When you are growing a readership, one of your best friends is your statistics program. Much like the phone company. internet connections can be tracedl. By viewing your statistics you can see how many people visited your site, how many people returned, and just get a general idea of your audience. Granted, just like a phone number, the information is really technical–just numbers, no real identifying information. Still, it shows you how many people are visiting your site, and thus its popularity. When Bitmap World started, we had about 300 monthly visitors. That’s “uniques”–meaning separate individuals. It’s possible, and likely, that 1 person will come to your site several times a month, so numbers are broken down into overall visits and unique visitors. As time has gone on, our readership has grown to between 1500 and 2000 uniques a month, with the average hovering around 1750. What is amazing is that comes from very little advertising. Some of our loyal fans have been so kind to grab buttons and banners from our link page to put on their blogs and sites. But, for the mostpart, we just don’t have the resources to do formal advertising. And that is where the amazing part comes. Okay, not really amazing, but cool Over 90% of our hits come from direct hits and bookmarks. 5% come from search engines. A mere 5% of our hits come from ads and banners. While I will admit, we are very grateful for everyone that promotes the sites (and anyone reading this is free to pick up a banner), there is something very satisfying to know that vast majority of the people who visit our site are doing so deliberately and not simply clicking-through for curiosity. Word of mouth is powerful. And statistically it is showing that while we may only get a handful of new visitors every month, the vast majority are staying. That is SOOOO encouraging for two 30-something year old parents juggling work, home, and everything else, and trying to squeeze a comic in there too. Our numbers are growing. Not leaps and bounds, but growing strong and steady. That’s the best kind of growth! I remember the time we got 10,000 hits one month, mostly from StumbleUpon. Gee, those numbers were awesome to look at, but they amounted in only a few regulars. This way is longer, and harder, but definitely more rewarding.

Oh, and if the above sounds like I am dissing linking to our site…NO WAY! We appreciate every link and want to continue getting the word out about the site! It’s still the best way to introduce others to Bitmap World. I am just mentioning this because it’s nice to know that even though we don’t have that many people linking to us (yet) that the word is still getting out and people are coming. That is just a real feel-good thing.

Of course, as our numbers grow, so does our anxiety. We would love to be able to update more often…and on-time. But we are trudging along, and we are ever thankful for our fans who are trudging along with us. Thanks for making Bitmap World part of your routine. And thanks for coming back, and bookmarking us, and linking us, and all that. On those days when we are so tired and would just as soon skip a strip, it’s knowing you guys are out there that makes us get our butts out of bed and keep thing story going!

Here’s to another 200 strips!!!