2024 Hamlet's Bible blog by the numbers - a retrospective

2024 was a very good year for the Hamlet’s Bible blog…

VIEWS FOR THE YEAR came to about 17k, averaging about 326 views per week over the year.

This was slightly more than a 90% increase over the average for the past six years, which was about 9k per year and 172 per week, out of a six-year total of 53.6 k views (and possibly higher [1])
from more than 80 countries since January 1, 2019.

So overall, views have been steadily increasing.

17 SERIES SO FAR:
Since I started posting (first on LinkedIn in 2017), I have done 17 series [2],
for an average slightly more than two series per year.

OPHELIA
In 2024, I finished my series on Ophelia (my longest) [3].

CLAUDIUS
This past year I started a new series on Claudius (to be continued at greater length in 2024) [4].

TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
I did a brief series on the twelve days of Christmas (concluding soon) [5].

POSTS WITH HIGHEST VIEWS
Views of posts from the Ophelia series dominated the year, as might be expected for a long series, but one post - the first post in the Claudius series - received the highest number of views for a new post in 2024 [6].

There were only two posts that received more:
- A “Top 20 Greatest Hits” post from December of 2019 [7],
a link to which I have at the bottom of every post (it is on my to-do list to update this!).
- A longer essay called “Anagnorisis (& some peripeteia) in Hamlet” [8] from August 25, 2020, inspired by a question from Shobha Pawar about Hamlet and Aristotle’s definition of tragedy. Judging by the blog’s analytics, it seems this essay may have been assigned for reading in some classes, considering the patterns for increases in views from one country or another during each year.

THANK YOU for your views, your readership, your kind and often enthusiastic, regular support.

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NOTES: All references to Shakespeare plays are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online versions: https://shakespeare.folger.edu

[1] Blogger allows monetizing by allowing ads, which I tried briefly, but this resulted in a flood of “unwanted referral traffic” views from two countries probably unrelated to interest in the blog.

The total number of views for all time, including (probably) unwanted referrals was
108k, adjusted down to 53.6k, divided by 6 years, for an average of 8.93k per year.

The total number of views for 2024 before adjusting for unwanted referrals was
51.6k, adjusted down to 16.97k. That number is slightly higher than a 90% increase.

I may be over-adjusting, but I would rather do that than allow falsely inflated numbers.

[2] Link to MASTER INDEX that links to each index for every series on the blog:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2025/01/master-index-to-quickly-find-index-for.html

[3] Ophelia (and Gertrude) (June 2023-Aug. 2024).
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/10/index-of-ophelia-posts-2023-series-and.html

[4] Claudius (Nov 19, 2024-)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/11/index-why-claudius-not-feng-whats-in.html

[5] The Twelve Days of Christmas in Churches of Shakespeare’s Time (Dec. 25, 2024-Jan. 2025)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/12/twelve-days-of-christmas-in-churches-of.html

[6] Posted after the introductory post for this series, this post receiving the third highest for 2024 was numbered as part 1 of the series: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/11/part-1-hamlets-uncle-claudius-as-lame.html

[7] Top 20 Greatest Hits: Hamlet & the Bible
- December 09, 2019
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html

[8] Anagnorisis (and some peripeteia) in Hamlet
- August 25, 2020
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/08/anagnorisis-and-aristo-poe-in-Hamlet.html


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IF YOU WOULD PREFER to support me on a REGULAR basis,
you may do so on Ko-Fi, or here on Patreon:
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html

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