Photonovice project: Most Popular

Tibor over at photonovice.net is running a project for photo bloggers to share the stats on their most popular posts, or if you don’t keep a blog, your most popular photos in the last year. I think this is a fascinating project, and I can’t wait to see the results. I think it will be very interesting and useful to see what is popular on various sites. Below are screen captures of my 10 most popular blog posts and flickr photos. I’ll look into the lists in a little more detail below.

In the case of most of the top ten of both lists, the most successful posts have been made such because of links from very popular sites. In particular, Strobist, Stumbleupon and more recently (and thus of less significance over the course of a year) Digital Photography School have been very significant sources of traffic to both my posts and my photos.

But this project isn’t about where the traffic comes from, but why. Knowing the where gives us a clue. The posts that were linked from Strobist were because I wrote about unusual or interesting lighting techniques. Stumble upon users seem very interested in macro and 3D photography, especially when I discussed the related hardware. This could be because of the “gadget geek” culture which may be a significant part of the stumbleupon audience. DPS has been sending traffic to my project pages in particular, as that’s what I promote there in my author tagline when I write my regular posts there.

The common theme seems obvious: how-to type posts, or those that seek to teach and enlighten, are by far the most popular. The majority of posts on my blog have been photo posts, where the particular photo of the day is the focus of the post. This is especially true because of my participation in Project 365. With the exception of the “Top photos of 2007” post, which was stumbled, all the most popular posts, and many of the most popular photos were all related to instructional content.

It is this kind of post I plan to concentrate my efforts on in the future.

Thanks Tibor for running this fascinating project. I encourage other photographers to get involved, but hurry! The due date is May 9th!

Links

For your convenience, here are links to the top 10 most popular blog posts and Flickr photos in the last year:

Top 10 Blog posts

• About macro extension tubes
• Fossil shrimp macro super panorama
• How to see 3D photos
• My top ten photos for 2007
• How to take 3D photos
• Vivitar flash hacked with phono port
• Loreo 3D lens in a cap – Pics and thoughts
• PROJECT: Iron Chef Photography – Fork
• PROJECT: The View From Below
• 3D light painting

Top 10 Flickr photos

• Fossil macro pano setup shot
• Fossil Shrimp
• Washing Day
• Pointing Emma in 3D
• Camera bag unpacked
• Manifriends Chelsea Beach
• The Pinnacles at sunset
• Bursting Water Balloon
• Emperor angel
• Aquarium snail macro setup