Definitions
If you're familiar with the terms visits, unique visitors, and pageviews, you can skip this.
Visits: Think of one visit as one browser session. That is, if you open Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or another browser, when you go to YWS, that's one visit. If you go to YWS, then go to another site but later come back to YWS, then that's still one visit. However, if you go to YWS, close your browser, then later open your browser again and go back to YWS, then that's two visits.
Unique Visitors: To count unique visitors, the analytics software YWS uses (Google Analytics) counts your IP address. So as long as your ip address remains the same, then no matter how many times you open and close your browser, that's still just one unique visitor.
Pageviews: Every time you view a page, that's a pageview. Makes sense, eh?
Hits: I don't use hits, and you should never trust a webmaster who does. Every time your browser makes a file request from YWS, that's one hit. So lets say you visit just the YWS front page. That's just one page view, but over 50 hits. Each image is counted as a hit, then there's the html file, the javascript files, the CSS file, etc. So if someone says "My site gets over 1,000,000 hits a month," that may sound like a ton, but it's really not.
Visits
Although it may not seem like it, 2008 saw remarkably little growth. January saw 39,581 visits while December saw 42,735 for an increase of 8%. Nor did that number ever really change throughout the year; in fact, only three months saw the number of visits exceed 40,000 (August, November, and December).
By contrast, 2007 saw tremendous growth. In January 2007, there were 16,577 visits. By December 2007, there were 33,547 visits for an increase of 102%.
Unique Visitors
However, the number of visits just tell a part of the story. So next we turn to unique visitors. Unfortunately, if we just look at unique visitors, then it seems like 2008 was a terrible year for YWS. In January there 16,094 unique visitors, but by December there were 14,117 visitors. That's a decline of 12%! January 2008 was a weird month though, and the 16,094 number is an anomaly. If I were a statistician, I'd throw it out as a fluke.
2007, though, again saw tremendous growth. In January 2007, there were 4,507 unique visitors, and 12,777 by December 2007. That's an astonishing increase of 183%, with most of the increase happening after the summer ended.
Pageviews
Of the three metrics used here, pageviews are my favorite. Pageviews tell you how active your visitors are; after all, you can have 100,000 unique visitors but that doesn't mean anything if they only view one page.
When we look at pageviews, 2008 was a great year. In January 2008, there were 470,346 pageviews. By December, there were 663,116 pageviews for an increase of 41%.
In January 2007, there were 286,687 pageviews, which increased to 401,702 by December. That's an increase of 40%. So in terms of pageviews, 2008 and 2007 were nearly equal in the amount of increase.
So what's it at all mean?
2007 was a spectacular year, and who knows when it will be repeated again. YWS grew by leaps and bounds that year with the launching of Squills, the YWS blog, and the radio show. 2007 was also the first full year YWS was back (there was a two month hiatus in 2006 owing to financial difficulties).
However, 2008 was still a great year. The site didn't grow much in terms of visits and unique visitors, but the fact that the pageviews number still increased by 41% is amazing. It shows that YWS is doing a great job at retaining members, and that people love the site more than ever.
Yet, the three metrics discussed above still don't tell the entire story! There's also the number of posts, and this is where 2008 really showed a huge difference.
Posting
In 2007, there were are a total 122,168 posts. January 2007 saw 8,273 posts while December 2007 saw 10,777 posts for an increase of only 30%. I do mean "only" by the way; one of the things that bugged me in 2007 was the skyrocketing number of visitors, but posting didn't increase by nearly the same amount. I still have no idea why there was such a huge disconnect.
In 2008, there were a total of 189,991 posts. January 2008 saw 14,655 posts while December 2008 saw 20,021 posts for an increase of 37%. That's about the same increase as 2007, which is amazing if you think about. In 2008, the number of visits and unique visitors stayed roughly the same throughout the year, and yet posting increased by 37%.
Conclusion
From the standpoint of the average YWS member, 2008 exploded. From your point of view, all you notice is the number of posts. And truthfully, the posting increase is all that matters; as long as that number keeps going up, then I know that YWS is growing.
In any case, I hope all that was interesting for you! Below you'll find some more stats:
Number of posts in 2008 in various forums
Fiction: 35584 posts
Fiction Topics: 5465 topics
Poetry: 20689 posts
Poetry Topics: 3167 topics
Storybooks: 34754 posts
Literary Misc (minus storybooks): 9129 posts
General Discussion Total: 30210 posts
The Lounge: 8586 posts
Randomness: 13347 posts
Debate: 7629 posts
Groups: 29236 posts
Other: 22760 posts
Total: 189991 posts
Number of posts in 2007 in various forums
Fiction: 21382 posts
Fiction Topics: 3614 topics
Poetry: 13593 posts
Poetry Topics: 2239 topics
Storybooks: 15747 posts
Literary Misc (minus storybooks): 6550 posts
General Discussion Total: 19376 posts
The Lounge: 5359 posts
Randomness: 8114 posts
Debate: 1747 posts
Groups: 15280 posts
Other: 28493 posts
Total: 122168 posts
2008 v. 2007
2008 Visits: 471,785
2007 Visits: 292,136
2008 Unique Visitors: 147,265
2007 Unique Visitors: 74,623
2008 Pageviews: 6,470,655
2007 Pageviews: 4,329,295
Gender:
Points: 11417
Reviews: 425