Meta

As the new year begins, this feels like a good time to look at some quantitative measures for how it went with this site and various projects.

I’ve had Google Analytics running on johnaugust.com since 2007. Here’s a look at how readership has grown over the past four years:

Other than links to stuff I’ve made, I don’t run any ads on the site, so readership metrics aren’t especially important. But it’s interesting to see the numbers edging up after dropping a little in 2010.

My best guess for why: Twitter. This year, I’ve been fairly consistent about tweeting each new post. That brings in both regular readers and new readers who come to the site through re-tweets.

A lot of the basic question-answering, which used to be this site’s main focus, has transitioned over to [screenwriting.io](http://screenwriting.io), which now has 96 posts on various topics. Daily visits are low, but most of the traffic is coming as the result of very specific Google searches — [“How long should a screenplay be?”](http://screenwriting.io/how-long-should-a-screenplay-be/) — which was its goal at inception.

Apps and audio
—-

The [Scriptnotes](http://johnaugust.com/podcast) podcast that Craig Mazin and I started in August has grown a lot, but it’s less obvious which numbers to count.

We have more than 2,000 subscribers through iTunes (which we can measure via FeedBurner), but that figure doesn’t count folks listening to it through their browser — on this site or others. Tracking audio file downloads off the S3 server brings us to 28,000 listeners per installment.

Again, without advertising, it’s not essential to know hard numbers. It’s been gratifying to hear from listeners who’ve been enjoying the podcast.

This year marked the launch of our first iOS app, [FDX Reader](http://fdxreader.com). This chart of unit sales shows the falloff from our initial launch, the spike when we introduced the iPhone version, and the results of a one-week sale:

As I blogged before, we’re not going to be adding anything new to FDX Reader. Our next app is for the Mac, and we have other iOS apps in the pipeline. More news on that this week.

I just want to take a moment to say thank you.

Looking back at the comment threads on recent posts, I’m struck by how thoughtful and polite the responses have been. Particularly concerning Justin Samuels, there was every opportunity for the discussion to get ugly and off-topic. It didn’t. That’s credit to you.

Compare these comment threads to anything on AICN or DHD. Their comments are mostly one-liners with random punctuation. Our comments are relevant, paragraphs long, and composed of complete sentences.

I think it’s a virtuous cycle; readers spend the time to leave quality comments because they see other readers leaving quality comments.

Stuart and I monitor the threads, trying to make sure readers are following Living Room Rules. Truth is, we rarely have to nix a comment. Thank you for that.

Okay, this time I definitely saw you appear in the new Transformers movie, no question. You play a soldier guarding the government facility where Frances McDormand works. Right?

— Ben Sitzer

I swear it’s not me.

My first thought was that it was my [doppelgänger from Salt](http://twitter.com/#!/johnaugust/statuses/19602822577), [Steve Cirbus](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1783121/), but he doesn’t show up in the IMDb credits for Transformers 3.

The truth is, I have a very familiar face. In daily life, I’m fairly frequently confused with someone’s cousin’s roommate. But if anyone can figure out the name of my double in the latest Michael Bay opus, please share a link.