January 6th, 2009

Michael Hyatt gave me this idea, as he listed the top 10 most popular posts from his blog. So here are mine, only I decided to go for 12, seeing as there are twelve months in a year.

The interesting thing is the last one that ekes onto this list is about Michael Hyatt and Thomas Nelson. Go figure!

The numbers in parentheses tell how many people read the post, but see my note below on this.

1. Michael Hyatt Explains How Thomas Nelson Chooses Which Books to Publish (111)
2. Tolkien Owes Me $350 For My Air Conditioner (131)
3. Ted Dekker/Frank Peretti’s HOUSE In Theatres! (140)
4. Auralia’s Colors - Of Villains & Beastmen (151)
5. I’m In “Pendragon: Sword Of His Father” !! (213)
6. Free “Design Your Own” 3D Dragon (236)
7. King Arthur Is Real But Winston Churchill Is Made Up? (293)
8. New Excalibur Design! (357)
9. My 1st CHAPTER For You To Review (394)
10. Pendragon — Sword Of His Father (446)
11. Auralia’s Colors - A Full Review (485)
12. White Stag Spotted In Scotland (738)

Admittedly, I wasn’t sure whether to include (9) because that post originated in 2007, not in 2008. However, I updated it this March, and since it has still proven popular, I included it.

So what does this say about my blog?

• People like book reviews of books by popular authors.
• People enjoy King Arthur related information.
• A lot of people are looking to create their own 3D dragons!
• People are excited about the movie Pendragon: Sword of His Father. In fact, my post about this movie has drawn readers from more parts of the world than any other.
• Also, people like my humorous post about Tolkien owing me money. A guy actually approached me about publishing this in a book of his, so we’ll see what happens there.
• And people seem to keep reading my first chapter, which is good!

One surprise was that not a single post about Stephen Lawhead appeared in the list. But watch my recent post about Lawhead’s latest book, TUCK, where I scoop the first review on the internet.

This post already has 90 views in a little over 15 days, so I expect it to be a hot commodity for the next few months.

(*) The number of people that have read a post is “rough” because of the vagueness of internet hits. Which blog post do you count when you just come to the main page and five posts are listed? I think this number only gets added to when someone reads only one specific blog post, and not just to a page.

Another gotcha is that the posts written later in the year have less of a chance of gathering readers from search engines. Thus I think the list is somewhat skewed to the earlier part of the year.