Matthew Wayne Selznick

I’m not very motivated to do a big “the year that was” retrospective post on 2008 just yet. Meanwhile, in the past I’ve shared various facts and figures relating to my progress as a creative person for others to compare / learn from / laugh at. Here are some numbers:

This Website

My little home on the Internet is not a traffic-generating monster by any means. After all, it’s the personal site of a mid-list small-press author and podcaster. In most metrics, in 2008 it performed below the baseline for sites of similar size except when it comes to new visitors — in that respect, mattselznick.com scored 11% higher than average.

Growth At Mattselznick.com

But let’s not focus on how this site compares to others. It’s a scrappy, DIY, independent site that doesn’t care about what the other kids do! Let’s see how it did in 2008 compared to 2007!

Now we’re talking! That’s unique visitors, and the heavy blue line is 2008 — an improvement from 2007 of over 160%! And the difference between January 2008 and December 2008? 450%, baby. That’s some growth, right there. The gignormous peak in the middle is July 13, 2008 — Sovereign Summer Sunday, when the Swarm Press edition of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” was released and I held my all-day webathon.

Compared to 2007, this site grew in every way:

• Page Views: Up 200%
• Average Time Spent On Site: Up 21%
• Pages Viewed per Visit: Up 13%
• New Visitors: Up 4%
• Bounce Rate: Down 7% (that’s good — it means fewer people leave as soon as they arrive)

2008 Statistics For Mattselznick.com

Here’s the where / what / how for this site for 2008.

• Visitors: 21,425 — a remarkable 71% were new visitors! Welcome!
• Page Views: 46,875
• How did they get here?
  • 44% came via links on other sites, like…
    1. 17% from Twitter
    2. 9% from Podiobooks.com
    3. 6% from Swarm Press
    4. 5% from Stumbleupon
    5. 4% from J.C. Hutchins — thanks for the link love, buddy!
    6. 3% from my mentions in BoingBoing
    7. 2% from Facebook
    8. 2% from Escape Pod
    9. 2% from Scott Sigler — good on ya, Scott!
    10. 2% from Twilight Sucks, a Stephenie Meyer fan site
  • 32% arrived via search engines, searching keywords like…
    1. 19%: “Brave Men Run”
    2. 14%: My name or some variation of my name
    3. 1%: “DIY Ethic”
  • 24% came directly to the site, to pages like…
    1. 30%: The main page for “Brave Men Run”
    2. 23%: The home page
    3. 5%: The main page for Scribtotum, my blog
    4. 4%: Blog post:
       “Make Lemonade, Stephenie Meyer” (This one riled up the fans — but a few agreed with me, too..! This post, as of this writing, is in the top 4% of search results for her name.)
    5. 3%: Blog post: “An Open Letter To Verizon CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg” (This one struck a chord among lots of fellow disgruntled customers… no response from Mr. Seidenberg to date! The post, as of this writing, is in the top 3% of search results for the keywords “verizon customer service.”)
    6. 2%: Blog post: “The Big Reveal: The Real Story of July 13, 2008″ (This was the announcement of my “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” release party.)
    7. 1%: Blog post: “For Hire” (This announced my layoff from Mahalo.com when they released approximately half of their editorial and a quarter of their developer staffs. I continued to do freelance work for Mahalo for another month at a 25% pay cut before I opted out of further involvement with that company.)
• Where Did They Come From?
  1. The United States of America: 75%
  2. Canada: 6%
  3. The United Kingdom: 5%
  4. Australia: 2%
  5. Germany: 2%
  6. 41 Countries with an average of 7 visits per month: 9%
  7. A total of 111 countries and territories in 4,523 cities on six continents speaking…
     1. English: 95%
     2. German: 1%
     3. French, Dutch, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Swedish, Danish and many more..!
  8. What Browsers Do They Use?
     1. Firefox: 56%
     2. Internet Explorer: 30%
     3. Safari: 10%
     4. Opera: 1.5%

Sonitotum

There were seven regular and twelve bonus episodes of my personal podcast, Sonitotum, in 2008.

The most popular regular episode was number Twelve, “Big Big Big,”with 871 total downloads — this was also the most popular overall. The most popular bonus episode was “Interview With the Dead Robots Society,” with 776 total downloads.

