This is a quick guide on how to add analytics to your AO3 stories. I hope you find it as useful as I did. Thanks and Enjoy!

When I got into writing fanfic, I didn’t know what I was doing really. After some research, I found four avenues to explore:

Tumblr



Ao3



Fanfiction.net



Wattpad



In the end, I dropped FF.net and Wattpad. The restrictions each of these had on adult content was a massive turn off and I settled on Tumblr and Ao3. While Tumblr allows the easy use of Analytics, Ao3 did not. This is too bad, because even FF.net and Wattpad had vastly superior tools in place for seeing your readers.

I’m a software engineer by trade and I set out to try and solve the problem of Ao3′s short falling. It’s relatively easy to set up and I hope that you find it as useful and motivating as I have.

Thanks!

1. Get a Google Tracking ID

Get yourself a Google account here.

Sign up for Google Analytics here.

Account Name: [Your fic name] Website Name: [Fic Name] Website URL: [Your Ao3 URL here] (ex: http://archiveofourown.org/works/8348572) Click Create and Agree to the Terms Write down your Tracking ID!





2. Use the Tracking ID when you update each chapter of your fic

Use it on EVERY CHAPTER, like so:

On the Edit Chapter screen, click on “HTML” view instead of “Rich Text”

Add the following to the bottom of your chapter:



<img src=“https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=[YOUR TRACKING ID HERE]&cid=1&t=event&ec=Ao3&ea=[YOUR LABEL HERE]”>

Your Label: Make it all standard characters, without spaces. Change it with EACH chapter so that you have more granular information available to look through. I usually use something to match the chapter or give a quick description. Some examples include:



Chapter1



1.5



Interlude2

FanArt2







An example of how it should look is here: <img src=“https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=UA-92651377-2&cid=1&t=event&ec=Ao3&ea=1.5”>

Now … sit back and wait. It will take a day for it to start collecting and then it will take much longer to really see your user base, their locations, and when people are reading, and which chapters get re-read and how often.

Looking at the Data

This isn’t a tutorial on how to use google Analytics, but I’ll give some pointers to their UI, as it can be a bit confusing. This tactic will ONLY show up in the Events … it will NOT show up in other parts of the analytics UI.



After a week or so, head back over to Google Analytics (GA) here.

Expand the side menu and click on ‘BEHAVIOR’, then ‘Events’ and ‘Overview’ and select ‘Event Action’:

You can do all kinds of things from here. You can change date ranges, add secondary dimensions or drill down into a specific chapter to see it’s locations:

Or see the locations of your readers on an actual map:

FYI: This is not spying. This is Google Analytics. Even Tumblr uses it. Anyone who uses an ad blocker opts out, it’s part of the terms and services of GA.

NOTE TO EVERYONE: Make sure when you copy and paste the above URLs, that they are not converting into ‘left’ and ‘right’ double quotes. They need to remain standard double quotes. If you are having a problem getting Ao3 to recognize the HTML, try manually replacing these, as Tumblr might have formatted them differently when you copy/pasted them: