Every year about this time, I escape from either work or family obligations to thank everyone for reading, and of course navel gaze a little, reporting back what happened in the blog in the past year. Also, I have a few upcoming changes to report.
Readership
For the first few years of the blog, readership grew. the last three years have stayed pretty steady, at about 1.1 million page views a year, or about 3000 a day. This seems like a ridiculous amount even to me. It might help to know that a large chunk of these are 3-second visits. So there are a lot of people coming through from Twitter or Google search and saying, “this is definitely not what I wanted to read”. So the world seems a little more sensible now.
Even so, a lot of you stay and read and come back, and thank you for that. The landscape of readers has changed a lot in the last couple of years, however. Most people come to the blog from Twitter or Facebook or Google search, and a smaller and smaller number are regular readers who come regularly by their browser or RSS feed reader.
I’m guessing this reflects a very general and surprisingly rapid change in how people consume online news and opinion, partly because of the huge increase in the number of voices. It certainly reflects my own shift as a consumer. I think it means I have a much broader but less regular readership than before.
I think it also reflects the fact that, after reading the same blog for a few years, people get tired of it. Tyler Cowen said this to me once, and I didn’t believe it at the time. But I’ve found I typically tire of a blog after shorter and shorter periods now, and follow very few people regularly.
Most-read posts of 2014
Excluding the home page, or fixed pages like “About me” and my research page, here were the most viewed posts of 2014. Almost all were pre-2014 posts:
When are you too old for a PhD?
10 things I tell undergraduates
Frequently asked questions on PhD applications
Students: How to email to your Professor, employer, and professional peers
The problem with graduate degrees in international affairs and development?
Getting a job in international development
The standing desk: I am a convert
What MA, MPA, or MIA program is for you?
What The Economist should have read before suggesting that US slavery wasn’t always so bad
Which is for you: MPA, MPA/ID, or PhD?
Number 1 had almost 40,000 views, which is kind of nuts. There’s clearly a lot of PhD angst out there.
The fact that these are all old advice posts is kind of boring, though. The most read new posts were the following:
My comments on the Economist’s terrible slavery post
My grading of the Bill and Melinda Gates letter
What happens when a very good political science journal checks the statistical code of its submissions?
Are cash transfers overrated?
My post on graduate advising that rubbed some people the wrong way
And the best political science syllabus ever?
Referrals and searches
To the extent people come from other blogs, it’s mostly from Marginal Revolution and The Economist’s View. So thanks to them. But a majority now come from Google searches.
The most common searches are always interesting. I continue to get a lot from “should i be an accountant” because of this post, and also “average age of phd student” because of the most read post, above. “Chris Blattman wife” used to be a common search term, but now it’s gone, perhaps because I turned 40 and am no longer so sexy to the stalkers. Sigh.
Do I make money off of you?
I continue to say no to ads, because it feels icky. And there are no sponsored posts or instances where I get free products for a review. In short, I don’t blog for the money.
That said, somewhat by accident, this year the blog started to make real money. Whenever I blog a book or music I like, I usually link to the relevant Amazon page (if there is one). In the interest of full disclosure, Amazon gives referrers a percentage when this happens. This year, almost 10,000 of you clicked on one of the Amazon links, you bought 3,000 items for about $85,000 total (as it happens, mostly stuff I didn’t link to), and so Amazon gave me almost $6,000.
So, the blog is now at the point where I have a financial incentive to link to books and related stuff. What does this mean for my reviews? Not much I think. I only link to about a half or a third of the books I read, since I don’t bother mentioning stuff I didn’t like or find provocative. But it means I am more likely to blog books than I was before. Probably the quality margin is now lower. So I’m trying to be clear what I loved versus just liked.
Thus, in this small way, you are helping me send my children to a truly wonderful albeit politically correct Manhattan daycare, where they learn to sing “baa baa white sheep” in addition to “baa baa black sheep”. The world is mad.
Upcoming changes
There will be two small ones. One is that I’d like to donate ad space to charities I particularly like, so you may see an ad in the near future. It’s given for free.
The second is that I may try to highlight the Amazon book recommendations with a widget in the sidebar. Because, let’s be honest, baa baa white sheep ain’t cheap, especially in Manhattan.
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