Overall, the nineteen episodes of Sonitotum drew 8,823 downloads, for an average of 464 per episode.

Music

In 2008, the following songs were downloaded or listened to:

1. Second “Sister,” 645 times
2. No New Memories, live version featuring Running Erin, 386 times
3. No New Memories, solo acoustic version, 363 times
4. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 314 times
5. Make Over, 100 times
6. On the Fade, semi-acoustic version, 87 times
7. On the Fade, PIGBAT version, 81 times

Total downloads for these songs: 1,902.

The recommended price per song downloaded is $0.99. Amount of voluntary payments for song downloads: $0.00.

Brave Men Run

2008 was a big year for my first book, “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era.” Not only was the book picked up by Swarm Press, I also added iPhone / iPod Touch and Kindle editions for purchase. Let’s see how it all turned out:

Brave Men Run Print Edition

• Original MWS Media edition
  • Copies sold: 20
  • Gross income: $29.60
• Swarm Press edition
  • Copies sold: 391
  • Gross income: my contract prohibits me from revealing specific details of my agreement with Swarm Press. I can tell you that I have not yet earned back my advance on royalties.

Brave Men Run “Pay What It’s Worth To You” E-Book Bundle

The e-book bundle, which features a .zip file with five DRM-free e-book editions of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era,” is available for download at a “pay what it’s worth to you” price. The suggested price is $5.00.

It was downloaded 59 times in 2008. Sixteen people who downloaded the e-book paid a total of $95.00 for an average of $5.94 per copy.

The gross income per total downloads was $1.61.

The Amazon Kindle Edition

The Amazon Kindle e-book edition of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” has been available since September of 2008. I don’t have December figures — I’ll try to update this when they arrive in a few days — but so far, 33 copies have sold for a gross income of $57.75.

The iPhone / iPod Touch Edition

App Engines produces an e-book edition of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” specifically for the iPhone / iPod Touch. It’s been available since September as well. So far, 122 copies have been sold for a gross income of $289.90.

The Free Podcast Edition

The free podcast edition of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” is available at Podiobooks.com. In 2008, 1,667 new subscribers listened to the book. Donations to the free podcast were $194.36.

The MP3 CD Audiobook and the Official Soundtrack

The MP3 CD edition of the podcast, which features the entire book and a bonus short story, did not sell in 2008. “The Animal In Me,” the official soundtrack of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” consisting of MP3s downloads from Amazon.com, did not sell in 2008.

All In All

Not counting my advance on royalties for the print edition of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era,” the book in all its forms earned about $667.00 gross.

“Reggie Vs. Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf”

I offered the first item in my short story series, “Reggie Vs. Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf” in November as a DRM-free e-book bundle, an Amazon Kindle edition, and a limited edition signed and numbered chapbook edition.

I don’t have the December numbers for the Amazon Kindle edition just yet, but in November 3 copies were purchased for a total gross income of $1.05.

The e-book bundle sold twice in 2007 for a total gross income of $1.98.

12 copies (of 100) of the limited edition signed and numbered hand-made chapbook edition sold for a total gross income of $135.00.

All together, “Reggie Vs. Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf” has earned $138.03, or approximately $8.00 per copy.

Advertising

I started using Project Wonderful to serve ads on this site in September. So far, the two ad slots have earned $4.87 — more than I’ve earned from any other ad service, any time, ever. There’s a Google AdSense box on the bottom of the front page; as expected from its placement, it has yet to earn anything.

Social Networks

I wish I had the foresight to record my social media followers at the end of 2007 so I’d have something to compare to now! This will serve as a benchmark for 2009 figures, I suppose:

• Twitter: Following 1,093 / Followers 1,010
• Facebook: 698 Friends
• LinkedIn: 302 Connection

I’m on other social networks; the above are the three in which I concentrate my efforts.

Words Written

About 50,000… laughably far away from my proclaimed goal of 200,000 in 2008. I might write a post about this, or I might not and just move on.

The Big Takeaways

Number One: I made more money this year from my creative endeavors than other year — over twice as much. I’m still at about 1/10th what I need to make a living, but there is progress, and that’s good.

Number Two: I know a whole lot more new people — and was reconnected with a whole lot more people — than last year. That’s pretty neat, and I value those connections a great deal.

So there are your numbers for 2008!