Aphelion

I was wandering in the dark recesses of the Net and I came across Alexa.com's traffic rating for Strange Horizons. On those pages, it brought me to one of those "people who visit this page also visit these sites" list.<br><br>On the top of that list was Aphelion! So, I clicked on it.<br>http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traff ... br><br>Now, I never expected Aphelion's numbers to compare with SH or Sci-Fiction. They pay big bucks, so they get the most attention. Besides, quantity doesn't always mean quality, and I say there's quality here. Also, I don't claim to understand the numbers the page shows. What troubled me was that the numbers said Aphelion's apparent circulation was down by 50%.<br><br>Dan, is this true? I hope it's not.<br><br>I've asked this in the past, but is there a way to know how many page views a story gets? I can't tell how much my stories were read by the lettercol posts I received. I would love to know how many times someone has potentially read one of my stories--even if it's only twenty people. At least I'd know. <br><br>How about a small counter at the bottom of each story page?<br><br>Am I out in left field here, or does anybody else wish they had that information?<br><br>Nate

On the other hand, how many of us do direct jumps to the Lettercol without passing through the main www.aphelion-webzine.com page? Rob, do these count? For that matter, I can't remember if SH has a lettercol, but if it does, I wonder how much traffic IT gets?<br><br>Robert M.

But one reason that those stats you saw might look low is the holiday double issue. People are waiting on the new issue of Aphelion. They've had two months now to read this present one. So I imagine that fewer people are visiting both websites to get into their stats database.

<br>It certainly makes sense that fewer people are reading if there isn't anything new to read. A 50% drop over three months just seemed alarming.<br><br>Out of curiosity, are there any things done to boost circulation? <br><br>Is there something that I, as a loyal Usual Suspect, could be doing to promote my favorite Zine?<br><br>I know there is the links page, and hopefully they link back. I checked a few mags I thought of, like Alien Skin, Anotherealm, and Planet, but they didn't link here. Strange Horizons did have a link, but it said Aphelion was now in its 4th year. Taking a quick look at the Aphelion Links page, the first three didn't link back here.<br><br>The places I did find links usually just say it's a place to read Mare stories. A few tell a tiny bit about the other fiction content and feedback to writers. None of them mentioned the Nightwatch stories.<br><br>So, just FYI, but you might want to check that other mags are reciprocating. Alexa.com says 37 sites point to the title page.<br><br>Nate

For that matter, I can't remember if SH has a lettercol, but if it does, I wonder how much traffic IT gets?
Robert M.

<br>SH does have a message board, but the numbers don't seem very good. It uses an Infopop server copyright 2003. Since it started there are only 111 members and 970 total messages and their mag has a traffic rank of 256,236th, whereas Aphelion has 110 members and 2,655 messages since April, yet the Zine ranks below 4,000,000th place (but it used to be 1.8 million higher).<br><br>Mind you, nothing says how many more millions of sites there are total.<br><br>Nate