Thanks a million (and a half)
We apologise for running two horn-tooting stories in one week, but we’re blown away, we really are. Back at the start of August we predicted, in all sincerity, a big drop-off in pageviews for this site, because the June and July figures had been inflated by a hefty sprinkling of Rangers stories as that particular circus ricocheted between slapstick and farce on an hourly basis. We were linked from many dozens of different football sites and forums as far apart as Inverness and Portsmouth, and thousands of readers with little to no interest in Scottish politics arrived for a brief visit.
There was indeed a fall in August as we stopped covering the Great Govan Debacle, but a much tinier one than we’d anticipated – just 4% (and more on that in a moment). And this month, to our considerable amazement, we’ve not only recovered the losses but hit another record high: up over 15,000 to 265,203. We only broke the million-views barrier in August, and in September (albeit the 29th) we passed 1.5 million. Wow.
The numbers are all the more amazing given the significantly lower number of unique users generating them, now that (nearly) all the football fans are gone again. But the thing that caught our eye was how many more views each post is now getting.
In June, the 223K pageviews came from 57 posts, an average of 3913 views per post. In July, the other Rangers-heavy month, 54 posts brought in 261K views, or 4845 per post. Without something new breaking down Ibrox way every day to report, August saw significantly fewer posts (just 42, or more than 25% fewer than June), but with total views barely dropping the average shot up again, to 5945. And in September, 43 posts averaged a whopping 6168 views each.
All of this, of course, is thanks to you, our awesome readers. But we want more. And don’t worry, we’re not after your money this time. (Though any contributions to our running costs are always gratefully received, of course.)
As we’ve said several times before, this site will serve no useful purpose if it’s just a support group for the already-converted. So we need you to help. We need you to click the share buttons at the bottom of each post, to retweet, and to post links in places that aren’t necessarily friendly to the independence cause.
Between 20% and 25% of Scottish people still aren’t sure which way they’re going to vote in 2014. Another huge chunk want to vote for an option that isn’t going to be on the ballot paper, and so their votes will be up for grabs too. They need to know the facts, not the cynical, dishonest spin of the No camp and its friends in the media. It’s our birthday next month. You know where to send them.
These look like impressive figures, so best wishes and a big slap on the back! I have a small clarification though, as I am not particularly web-savvy!
Are the total figures unique views. I presume so, which makes them truly fantastic. My usual habit is to log on first thing to check out new stories or to catch up with comments. Then I will drop back 3/4 times during the day. Will each visit be a separate record, or is the log on from my computer the ‘single’ number for that day/article etc.?
I ask out of genuine interest. If each article is being watched by over six thousand viewers, then it is even more important that we maintain the right balance of humour, argument, and information.
Well done to Stu and his helpers, and to everyone who posts here in the right spirit.
Hail Alba
People appreciate quality. It’s a combination of the articles and the comments below the line which keep me coming back, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
It also helps when visitors are made to feel welcome (Newsnet Scotland please note).
hOLEBENDER
DITTO
Congratulations Rev and keep up the good work .
I think that the last 10 days are going to prove pivotal in the aspirations of the Scottish people to run their own affairs and it is sites like yours that manages to destroy the lies and blatant propaganda of the unionist media .
i dont use facebook or twitter but everytime I send an email , I put your site at the bottom of it .
Once again keep up the good work .
I was telling people about this site at the rally (in response to their enthusiastic endorsements of NNS, I should add). I have also linked here from my two rather esoteric blogs (nothing to do with politics) and also my LinkedIn page. By the way, I’m wearing my new WoS T-shirt in the office this morning (I cycle in so I have an excuse) and if anyone asks what we’re proposing to “take from here”, I will enlighten them. Anyway, good stuff Rev Stu and I will continue to spread the word.
Yes well done Stu , impressive figures. I love wings because as good as your articles are loads of information can be gleaned from the comments. The folk are all well informed and you can tell they are just normal punters putting their views in. NNS was a bit like this in the beginning, now it’s all a bit snooty, your feart to post on it now.
Well done mate and keep it up, you get information along with good humour, the way ordinary guys want it. You don’t have to be a political anorak to join in. brilliant.
Aplinal: if you click on the top graph, you’ll see a grey box at the left-hand side which details the stats in more depth. Basically, last month we had 12,000 different people visit the site, who on average read 22 pages each over the course of the month. I’m not actually entirely certain if a person reading the same post in the morning and then again in the evening (or the next day) counts as two views or one. I would imagine it counted as two but I’m not completely sure.
