Bloggery

Now here's a depressing thought. The Commissar has posted Glenn Reynolds' November traffic, and it proves what we all expected to happen.



Instapundit traffic can be used as an indicator of blogosphere traffic as a whole. As one of the best-known blogs, it's likely that the majority of blog readers visit Glenn's site. While we expected traffic to take a hit following the election peak, I didn't expect if to drop so precipitously. I'd hoped that the buzz caused by events of recent months - increased exposure in the MSM etc. - may have caused a huge lasting increase in readership, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

So, will the next 4 years be a long, hard winter for us in the blogosphere, as we pass time until the next election? Not necessarily. It may be that Instapundit's traffic has taken such a hit due to his niche. He is, after all, a political war blogger. Now the election is done with he may just need to refocus on other, more entertaining, issues.

If other bloggers are searching for a spark of hope in all this, it may be useful to look at Glenn's traffic over the entire year. Between January and July he maintained a steady 3 million visits/month. Forgetting the election peak, he should still begin the new year with between 4-5 million monthly readers. For the rest of us, the challenge will be to convince a small percentage of his readers to visit our sites after reading his nanotechnology pap.



I'm going to look into this a little more later on, but first... french bread, red leicester cheese, tomato and a little red onion for that extra zing.

Update - for those bloggers feeling depressed at their drop in readership, I present my own stats.



Sortapundit wasn't hugely affected by the election boost, as I don't really do politics. I've enjoyed my best month ever, due in no small part to referrals from Rusty Shackleford of the Jawa Report, Bill Quick at DailyPundit, David Anderson at ISOU and the Commissar at Politburo Diktat. Surviving the next few years will depend on each bloggers ability to forge new connections, and maybe move in the direction of group blogging to pool resources. Sure, the pie will be smaller, but with a little ingenuity and a lot of bloody-minded stubborness you should be able to cut yourself a bigger slice.