Top Five Least Viewed Posts

Every coin has its flip side, and so too does this. If we covered the top five most viewed posts yesterday, then it must be time to look now at the least viewed. Certainly that’s what the originator of this now blogger meme — SDWeasel — thought.

The first four are all tied for first equal with a whopping 3 views. Yep. These are all rookie numbers. And in fact, scanning through the bottom posts, I could equally have labelled this post ‘Things that I wrote when I was new’. For context to the dates below, Time to Loot was born Jan 20th, 2019 into a frenzy of hype, hope, and bold text.

Top Five Least Viewed Posts

1. What do??? (3 views)
   Three views and seven comments? How does that work? Oh — it was a back and forth between Isey and I. Chances are high all three of those views are in fact, Isey. (My views don’t count.) In terms of the post itself; I needed to fill in a whopping nine days between the point in time of that post and Anthem’s early access, and I wondered what I might fill that time with. It was published February 6th, 2019, so a very early post for me indeed. :)
2. Iteration within the Tomb Raider Series (3 views)
   April 20th, 2019 for this one — it came rather hot on the heels of my finishing Tomb Raider (2013) as a commentary on just how much had changed in the sequel, while still maintaining the core gameplay experience they’d set out to create with the 2013 reboot from just 2-years earlier.
3. Wild Speculation Time: Anthem will have an NPC Mission System (3 views)
   ….Hahahaha. Oh boy. No… No this wasn’t the case. I still wonder whether it might have been the intent though, then their development hell on the title lead to it being cut. In any case, this one was posted Feb 3rd, 2019 — and in it I say, “Yet, surely there will be some surprises that BioWare has been keeping close to their chest?” Oh boy was there ever… Just not the kind we expected. ;)
4. A New Anthem Demo Approaches (3 views)
   Less than a day stood between this post — Feb 1st, 2019 — and the second and final demo weekend of Anthem prior to the early access launch on Feb 15th. It’s interesting to see just how far interest in this post dropped even relative to the first demo weekend (with an at the time, whopping 17 views!) — at the time I put this down to the fact with the first demo we still had a great deal of uncertainty as to what would be included, what we would have access to, how Javelin unlocks would work, etc. So a collection of fact with sources from Dev tweets etc was a much more useful prospect. That’s probably still actually correct; but I wonder if there was some ‘walk away’ effect even after the first go-round?
5. The Time for Talk is Over (6 views)
   You know — sometimes you just get attached to some of your own posts more than others. They’re not like Children, I think it’s OK to openly have favourites. I wouldn’t call these early Elder Scrolls Online posts my most favourite posts ever but they are amongst the earliest I have. They have stuck with me, and unlike some posts whereupon rediscovery I’m surprised to see them — these ones I’ve remembered.
   
   They were simply a chronicling of my time heading back to ESO on a fresh character, and I ended up getting three parts done before Anthem came in and took over. This particular one was the second part of the three and was published Feb 15th, 2019.
   
   Reading over it again, I think the reason I loved this set of posts so much was that it is (possibly still to date!) the closest I’ve come to recapturing the essence of the writer’s voice I had developed on earlier blogging projects.
   
   The series in full was:
   • Restarting in Tamriel (15 views)
   • The Time for Talk is Over (6 views)
   • Pilgrimage to the Angry Dead (9 views)

Wrapping Up

So that’s me! My five least viewed posts (plus a few other bits here and there).

I could happily let most of these posts sit where they are as the lowest viewed five; finding your footing with a new blog is just something that takes time. Early on, any post that had 20 or more views was fantastic to my eye. That number has since lifted to 50 and my hope is that one day I’ll be able to raise that expectation to 100. For now though, I would say less than a quarter of my posts have met that 50+ mark — despite what a look at the top five most viewed might suggest.

I think part of the trick to my continued motivation here with Time to Loot is that there is less weight put on external metrics like this. Not none. I definitely look at my stats. I couldn’t pretend for a moment that I “don’t care” about them, because I do.

But far more important to me is the chronicling aspect; the ability to look back on times past. The successes and the follies. Heck, even just to see what might’ve interested me at some time or another.

I will still absolutely experiment around with making posts entertaining and bringing people in; but this is sort of a side goal. Luckily; it isn’t mutually exclusive with my own goal by any stretch. :)

If I might leave you with a request though? If you have even a passing interest in ESO — take a look at the three ESO posts linked under #5 above? I’m curious whether that sort of posting and story telling is of interest to you.

Thanks, and take care all! We’re certainly living in interesting times at the moment, that’s for sure.