Monster Commute – a Traffic Novel

Confession time: I’m obsessed with traffic.

No, no, not that kind. Seeing bunches of cars doesn’t help my heart rate, it just burns it up.

I’m talking about web traffic.

I’m obsessed with watching the numbers of people who visit our websites. I check Monster Commute’s traffic about 5 times per day. I check the others, daily.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s a good thing, either.

Good = I need to spend my energies talking to people, answering questions, and making comics, illustrations, products, and other content.

Bad = Spending time on stuff that doesn’t matter.

Really bad = doing it 5 times per day.

Web traffic doesn’t matter.

It is a single, thin indication of how things are going, but it isn’t the end-all, be all. It doesn’t really tell me how much people like what we’re doing, or if they get it, or how they feel about little Beastio.

Heck, a lot of you have told me that you catch up with the comic about once per week, so that you can read a bit more story all at once. That’s cool, have at it.

It skews the daily numbers some, but this isn’t about numbers. It’s about these characters, this world, and you.

So, I’m going to try not to obsess about traffic as much right now. I’ve got a bunch of other things to work on, instead.

Related facts:

• MonsterCommute.com is my most successful website, in terms of daily unique readers. That happened pretty fast, as the site isn’ t even a year old yet.
• SteamCrow.com was my best site, likely due to the articles. I got rid of the articles there, because it was distracting. I’ll post them again, elsewhere.
• Agyris.net is my eldest site, at nearly 9 years old.
• Agyris.net was once linked by Boingboing and Slashdot. I couldn’t keep the site up for a week.
• I own about 9 or 10 domains right now. I should haven’t let a couple expire. Oh well.
• All of my sites are really small pudding. However, I’d like to change that.

- Daniel