such a huge increase in AO3 traffic in general so it's been really interesting seeing people's lists, and I was really curious to see what changes there were for my own fics.

Here's last year's:

1. Not Looking for Sweet Talk (Leverage, 2102 hits)
2. Strong Enough to Be (The 'Not Your Man' Remix) (SGA, 1366 hits)
3. Everything Changes (SGA, 745 hits)
4. What Makes a Man (Sherlock Holmes, 471 hits)
5. At Your Most Beautiful (SGA, 469 hits)
6. INSECURITY COMICS (Dinosaur Comics, 420 hits)
7. Sleeping Underneath Your Skin (Harry Potter, 385 hits)
8. Scars (One Piece, 383 hits)
9. The World That We Live In (No, We Can't Go Back) (SGA, 363 hits)
10. Halfway from Coal, Halfway to Diamond (HanaKimi, 357 hits)

And here's this year's:

1. Not Looking for Sweet Talk (Leverage, 2443 hits)
2. Strong Enough to Be (The 'Not Your Man' Remix) (SGA, 1767 hits)
3. An Ache in My Heart and a Thorn in My Side (SGA, 1595 hits)
4. I Only Want the Same as Anyone (SGA, 962 hits)
5. Sleeping Underneath Your Skin (Harry Potter, 926 hits)
6. Everything Changes (SGA, 904 hits)
7. At Your Most Beautiful (SGA, 819 hits)
8. What Makes a Man (Sherlock Holmes, 814 hits)
9. The Best Day Ever (Big Bang Theory, 723 hits)
10. INSECURITY COMICS (688 hits)

Since I only wrote six fics since I did this meme last year, it's hardly surprising that most of the top ten are the same this year as last. But the two new ones are in spots three and four, which says a lot about the increase in traffic. They weren't posted for any special fest or anything (the top two fics were Yuletide and Remix, respectively, both large fests hosted on AO3), so they didn't get a bump from that. Though they did get more hits due to the fact that around this time last year I stopped posting fic to DW/LJ and now only post headers with links to AO3, so all the people who would otherwise have read on my journal or in comms are now reading on AO3.

Oh wait, The Best Day ever is new, too? Wow, that is surprising, because I thought it had been fairly popular last year, too. It's surprising to me how popular that fic turned out to be, so I'm definitely not surprised to see it in the list.

It's interesting to see the changes in order, though. Most fics are chugging along, consistently getting more hits, but then there's stuff like Sleeping Underneath Your Skin, which more than doubled its hits and jumped from 7th to 5th. And even though What Makes a Man also almost doubled its hits, it dropped from 4th to 8th.

In fact, my most recent fic, which is not only not in the top ten, but not even the top twenty, would have been nearly tied for 6th on last year's list (it's at 419 compared to 420).

And speaking of the top twenty, I kind of want to analyse those, too, so...

11. My New Achilles Heel (SGA, 667 hits)
12. Not Keeping Track (Scott Pilgrim, 625 hits)
13. Scars (One Piece, 586 hits)
14. No Understanding No Sound from Above (Harry Potter, 581 hits)
15. Halfway from Coal, Halfway to Diamond (Hanakimi, 572 hits)
16. No Rules for This (Digimon, 540 hits)
17. The World That We Live In (No, We Can't Go Back) (SGA, 519 hits)
18. Life (Sometimes It Washes Over Me) (SGA, 502 hits)
19. Expect the Unexpected (Leverage, 493 hits)
20. The Best Days of My Life (SGA, 490 hits)

Now here there is a lot more movement! My New Achilles Heel shot up out of nowhere to take the 11th spot. This is a drabble that got almost no attention when it was posted (both here and on AO3), but was remixed last year, which led to a lot of people clicking through to the original.

I'm not surprised to see Not Keeping Track there. Although it wasn't written for Yuletide, I think it received a Yuletide bump due to people clicking on the Scott Pilgrim tag after exhausting the Yuletide Scott Pilgrim fics. And it's one I get kudos on pretty consistently (also favorites on ff.n).

I see some older SGA and Harry Potter fics that people may have discovered or rediscovered on AO3. This is stuff that for a long time got no traffic at AO3 because any recs or delicious saves were pointing towards the original posts on LJ, but now we're seeing people who are just browsing AO3 in general, so there is traffic on these old fics that had been just sitting there unnoticed for a couple years since I posted them there.

Halfway from Coal, Halfway to Diamond is one that made the list last year because it was a Yuletide fic that was first posted to AO3. It's obviously continued to get hits, but not that many, and in time will get pushed further and further back due to being such a minor fandom.

Okay, I will stop now before I am tempted to do the top thirty for forty or more. XD It's just so interesting to see what people are reading! (Or at least clicking on!) For example, I didn't expect to see a handful of my ancient Vampire Chronicles fics in the top forty, but there they are! In fact, in general my VC fics are way higher than I expected them to be. A lot of VC fic has been lost over the years, so I think people are really happy to find what they can. (I didn't look that far back, but I assume the bottom forty or so is almost all Jude/Ewan stuff, because yeah, no fandom. And yet I wrote so much of it! Hahaha...)