December 29, 2011

My Most Popular Posts of 2011

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All the cool kids are doing two things at the end of the year. The first is a top ten list of most popular posts. I managed to figure out how to find this information from our Google Analytics account, and I’m so proud of myself that I’m going to share the results. Here are my highest traffic posts of 2011:

Of course, this is all a bit random since a high-traffic post is usually just a marker that the MoJo powers-that-be highlighted it or that some other high-traffic blog happened to link to it. Unfortunately, my Google Analytics skillz are just barely good enough to generate this list, not good enough to figure out who my top referrers are. Maybe next year.

The second thing that seems to be the rage this year is a review of the past year’s posts to highlight my biggest mistakes. Unfortunately, my memory is nowhere near good enough to do this without help, and the Mother Jones archives aren’t set up to allow quick browsing of past posts. So this one is technologically out of reach for the moment. Feel free to nominate my worst boners in comments, though.

And now, just because this was so much fun, here are the next ten highest traffic posts of the year. Enjoy.

Altogether, this is a pretty wide ranging bunch of favorites. But if you’re looking for posts about the euromess, I’m afraid none of them made the top 20. Just not a very popular topic, apparently, and one where you really have to read lots of posts to get a good picture of what’s going on anyway. But for what it’s worth, here are the top two:

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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