Thanks Rev. Stu. 12,000 different people is mighty impressive! As I said, you’re my first port of call each day, and keep up the fantastic work. It is a refreshing change form the usual stuff ‘out there’!
Cheers, Alex, that’s the aim. As I said a long time ago, the goal of WingsLand is “intelligent tabloid” – informed and detailed, but as easy-to-read, punchy and entertaining as we can make it.
I shared the site with a lad at work who asked me “Where can I get good accurate information on independence.” Thee was only one answer.
I also think, since a lot of your Rangers stories where fairly negative (Not your reporting, but their whole situation) a lot of football fans who may not share the same ideology came to the site due again to the accuracy and detail in the reports. I suspect more than just a few are of an independence slant anyway and have chosen to stay for the same reasons they came in the first place, accuracy and detail.
Also, I understand you are aiming to convert non-believers, but this siteis an excellent resource for independantistas who lack confindence in thier arguements or the ability to research them. Frankly, if Rev Stu says so it must be true! Saves us all a lot of time.
Keep it up!
Oh, and there’s also just the right amount of ireverence to make us laugh at the unionist without every really insulting them!
I too have more or less given up on NNS. If Peter Bell scoops an article I’ll maybe go and read it, and check out their front page while I’m there, but that”s about it. The “out-Scotsman the Scotsman” literary style gets tedious fairly quickly, and the articles are hard to link to for the uncommitted because it just reads like propaganda.
I have also been made to feel extremely unwelcome. I got quite annoyed about an article which was taking the BBC to task for inaccuracies, and made the mistake of assuming the writer was correct. I wasted an entire morning trying to follow up his figures only to find that he was wrong (of course there were no direct links to the source and the text was very oblique, as in, look it up for yourself), and had made pretty much the same mistake as the BBC but in the opposite direction.
I protested several times in the comments that the article was wrong, and was more or less ignored. A correction was made to the article, but the basic error remained unchanged. In exasperation I posted about the article in exactly the same terms as its author had attacked the BBC – I said it was lying. I immediately found myself on permanent pre-moderation.
There’s nobody you can email sensibly to point out an error like that. Their moderation standards are arbitrary and biassed. (I had a comment pass moderation which then disappeared, and when I queried that they said it was defamatory – it was no such thing. I have however seen blatant defamation stand uncorrected.) The entire site seems to have had a complete humour by-pass.
Then this post limitation rule came in. That’s just the end, really. This was all shortly after they’d had an article on Lockerbie, and if I’m an expert on anything, it’s that. You can’t have people posting mince from all sides, and hope to correct it on one post every half hour. Hell mend them, they can get by without me. That’s how they seem to want it.
I find the company here immeasurably more congenial. It may be an IQ thing, just to be elitist for a minute. And some of it is funny. (Mind you, I had cocoa coming down my nose when I read the last BBC Scotlandshire post, now we know where to go for a real belly-laugh.)
My WoS goodie-bag showed up this morning, and I’m extremely pleased with the contents. I’m using the mouse mat already, because I really needed a new one (NWO Kitty was worn out). By the way, the logo on the mouse mat is mauve. But it’s OK. Everything else is perfect.
We have a rule at work about not wearing political or football favours. I’m waiting to see how long it takes someone to figure out “All our base – will belong to us”. Or even “we’ll take it – from here”. I give them about two years. (My favourite, “A hundred of us – remain alive” is probably not subtle enough for day-to-day use.)
Keep it up, RevStu!
Well done Stu!
It’s people like you who are greatly contributing to a YES vote, by producing accurate information to counter the biased MSM.
p.s. well done on saturday (from a hibby) the better team won.
Im one of the refugees from NNS Rev Stu so just want to concur with all that holebender said further up the thread.
I suspect im one of the flock at the rally that Major Bloodnok is speaking about and so nodded me in this direction.
I think you strike the right balance of humour and reporting of the news as it is without boring us half to death in the process so keep it up. This site and the informative comments is my first port of call and will continue to be so cutting through and exposing the lies and misinformation of the Unionist side. Although not on facebook or twitter either, i will do my best to send this link and get the word out to others around me in my quest to free my country from the straightjacket and suffocation of Westminster rule.
YES!
Sorry to break this to you Rev but I spend my days accessing your site from every PC possible; internet cafes, work PCs, mates houses, friends ayepads and the like. I’m clocking up 11,000 unique visits a month at the moment. Only getting about 2 hours sleep a night though.
“I have also been made to feel extremely unwelcome.”
I don’t have favourite commenters or anything, but I have to say that any site making someone as informed and articulate as you feel unwelcome, Morag, is a site that’s screwing up very badly indeed.
