Following my last post on the anniversary of this blog it seemed only Obama-like to practice near total transparency in sharing a few statistics with the growing loyal readership base that you all have come to comprise - and so without further adieu, I present to you, The Wild Wild East Dailies (WWED) 2008 Annual Report.Overview:
What a year. From a base of zero in Feb 08, WWED has accumulated 20,000 views in the last year. Beginning with around 500 in February and March and doubling to around 1000 a month by April, things stayed at pretty much that level until September, which doubled again to 2000, when either the election kicked in or I received a bonus for getting through 6 months without being booted off the Internet. I suspect the election was the influence here as you'll see later when we look at the most popular posts of the year. Also, that's about the time I started delving into political satire and you'll see it was a big ticket item in terms of hits but interestingly enough, the majority of those hits did not turn into loyal readers. November brought 3000 and by December we hit the year's high at over 5000. With plenty of holiday time on their hands, and little cash in their pockets readers took to the Internet with reckless abandon looking for cheap entertainment and the WWED was just the ticket. Holiday traffic stretched from Thanksgiving in the west through Lunar New Year in the east and has now just leveled off to around 3000 per month - but that's a projected 36,000 for 09 and I suspect we'll do much better than that. My goal would be 100,000 but that may be under-achieving. www.Technorati.com ranks the site at 520,000, which doesn't look so impressive until you realize that they track 120 million blogs worldwide - and that puts us well inside the top .5%.Where you are from:
According to Alexa rankings, the United States is the runaway winner with 72%. Other countries, a real mixed bag from Gambia to Togo account for 20% and Vietnam holds it own at a more than respectable 7%. "Hey, that's only 99%!", your saying. That's because North Korea is the only country in the world without Coke and Internet for its citizens. A chart for just the last few days (below)puts Vietnam leading America with the UK, Canada, Australia and Korea following. Just a quick look at the world map at the top of the page is pretty enlightening and that map has only been tracking since November.
 | 164 | 43.97% | Viet Nam |  |
| 114 | 30.56% | United States |  |
| 18 | 4.83% | United Kingdom |  |
| 10 | 2.68% | Canada |  |
| 9 | 2.41% | Australia |  |
| 7 | 1.88% | Korea, Republic Of |  |
| 7 | 1.88% | United Arab Emirates |  |
| 7 | 1.88% | Singapore |  |
| 6 | 1.61% | Thailand |  |
| 4 | 1.07% | Malaysia |  |
| 3 | 0.80% | Unknown | - |
| 3 | 0.80% | India |  |
| 2 | 0.54% | Japan |  |
| 2 | 0.54% | France |  |
| 2 | 0.54% | Germany |  |
| 2 | 0.54% | Turkey |  |
| 2 | 0.54% | Serbia |  |
| 1 | 0.27% | Egypt |  |
| 1 | 0.27% | Cambodia |  |
| 1 | 0.27% | Bangladesh |  |
| 1 | 0.27% | Finland |  |
| 1 | 0.27% | Norway |  |
| 1 | 0.27% | Hungary |  |
| 1 | 0.27% | Croatia |  |
| 1 | 0.27% | Greece |  |
In terms of real concentration, the Northeast US is the heaviest with New York city and state carrying the bulk but LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas and Chicago all carry respectable weights.
What do you like:
Suffice to say that the greatest number of entries to the site come from the main page, but many others come in looking for a particular item. Not surprisingly, anything involving Obama scored well but I have to tell you - Sarah Palin was a more than respectable second - in fact her lunacy sparked the biggest post of the year when she entered the race and she scored a healthy #5 with Kim Jong Il as her WWED running mate. Political satire carried 4 spots out of the top 10.
01. 08/August/Obama Splits Ticket - Boots Biden! (1,272)
My first crack at political satire and the biggest at twelve hundred+ hits. Thank god Sara Palin entered the race. This post was helped out by a link from Cracked Magazine that still yeilds hits today. Comedians worldwide are still mourning the loss of Mrs. Palin.
02. 08/July/Paris In The 30s - Saigon Today (680)
This one surprised me - a wonderful memory of an evening in a French bistro with an accordion player and the French Navy dancing. Maybe some proof that the more artistic stuff works too.
