Green Phoenix - 2019 in Review

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!

This week is going to be a little different. This won't be an article analyzing a piece of media, or an editorial giving my take on an element or change I would make to a cultural capstone. Instead, in the spirit of the new year, I will be taking a look back on the previous years articles and looking at the various statistics behind those articles and what that can tell me about what I can do more next year.

While this article may be a bit more dry than my usual editorial, I feel that, as my audience, it is very important you see the work I go into making these articles the very best they can be and as entertaining and informative as I can make them.

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General Statistics

In 2019, I wrote a total of 27 articles over 30 weeks (accounting for the three weeks of December vacation). I joined the site on the 7th of June, 2019 with my article on the 1992 Disney animated classic Aladdin. That very first article has received (as of the 3rd of January, 2020) 49 views since its release. As of writing this article, my reviews have received 829 views in total, with an average views per article of 30.

Not exactly drawing in massive crowds, but for the very first year, with minimal marketing and brand recognition, it's not too bad.

Of the 27 articles I wrote in 2019:

• 15 were film reviews (Including both animated and live-action),
• 3 were reviews of television shows or anime,
• 4 were book recommendations, and;
• 4 were editorials.

I am incredibly happy to state that I managed to release an article every Friday without failure or delay, and even managed to build up a consistent stockpile of articles for at least two months at any one time.

Hopefully with even more marketing and even better articles, all of these numbers are going to go way up, especially because we will be going through a whole year in 2020, instead of half of one.

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The Best and Worst

My most read article, as of writing this article, is - by an incredibly wide margin - my review of the original Lion King from 1994 with a mind-boggling 142 views! I find this absolutely incredible as I created this review largely as a reaction to the release of the photo-realistic Lion King remake that had been released in theaters around the same time. I also enjoy that my favorite animated film and the film that has had one of the greatest impacts on my life should be among my most viewed articles.

Now, looking at my fellow Rangers, my Lion King review is not really all that high in terms of views. But I am among the newer creators and this level of viewership is still new to me. And even leaving aside such a large outlier, most of my reviews reach around 30 views on average. Not exactly a lot, but for a site that does only moderate marketing; it's pretty good.

That being said, not every review or article I write has been so well received. Almost all of my lowest viewed articles belong to either my book recommendations or my editorials, which is a bit of a shame. My least viewed article, not including the one released last week, is my editorial covering The Machete Order which only has 10 views, though this article was based on a much earlier video editorial I made on my original YouTube channel.

I absolutely love writing my editorials, as it gives me an opportunity to focus on generalized issues or concepts in film or television criticism or to cover a very strange or esoteric subject. I suppose I will just have to keep them going and improve their quality and intersperse them among my other reviews.

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Conclusions

All in all, I am extremely happy to see how well received my reviews seem to be. I do wish there was a little more reader interaction, but it has only been about six months. All things may come in time.

My viewership seems to really enjoy the articles and I will continue to review films and television (including more anime). I will also work on more editorials and may even begin doing some more countdown work as well.

As far as looking at the changes that may need to be made, I feel that I need to begin releasing more topical reviews and articles, including perhaps more reviews of films in theaters or that were in theaters.

In fact, why don't I spend the next two reviews doing just that? Let's start 2020 with a look at the last two big film releases of 2019 and get this year started bigger and better than ever before.

I hope you all will join me in 2020.