“Sorry to break this to you Rev but I spend my days accessing your site from every PC possible; internet cafes, work PCs, mates houses, friends ayepads and the like. I’m clocking up 11,000 unique visits a month at the moment. Only getting about 2 hours sleep a night though.”
Two whole hours? Lightweight! Put some effort into it, laddie!
You’ve done well with the site. It shows in the results and you deserve the odd pat on the back, so feel free to blow your own trumpet this time. 😉 I’d recommend this place for nationalist reading or for those on the fence on the referendum too. It’d probably be my first suggestion on any list.
Keep up the good work.
Best indy blog on the net.
I suppose more than one peson may read each print copy of a newspaper. At the same time, one online reader is quite likely to have two PC points of access. So you have to get a fair bit higher than newspaper circulation figures for readership to be really comparable. Still, doing well.
I access from both my office and my home PC, but both of these immediately recognise me as “Morag” when I log on to this site, so I don’t know if that counts as one person or two.
Although I glance at a lot of Scottish politics blogs of an evening, this is the only one I have in my office computer favourites list, and the only one I look at frequently during the day.
NNS has what seems to be a good article up at the moment about this report.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourbeeb/oliver-huitson/how-bbc-betrayed-nhs-exclusive-report-on-two-years-of-censorship-and-distorti
How the BBC betrayed the NHS: an exclusive report on two years of censorship and distortion
The trouble is, their articles are so skewed all the time, that I can’t trust it to be an impartial assessment of what the report is actually saying.
Rev, I don’t know whether to congratulate you or not. Thanks to your superb writing and the great posts from all the others, I have managed to completely lose the last weekend (and not just on that strange porn site either).
By the way, at the rally in Edinburgh I was standing one step down from 3 guys who were having a discussion about sites and two of the guys were advising the third guy to try Wings. I wonder if I was standing beside any of you and didn’t know it!
I do try to spread the word, but think I can do it better with a WOS bag. I did consider Scott Minto’s suggestion of a thong, but decided a thong saying “we’ll take it from here” was just asking for trouble, so a bag it is! And, on reflection, Congratulations! You deserve it.
Always an interesting site !
occasionally we slip up too BUT WE DO APOLOGISE IF WE GET IT WRONG. – unlike the propaganda and lies put by the Labour, Tory and Libdem Spin doctors.
Take note ! It is not ‘spin classed as spin’ anymore – just lies now.
You’ve provided a much needed resource, Rev. The comments section shows that there are people who want to talk about many of the aspects of the current political situation and, of course, the future of the country.
There are a number of indy blogs but, for one reason or another, they post sporadically. I’ve often thought it’d be a good idea if they could come together on the one site to reach a wider audience and encourage debate.
Just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of support. Like other people I find your balance of humour and ‘cut through the bullshit’ analysis really helpful and entertaining. I’m sure I’m not alone in cross-checking stories on other sites but I relish coming to WoS to see what your take on it is.
You know, I chickened again. I went into the newsagent to pay my weekly newspaper bill, and I was going to cancel the Herald, and yet again I walked out the door without doing it. Getting the Herald delivered every morning was one of the things I looked forward to when I realised I was going to be moving back to Scotland. I like the newsagent and don’t want to take business away from him.
SOMEBODY SUPPLY ME WITH A BIT OF BACKBONE!!
http://wingsland.podgamer.com/the-grave-of-journalism/
?
To keep your newsagent happy you could always replace it with a subscription to something with a bit more integrity, like Viz.
Please. Dead and rotting horses is way too much like work.
You know I just remembered what I posted that got modded off NNS for being “defamatory”.
I said that Sally Magnusson was just aboot greetin as she watched the 2011 election results come in, live on air.
Gonnae mod that off here, then? 😉
(I vaguely remember that saying I’d read somewhere that Kezia Dugdale was Fifi la Bon Bon didn’t go down too well either, although I note they’re all dicussing that over at CiF at the moment without censure.)
… but Sally was just aboot greetin! How can the truth be defamatory?
Could it be that the “swivel eyed” moderation policy elsewhere is having a knock on effect?
Congratulations on an EXCELLENT site Stu.
Your work rate is amazing and you are ALWAYS on the money with your views.
Thanks for producing such a high status site.
Can I just add that I’m glad Stu permits the humour on here. I’m one who knows nothing about nothing, as anyone who reads my posts will testify to and so am more than grateful to Stu for permitting my version of humour on his site. 😆
Morag, Firstly can I, as a long standing member of the NNS “naughty step club” welcome you into the ever growing club. 😀
Secondly, don’t worry about getting some back bone, you already have that en masse. If your ever worried about “lack of back bone” just remember “The Darkened Room” is ALWAYS open! 😆
I’m another NNS refugee, although I still post there sometimes. Like many others I’m permanently in pre-mod, so anything I write usually arrives on screen 8 hours later (I know, what’s the point of continuing)
I wrote something negative about a football team and it wasn’t liked – that’ll learn me..
