Working for Yahoo, Part IX

So, after three weeks in the system, here are some numbers.

Here's Louie                                                                              22 days, 37 views
Visting Civil War Battlefields: Wilson's Creek                               21 days, 70 views
Kings, Queens, and Generals: A Summer 2011 Reading List        21 days, 34 views
AMC Randhurst 12: A Theater in the Digital Age                          16 days, 98 views
Lord of Ultima: A Copy of a Copy                                                10 days, 37 views

As we can see, certain trends are at work here.  For one thing, the two assignment pieces I did, "Here's Louie" and "Kings, Queens, and Generals," are the least efficient ones I've done.  I'd expected that assignments would get some play somewhere on the Yahoo network, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  Apparently assignments are only good if you can't think of something else to write.  What's worse, both of these, especially Here's Louie, have almost all their views in the first couple of days, that is through views generated by my mentioning them here, on Facebook, and on Twitter.  There's virtually no hits after that first bump, so these are pretty much entirely self-promoted.

Ergo, assignments are a bad deal.

I'll admit, I expected the Lord of Ultima piece to do better.  I know I search for reviews before playing random internet games, but traffic on this one is pretty much flat too.  Technically, the reading list is getting more play.  So Yahoo is right...video game reviews, even of a game for which I couldn't find any other reviews, don't do well.

Where they're wrong, though, is in the popularity of the movie theater review.  As you can see, its outpacing everything else in both a per day hits and in overall.  Yahoo wouldn't give me the upfront payment on this one, but it's still doing pretty well.

Despite the theater review's comparative success, I've spent all week pumping out six more Battlefield articles like my Wilson's Creek one.  Why?  Well, the thing of it is that the $2.00 I get for each one is equivalent to 1,333 views straight up.  So regardless of the fact that the Randhurst piece is nominally more efficient, if I can keep scoring the upfronts, that's probably better overall.

Of course, it's still not much money, but it's a start.