Fraters Libertas

Traffic Report

What does a prominent mention of your Web site in the Pioneer Press's editorial page get you in terms of increased traffic these days? According to superficial analysis, nada mucho.

Differences between Monday, January 24 and Tuesday, January 25 (the day the Yost editorial ran):

Hits: 19,445 to 20,663 (+6.3%)
Pages: 3,964 to 4,303 (+8.6%)
Unique Visitors: 2,734 to 2,759 (+0.1%)

25 extra bodies, hanging around to view a few extra pages. (Welcome to you all, you beautiful, brilliant people.)

I'm not complaining mind you, we appreciate the hell out of the publicity. But I've heard of similarly mild migrations from others who's URLs have appeared in the broadsheets. Based on that scant anecdotal evidence, we'll rule out Yost's skill in persuasion as the special cause of the problem. (Although we'll never know the destructive result of the unfortunate "child molesters" simile. Considering that, I suppose we should be glad we didn't lose traffic.)

Hasty conclusion based on superficial analysis - overwhelmingly, MSM consumers aren't ready, willing, or able to accept blogs as a valid source of information or entertainment. We weren't expecting a flood of new traffic. But you'd think if the pump was already primed we'd have gotten a nice little splash.

Or maybe we didn't get the traffic because everyone rushed over to the Nihilist in Golf Pants instead.

Although our collection of new visitors may be small, they're powerful. At least they're good artists. Dan Lacy writes to tell me he saw us in the PiPress. And he happens to be a blogger-cartoonist, from a site called Faithmouse, who describes his stuff thusly:

Faithmouse is a Christian conservative editorial cartoon online since 1998 and which appears and/or is linked on over 260 web sites including newsmax.com and mensnewsdaily.com. My cartoons have been lauded on Polipundit and maligned on Daily KOS. There are entire forums set up to criticize my cartoons, while individual toons appear regularly in a wide variety of pro conservative forums.

I did not know any of that until today. The interconnectivity magic of the blogosphere goes on!

Others who came here for the first time via the Yost piece (bloggers or not), I'm interested in your reactions to the editorial and the blogs featured therein. Why did you come here? What do you think? Email me, tell me your story, it'll be painless, I promise.

(Message to the Nihilist in Golf Pants, I know you've been to Fraters Libertas before, no need to doctor up a phony email as yet another shameless publicity stunt to feed your mad craving for power.)