Blogging Is My Business, and Business Is Slow

National Journal's GovExec has the traffic numbers for political blogs. They ain't good.

RedState traffic is down 28 percent but page views are up 12
percent over the past three months. RedState underwent a redesign and
management overhaul this summer. Right Wing News dropped 20 percent
over the same time, Blogs for Bush was down 13 percent, and Townhall,
which also was recently redesigned after an acquisition, dropped 14
percent.

By contrast to the big drops for RedState and Right Wing News,
readership at the liberal Huffington Post is down 14 percent, and the
drop is 12 percent at Daily Kos, the most trafficked blog… As for the Republican National Committee versus the Democratic National
Committee, both saw traffic declines. The DNC was down 24 percent, and
the RNC dropped twice as much at 48 percent.

Considering the rate at which the RNC churns out web videos, that's pretty surprising. The original liberal blog MyDD is actually up, as is the liberal Virginia blog Raising Kaine. That's important - the big shot political bloggers have speculated for a while that local blogs were the wave of the future. The bloggers who finally establish liberal and conservative sites in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada are going to find themselves incredibly popular come late 2007.

This is as good a time as any to plug two Reason stories - my review of the big two bloggers' books, and Matt Welch's farewell to warblogging.

(Cross-posted at AS.com.)

Comments

[joe]

I'd want to see longer trend lines before drawing any conclusions. This could just be seasonal.

[madpad]

I'd want to see longer trend lines before drawing any conclusions. This could just be seasonal.

Agreed...any attempt to make an analysis or prediction of ANY web trend - especially one based on information from ONE source comparing such a limited time frame - is a more than a little premature.

Nothing about this suggests...well, anything. Except that maybe people are getting tired of overtly conservative or liberal blogs as opposed to blogs in general.

From the polls, I'd say it's not blogs that are passe...it's partisanship.

Also, newsflash...there are a lot more blogs than there were 3 months ago. Video blogging is becoming increasingly popular and there's more to do and see on the web with each passing day. And goodness me, folks are still stuck with the same 24 hours in their day.

Given that the partisan blogs seem to do little more than confirm what their readers already (feel they) know, is it any wonder the less committed would go somewhere else after a while?

Who knows. Maybe people in general are just getting a little tired of ignorant, ranting windbags.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

FWIW, traffic tanks across the web in July and August. It was ever thus.

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

Well for UK blogs it tanks during late-July, August and early September because everyone has buggered off on holiday.

[Mike Laursen]

I hope this doesn't keep Hit & Run from spending some money on bigger server squirrels.

[thedifferentphil]

There is a lot to be said for editorial screening of reading material. I like H&R, but even here a person has to wade through an awful lot between clear, interesting posts. Contrast that with the posted Reason articles that are editorially vetted and are almost always clear and to the point. So I don't see blogs as the future of journalism (and esp. for those that are not connected to edited material).

[mw]

I can pretty much tell you what happened.

I was the last person in America to wear a Nehru shirt and button fly bell bottoms (I actually wore them at the same time). I still have a silk disco shirt hanging in the closet. I joined a dotcom startup in March of 2000, and I started my Political Blog Divided We Stand, United We Fall" in April. There is your answer.

That said, my readership is up well over 500% as I recently broke through the single digit barrier.

BTW, I have started reading "Hit & Run" regularly, so you guys might start thinking about your next gig.