03. 08/June/June 22 - Happy Birthday Todd Rundgren (487)
Surprising as well as Todd is a big favorite of mine but not of the masses.
04. 08/April/American Foreign Policy Since WWII (411)
A video rant by Rodney Dangerfield and Sam Kinneson that really takes US foreign policy apart. Funny as hell.
05. 08/September/Kim Jong Il, Ill After Threats by Palin (381)
Who would think to put Kim Jong Il and Sara Palin together in print? I would and have been apparently be the only blogger to do so. I still see the search terms for this post and it still gets respectable hits.
06. 08/July/Obama Brandishes a Bud For The Bubbas! (365)
My first crack at both Budweiser and Obama this post still draws hits even though it's technically politically incorrect to make fun of Obama. Fuck those who can't take a joke.
07. 08/May/Buddhist Funeral Prayer (346)
This made me feel good. I had copied the prayer given to me at a friend's memorial service and it seems one that a lot of people are interested in. It's beautiful.
08. 09/January/Chúc Mừng Năm Mới or Happy New Year in Vietnamese (336)
This just underscores the importance of the Lunar New Year here and also for the tracking response it received from Vietnamese search engines because it uses Vietnamese language - not to mention that it's a nice story as well.
09. 08/November/BarCampSaigon - A truly impressive start (301)
BarCamp is a digital non-conference that brings techies, bloggers, marketing folks, venture capitalist and all sorts of wing-nuts together for an all-day event that ends in free beer. Who wouldn't love it? It was also a great way for WWED to broaden its Vietnamese and Cambodian reader base This post has been featured as the "Best Tech Blog Post of 2008" on the Blog of Baomi.
10. 08/July/Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase! (281)
We end our top ten with another political satire piece that just reinforces to me that there's always a market in funny. As much as I love some of the more artful stuff I do, and the business things, one should never overlook that crass and sophomoric have their place too. It certainly works for the Farrelly Brothers.
Who loves me baby:
Our final category today involves quality - the quality of readers that come, come back and spend real quality time. In our first chart today we look at "Return Visitors". These are people who visit regularly. Some of them may get WWED from a feed - we have around 70 feed subscribers - and others just check in manually from time to time. If you haven't subscribed yet, I urge you to do so. That way you get em' as I write em' and can just preview a headline and decide if you want to read the whole thing. According to stats from both Google Analytics and Statcounter about 10% of the crowd are return readers and based on unique readers (not just page impressions) of more than 16,000 that adds up to 1600 regulars.
The second Chart involves "Visit Length". That's how much time how many people spend here. You can see that 76% of the people blow off in less than 5 seconds but that a whopping 7.8% stay for more than an hour. Amazing. The average visit across all visits is 2 and a half minutes but even 8.4% of you stay for at least 5 minutes. I have documented proof that 3% of the people are hanging out for hours upon hours - some up to 10 or more! And you've got to ask yourself, "Why?". My guess would be the podcast. I think some people may be just popping up the site for a radio station and that's okay by me. Whatever hooks em. Rhona from New York complained appropriately loudly when her podcast went away for a few days - but then she got a new computer and everything was fine. Whatever people's reasons for tuning in I just couldn't be more happy to have them. On an e-com site hits mean money, but in our case on the WWED, quality is job #1. If I write it, they will come. But not if I write shit!So long as we're not far away from the subject of money, I am prepared to tell you just exactly how much the site has made me all year. $4.86 cents. Yep. Four eighty six. This has come from the little Google ads you see below each post. As far as the PayPal button in the sidebar, goes? Nothin. Zip. Nada. It seems the Radiohead concept has not caught on here yet. But now that we're up a year, and I feel that I have more than done my work, do consider throwing a donation in the pot for a hard working street performer - and I mean seriously - toss me a buck, if you like what you're getting here, and support my work if you will. One of these days I'll have a book I can gig you into buying, but until then, at the risk of sounding like a public radio station, consider a small donation.
Thanks to Rhoda in NYC, Freya in Wisconsin, David and Ted in London, Hugh in Texas, and Nels & Debs & Pat & Tom & Kevin & Steve & Mads & Daniel and all the many thousands who have spent at least a minute here from all around the world. If it weren't for all of you I wouldn't have had to have written such a long-assed post as this!
Cheers 2009!
For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:
Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book>/a>
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?
