I launched raphaelhertzog.com this summer (taking over the English content of my former multi-lingual blog), when I decided that I would be more serious about blogging on Debian/Ubuntu related topics. On September, I decided to write 2 articles per week and up to now I managed to keep the schedule.
Two of my articles were published by Linux Weekly News, those are much more researched than the average blog article (they are tagged with [LWN] in the list below).
The most popular articles
Most people read my blog through the RSS feed which happens to be syndicated on Planet Debian and Planet Ubuntu. According to the feedburner’s statistics, the top-5 articles are:
- 5 reasons why I still contribute to Debian after 12 years (32700 views)
- [LWN] Understanding Membership Structures in Debian and Ubuntu (31700 views)
- Social Micropayment Can Foster Free Software, Discover Flattr (30100 views)
- Everything you need to know about conffiles: configuration files managed by dpkg (29900 views)
- How to make 110.28 EUR in one month with free software and Flattr (29400 views)
But I also have occasional readers visiting my blog because my articles are announced on Identi.ca, Twitter and Facebook (and they circulate on social networks, thanks to those who are sharing them!). The top-5 articles according to the statistics of my website are:
- 5 reasons why I still contribute to Debian after 12 years (6000 views)
- [LWN] Can Debian offer a Constantly Usable Testing distribution? (5000 views)
- Understanding Debian’s release process (1500 views)
- Flattr FOSS (1400 views, not an article but I regularly blog about this project)
- Can Debian achieve world domination without being on Facebook? (1100 views)
The most flattered
Since I am using Flattr on my blog, it can be interesting to see the articles which generated lots of flattr micro-donations. The top-3 articles are my articles about Flattr (1, 2, 3). Excluding articles related to Flattr, the top-5 is:
- 5 reasons why I still contribute to Debian after 12 years (12 flattr)
- The secret plan behind the “3.0 (quilt)” Debian source package format (10 flattr)
- How to use multiple upstream tarballs in Debian source packages? (5 flattr)
- [LWN] Understanding Membership Structures in Debian and Ubuntu (4 flattr)
- Do You Want a Free Debian Book? Read on. (4 flattr)
Most articles get 2 to 3 flattr clicks.
The most commented
I usually get 4-5 comments on most articles but some generate much more feedback:
- [LWN] Can Debian offer a Constantly Usable Testing distribution? (40 comments)
- 5 reasons why I still contribute to Debian after 12 years (22 comments)
- Can Debian achieve world domination without being on Facebook? (15 comments)
- How to generate different dependencies on Debian and Ubuntu with a common source package (14 comments)
- [LWN] Understanding Membership Structures in Debian and Ubuntu (12 comments)
Factoids
Here are my conclusions based on the above figures:
- Writing about your Debian/Ubuntu work and your long term involvement makes for highly popular content that spreads well.
- In-depth and well researched articles (like those written for LWN) do not generate more flattr revenues than the average article even if they take 4 to 8 times as long to write.
- People are more likely to flattr you for your free software contribution than for the value they get out of your article.
- People care a lot about the Debian release process, and like to discuss the topic.
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just to let you know that the numbers are not just numbers. I really enjoy reading your posts (I do it via the planet debian email ticker system though). keep up the good work and thanks for everything.
Thanks for the kind comment. Be assured that I know that there are real people behind those numbers. As a proof, I’m going to ask you/those people what you/they’d like to read on this blog… it’s the topic of an upcoming article. 😉
In-depth and well researched articles (like those written for LWN) do not generate more flattr revenues than the average article even if they take 4 to 8 times as long to write.
Be careful with this one. A particular post may not get as much attention, but over the long term in-depth and well-researched articles probably drive more traffic to your site. I’m sure there are millions of very detailed, very accurate Wikipedia pages I’ve never read a single time, but I still value it as a resource.
David, you’re right. And the figures prove it as well, both articles did quite well in terms of inbound links, dissemination through micro-blogging, and bringing new people towards my blog. And they are likely to rank better than average in search engines.
Don’t be worried, I’ll continue to provide such articles from time to time. 🙂