Return Readers.

One of the nice things about changing from Wordpress to Tumblr recently, is that it’s put an end to one of my biggest fears I’ve had since starting my web-comic. All throughout 2014 I was getting hits through advertising and word-of-mouth, but I would always return to the same nagging thought whenever I would look at my web-comic’s stats. “Sure I seem to be getting hits”, I’d think to myself. “But what if they’re all just spam-bot hits. What if all my site’s visits were from annoying non-human computer programs, scanning my site for a place to unload tons of unwanted spam. What if I didn’t have a single returning reader and nobody was really following this web-series.” In other words, what if my audiences was nothing more than a bunch of nuisance spam-bots and zero real people. The website stat software I was using during 2014 was very light on details. All I knew for sure was I was getting hits from somewhere. The fact that I would often have to remove so many nuisance spam comments from my old site only fuelled my nagging doubt about having any real readers. But when I moved Babayka-Lives over to Tumblr, I also change website stat software, and I’m so glad I did. Using the new stats program, it soon became clear I did indeed have real life returning readers. Sure, I get my fair share of attention from spammers (mainly from Russia), but looking over my stats, it’s clear I do get plenty of real life readers returning to read this web-series, too, and for that I am very grateful. I’m very glad to be able to put that nagging fear to rest at last and know my readership isn’t all just soulless spam-bots. To show my point, here’s the readership stat from yesterday after I posted page-78.

It very cool to finally know that real people are tuning in and enjoying the comic.