Here’s an interesting little chart from Alexa. We Hunted the Mammoth is the green line; A Voice for Men is the yellow line:
For more details on Alexa’s estimates, see its pages for WHTM and for AVFM.
Now, Alexa bases its rankings for most sites — including mine and AVFM — on estimated, not actual, traffic, and I have reason to believe that Alexa is underestimating when it comes to my site. I’m pretty sure that WHTM has actually been doing better than AVFM for some time. (I can get into that in the comments if you want to know why; I also have some suspicions about AVFM’s traffic.)
In any case, here are my actual traffic stats for the period in question; I’m averaging more than a million pageviews a month. The current month (in orange) is obviously not over yet, but if my traffic continues on in a fairly typical way for the rest of the month I should easily clear a million again. (The red bit is my estimate for this month’s traffic.)
Paul, if you want to post your own traffic logs, we can compare the two sites more accurately. (Somehow I don’t think he will.)
Oh, and one more thing:
AVFM has 18 people on its masthead, including a Publisher, a “Managing Editor,” an “Assistant Managing Editor,” a “Senior Editor,” an “Editor for the Falsely Accused,” a just plain “Editor,” an ‘”Australian News Director,” an “Indian News Director,” a “European News Director,” a “Chief Public Relations Officer,” and even a “Chief Marketing Officer.”
Here at the We Hunted the Mammoth Editorial Offices, which also double as my apartment, it’s just me and the cats.
David, If you’d like to share your thoughts on AVFM hits, I’ve got the popcorn….
FUCCCCCK YES! Nice work!!
Oh, do please tell…
Congrats, David!
@David:
We could use some pictorial evidence of your other staff, ahem. 😀 There just aren’t enough cats in the internet.
I’m surprised there are that many people left at AVFM!
The Alexa graph seems like it’s taking a pretty steep dive – is this related to the “drop in pageviews” that Paul predicted when he started blogging about the history of yeast?
Open carry a real penis substitute. Dildos.
*Comes out of lurking retirement*
David –
I forget who it was, but I remember a commenter a few weeks ago saying that the Spearhead seems to straight up not exist anymore. Upon further investigation, that seems to be true! One of the tentpoles of the Manosphere, once one of your primary sources of material (source of the Scented Fucking Candles meme, no less!), and it’s just gone! Quietly disappeared off the map! When did this happen? How did this happen? Any information you have would be much appreciated.
Just seemed an opportune time to ask…
*Returns to lurking*
I’m gonna have to use this to build a case for having cats at my workplace. Look at that productivity!
I wonder what Paul will do when his little following dries up — beyond blaming the non believers and the apostates, which he’s all over already.
YES!!! Congrats David….Well done.
Well, my suspicion on AVFM traffic is based on a couple of things.
One, back before AVFM’s traffic plunge on Alexa, Alexa was estimating that the number of pageviews per visitor on AVFM was something like 6 — that is, the typical visitor looked at six pages on sahe site.
At the time, Alexa was stimating that the number of pageviews per person on WHTM was less than 2. (In fact, according to my actual stats it was 3-4 pageviews/visitor, and now it’s generally more than 4.)
So Alexa was suggesting that AVFM visitors were 3 times as “engaged” as readers here. But if you compare the most obvious visible signs of engagement, comments, there are more here than there.
I don’t know if this reflects the inaccuracy of Alexa’s estimates or some sort of traffic boosting or Alexa-fooling strategy on AVFM’s part.
The fact that some AVFMers have a lot of fake followers on Twitter suggests to me that AVFM is not above faking things to make itself look more popular than it is.
The other suspicious thing? Elam announced not that long ago that he expected traffic there to fall further than it already has.
On the one hand, maybe this jut meant that he expected to post fewer posts, and that traffic might fall because of that.
The alternative is that he was paying for fake traffic (possibly bots), or doing something to fudge his/alexa stats and that he’s stopped doing this. Hence traffic in freefall.
But I don’t know how that would work, nor do I know how one might go about fooling Alexa, so I have no idea if my suspicions are justified or not.
Once I switch over to wordpress.org, I may sign up for Alexa’s subscription services, so they’ll have my actual stats to work with.
And thanks, everyone!
On the Spearhead, I think it’s been down for at least a year. I probably should have done a little tribute to it. Hmm. I could stiff do that.
Oh, oh, another big reason to doubt AVFM’s traffic stats. My posts here often get hundreds of likes/shares on Twitter and Facebook, sometimes even thousands. (You can see that if you look at the share buttons after each post.) AVFM posts rarely get that many.
There’s some kind of power law going on with shares; posts of mine tend to get either a handful or several hundred. There aren’t many that score in between.
For example, the sandwich post this morning already has nearly 100 iikes/shares; this one is probably going to have a handful, since it’s mainly of interest to regular readers.
I’d totally volunteer for this position on WHTM’s crack staff. I mean I wouldn’t do anything other than pose heroically, but I still want the gig.
David Futrelle,
The Folks at a “Voice for Men” must be enraged!
I wonder how long it’ll be before the AVFM staff out number their visitors?
Who knew that being the fat, ugly pedoface of the LGBTHIV+ crowd could be such a profitable venture. Nice hustle, loser.
Wow. That is quite the nosedive at AVfM. Is this because contributors are leaving or are contributors leaving because of this? Or is Paul Elam driving them all away as he scrambles to save his website?
@boburry
Cats in the workplace can actually work.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemcneal/kitty-library#.arzBQGQVA
I’ve also often wondered about the actual size of AVFM’s readership. Just looking at the comment section it would lead you to believe the site has less than 20 regular readers..
It wouldn’t surprise me if very few people actually read stories and articles on AVFM. It’s just the same crap over and over again, and very little actual content. Sometimes there’s a giant TL;DR posted by Elam or one of the underlings. It really is a terrible website.
OHHHH how edgy. you sure showed us with that brilliant insult.I don’t how we’ll ever recover from it.
Someone needs their nappy changed and their name is anon. Could have at least given us a fun name to mock god dangit.
I’m surprised they weren’t all Attila Vinczer.
Not it! I already change too many diapers.