Well, it's official. This blog has existed for exactly one year. One year of blogging in support of my (first) book, "Politics for the New Dark Age: Staying Positive Amidst Disorder"; one year of commentating on politics, philosophy and the culture wars from Geneva and outside of the government mothership. Getting the chance to be interviewed on a podcast as a result of my piece on social media and social trust was definitely a highlight. In honour of the anniversary, today's post will be a little different, looking back at what worked, and what didn't.
Over the last twelve months, this blog:
- was visited by >2,700 unique individual readers;
- roughly half of those visitors were from the United States. Australia, the UK, Canada and Switzerland made up most of the remainder;
- one third of my readers came from Reddit, which explains the considerable increase in readership I got on posts that were posted there;
- finally, 74 of my visitors clicked through a link to buy a copy of my book. Thank you to each and every one of you!
The top three posts from this year were:
- "The Structure and You! Privilege Preference and #MeToo". With 925 unique views, this was the first post I wrote that ever spread even modestly widely, and is still being discovered by new people even six months later.
- Unsurprisingly, the follow-up to that post: "It's OK to be hypocritical (Part 2): Vegans, Morality and Aesthetics" was also modestly popular, with 468 unique views.
- Finally, my post on the so-called "Hereditarian Left" also did well, at 360 unique views, a sign that it always pays to offer views on 'controversial' topics at just the right time. Gratifyingly, several of the players in that debate took the time to respond and engage with me.
Overall, the keys to success appear to have been a) wading into controversial areas, and b) making sure my work was seen on high profile sub-reddits. Oddly enough, my book reviews have also performed solidly, with my review of Yuval Noah Harari's "Sapiens" just barely missing out on the top three.
What posts performed the worst?
- Sadly, my holiday writings on the issue of a 'Voice' for Indigenous Australians received the lowest readership of all my posts, despite it being a touchy issue in Australian and me sharing the entries widely on Reddit.
- I'm more personally disappointed that some more philosophical writings on evolutionary ethics ("Three Duties") and the evolution of sex and gender categories ("The colour analogy") were both read less than ten times. I'm rather proud of both pieces: perhaps the abstract titles and topics were to blame?
- Finally, it's odd that my follow-up to that podcast interview, "Climate Change Broke the Neoliberal Consensus Too" fared so poorly, despite being promoted by the "Connected and Disaffected" podcast crew and being clearly linked to that appearance.
So what's next? Expect the pace of new writing to slow down a bit over the next few months as I manage the return to Australia and gear up to write the first draft of my second book. That's right, there's a follow-up coming that I'm quite excited to get started on. Perhaps by the second blogversary, I'll be able to tell y'all a little more. Until then, thanks for reading!