That Man Behind the Curtain: February 2013

Hello mad science fans. A very quick and slightly belated post recapping the numbers from last month. I wanted to get the slush from the special call cleared up before posting this, just so I didn’t have to make some comment about “oh, well, these submission numbers aren’t complete because we have a bunch of slush that isn’t finished.”

The Money Aspect

Amounts in parentheses are losses/expenses.

Hosting: ($17.06)
Stories: ($80.00)
Art: ($150.00)
Advertising: ($10.00)
Paypal Fees: ($5.18)
Donations: $10.00
Ad Revenue: $0.23
Books Sales: $0.76
Total: ($251.25)
Q/YTD: ($633.36)
All Time: ($3,949.41)

As per usual, I try to list costs for art and stories under the month that the stories run on the site rather than when I pay them. I also cover Paypal expenses when paying authors and artists.

The Smashwords ad report is a little confusing. There seems to be a couple sales for the Kobo that were, I think, made in January but didn’t appear until relatively recently. So that went on the January tally. For February only one book was sold. It sold for .58 Euros, which Google tells me is $0.76.

Sales and ad revenue are down, possibly because I’ve also not been advertising as aggressively. But on the other hand, my total loss for the month is one of the lowest since we started putting out content. And, really, when you’re talking about making $2 instead of $5, then you’re not really making a whole lot of distinction.

I’ll be doing another big advertising push once the next quarterly is together. I’m also hoping to crack my problem with getting MSJ on Amazon this month.

Submissions

In February we received 24 submissions: 5 exclusive flash, 5 exclusive shorts, 2 regular flash, 6 regular shorts, 6 classified ads. (3 classified ad submissions were submitted by the same person. Make of that what you will.) We accepted 15: 1 exclusive flash, 5 exclusive shorts, 1 regular flash, 2 regular shorts, 6 classified ads. 62.5% acceptance for the month. 53.5% for all time. We have enough stories to get us through early July. The exclusive submissions will be split between the next two anthologies.

We got some really amazing submissions. We were really floored by some of them. We hope you are too. We are also getting the feeling that the novelty of the classifieds are wearing off and are debating what to do. Do people love them enough to keep them alive? Is it a cute idea that’s been beat to death? Let us know what you think.

Traffic

February had a total of 1,330 visits, down a hair from last month. Our traffic consisted of 978 unique visitors and 2,231 page views. Our highest daily traffic was a staggering 155 visits. StumbleUpon proved to be the big breadwinner for traffic. I’ve been trying to dig deep with tags to broaden appearance on there and it seems to be paying off. But Facebook still does well. We have 600+ followers on Facebook, compared to 15 on Google+ and 195 on Twitter.

On a related note, would anyone be interested in a Mad Scientist Journal Tumblr? I gather it’s what the young folk are into these days. It has also swallowed Dawn’s soul. So, you know, it has that going for it.

February’s search engine term for the month is “word for a mad scientist lady”. It was almost “boil on my face”, because I just could not for the life of me figure out how they would get there. (Turns out there are four stories that could be culprits.) But really, I am delighted that there might be a separate term for mad scientist women. Mad scientessa? Mad scientista? It boggles the mind. Maybe there’s a story in that?

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