September 5 marked the 4 month mark for The Inquisitr, and although I’m a little late with this post, some updated figures and observations.
We closed August with 420,000 page views, and this is before I noticed that Google Analytics was under-counting, likely due to page load times. Based on the top leaderboard spot, the figure was around the 460,000 mark.
It was a very good month, and I doubt very much if we’ll repeat it, but certainly I’m hopeful of a result above the 200,000 mark for September, hopefully more again. 1 week in and we’re just shy of 70,000 page views, so we’re off to a solid start, even if it’s not spectacular.
RSS subscriptions remain an issue, an under performing aspect of the site. Around the 3000 mark across the four feeds (I didn’t total them for the post), but off from a peak in early August, but slowly climbing again.
Technorati rank has been tough. The indexing went down for our two biggest days in August, so we missed what should have been a huge boost, and we malingered just shy of the top 2000 mark for nearly a week. Since then its started to move again, but as I suspected, the closer we got to the top 1000, the slower the rank improves as you need more and more links to climb the ladder. 1692nd as I write this, with just short of 2 months to get to the top 1000 based on knowing that the stats Technorati use are 6mths worth of links…basically, as we add incoming links, we can only go up until 6 months, when it will level out somewhat.
On the advertising front, we’ve signed a 6 month agreement with an ad supplier with the ad units to start in the next day or two. More details once the ads are up. Unfortunately it’s US inventory only, but if they deliver the rates they’re talking about, The Inquisitr should break even, and maybe even turn a small profit for the first time, not allowing for me to get paid out of that 🙂
Overall: at the 3 month mark I was starting to stress a bit, not because the site wasn’t performing well, but because it wasn’t performing well enough to cover costs. Ask me in a month and I’ll tell you if those fears were unfounded, but JR + Meieli have rallied around the site, and collectively we’re getting more things right now than before. It’s getting close…..
Update: I should have added, if only Awstats figures were actual page views, because we broke 1 million page views according to Awstats in August…I know, I wish 🙂
Congrats on all of your progress – you (and the team) are doing great!
thx Allen, for both your comment and all your support along the way.
Keep up the good work, Duncan and team. The Inquisitr is a must-read for me, and you've done greater than I ever would have anticipated. So much for fading quietly into the shadows…
Thanks Louis, and thx for your support along the way. Now if only I had the money to hire you as a writer!
If only I could finish my d**n posts in less than 3 hours since my kids won't go to bed. 🙂
Congratulations Duncan. I can't believe it's only been 4 Months?! It's an integral part of my news reading day now.
With regards to the RSS – i don't want to sound patronising, but it's very difficult to even see where the rss link is and very little mention of it really on the site apart from at the bottom posts – and I've always found people seem to ignore them except in actual readers – then it becomes a little more noticeable. Anyway, just my thoughts – you guys have done an amazing job. Oh and also i'm really sorry for the delay with a recent post, I think it should do great for you though & will be with you hopefully by the time you're up.
Congrats again!. Zee 🙂
Great status Duncan. +1 for Zee's comment about not merchandising the RSS feeds, especially the category feeds. I find myself coming to Inquisitr a lot for one-off posts but wasn't motivated to add it to my stuffed feedreader. Only after I read this did I go figure out that Inquisitr has 3 channels and that I was most interested in tech, odd, but not pop. So that division may be ridiculously clear to you and most readers but for this continuous-partial-attention-deficit-distracted reader it was not. Take this random reader feedback for what you will. Added Odd and Tech to my reader. Keep up the great work!!
Congrats Duncan. Can't think of ANYONE else that's this transparent (It's a good thing). Continued success. There's very few 'real deals' out there. You're one of them.
Congrats Duncan. Can't think of ANYONE else that's this transparent (It's a good thing). Continued success. There's very few 'real deals' out there. You're one of them.
Great status Duncan. +1 for Zee's comment about not merchandising the RSS feeds, especially the category feeds. I find myself coming to Inquisitr a lot for one-off posts but wasn't motivated to add it to my stuffed feedreader. Only after I read this did I go figure out that Inquisitr has 3 channels and that I was most interested in tech, odd, but not pop. So that division may be ridiculously clear to you and most readers but for this continuous-partial-attention-deficit-distracted reader it was not. Take this random reader feedback for what you will. Added Odd and Tech to my reader. Keep up the great work!!
Congrats Duncan. Can't think of ANYONE else that's this transparent (It's a good thing). Continued success. There's very few 'real deals' out there. You're one of them.