Anyway, I find these articles most enlightening and I recognise many monikers from the NNS site who contributed quality information, such as Scottish Skier and his ‘poll’ skills, so I find myself visiting this site more and more often.
Morag the Herald addict – I just weened my old mum off the hootsman after 40 years because I found a website where she can view obituaries (seems to be the only reason many older people buy the rag, births/deaths/marriages) and I also got her into the habit of using the computer for news, so although the habit of picking the paper off the mat in the mornings hasn’t been replaced, she has alternatives.
I also told her to spend the money she saves on another magazine, so she subscribes to a gardening publication now.
I rarely buy newspapers at all anymore. I check the headlines in the Herald on-line to see if there’s anything interesting, but usually I can’t get much more than a couple of sentences, so I scan the posts instead. I don’t comment much there as they’ve deleted my posts several times and I don’t know why. Also, I got fed up with the stupidity of Michael McKeown and Terry Kelly – just boring. I was interested in the articles on same sex marriage, then became fascinated with some of the bizarre religious comments, then it just got old. I think the problem is, I just don’t appreciate the lazy and manipulative efforts of Gardham, Gordon and Hutcheon. I sometimes like McWhirter and Bell, but my loyalty vote remains with the great Tom Shields. First port of call these days is Wings and Scoop It and I get NNS updates in case there’s anything by Paul Kavanaugh’s wonderful dug.
Oh, Paul Kavanagh is wonderful!
The Herald comments are weird. I’ve had a lot of comments fail to appear or edited for spin too. Once upon a time if you wrote a letter to the dead-tree paper, and it was published, any editing was only for style, or occasionally for length if you’d been over-garrulous. I had a lot of letters published in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently though, anything I’ve had published that way has been severely edited for spin, which stopped me writing at all. I thought the online comments would be different, but they’re not. Except, McKeown seems to get away with saying anything he likes. I seldom comment online now.
A few years ago, cybernats hailed Paul Hutcheon as their hero. It was obvious listening to him on TV though that he just hates all politicians, and he was going to get fed up with putting the boot into Labour eventually. He doesn’t care what he writes so long as it’s sensational and might sell papers.
The coverage of the windfarms thing was appalling. The numbers on the march thing was very dishonest, too. They put up an article in the evening of the 22nd, with a photo of the Union flag protest and belittling the numbers attending using the 5,000 estimate. One poster came on and said, hang on a minute, the organisers were expecting 7,000 and it’s really obvious they got more than they were expecting. (I’m not sure they were expecting that many, because other sources said they’d estimated 2,000 to 5,000 to the police. Maybe 7,000 was the “wildest dreams” estimate.)
The Herald went right on ignoring the organisers saying they’d actually counted and there were 9,500 there, and ignored the actual intent of that post. When the paper came out the following morning the article had gleefully seized on the anonymous comment saying 7,000 had been expected to announce that the march had been a severe disappointment because it attracted 2,000 fewer than were expected.
This isn’t reporting, it’s propaganda.
@ Morag
Totally agree – it’s not reporting, it’s not opinion – “propoganda” is exactly the word I would use too.
I commented on one of Hutcheon’s articles – can’t remember what it was, but it was a total non-story and I queried what he was doing as he advertises himself as being a political investigator and this non-story was neither political nor investigatory. It wasn’t up for long before they deleted it. I did something similar with a Marcus Gardham article and it disappeared quick fast too.
I’m impressed you got letters printed in the Herald, by the way. I thought if you weren’t named Marr, Clayton or Mann you wouldn’t stand a chance.
I also got put on the NNS naughty step just for telling Maitland Mackie to f*** **f.
Yes, that’s right, f*** **f!
On this site I can tell Maitland Mackie to Fuck Off!
So thanks for that Stu.
And thanks for a fuckin brilliant site!
I think it’s reasonable for a web site to ban swearing if it wants to. And to pre-moderate posters that won’t abide by that rule. So you’re not going to get too much sympathy from me on that one.
RevStu understands that judiciously sparing use of expletives can be an effective rhetorical device, so he permits it. If he didn’t, I’d respect his wishes.
Morag,
I am engaged in a debate with a dead sheep, sorry Terry Kelly, and the desire to swear is strong in this one.
Just saying………