Welcome, ladies and gentlemen of the international nature blogging community. I’m pleased and honored to deliver to you today the first State of the Nature Blog Network address.
Friends and colleagues, the state of the Nature Blog Network is strong!
I started the Nature Blog Network in January 2008 with zero members, well, one actually since 10,000 Birds was a sure bet to join! Yet, at the end of October 2008, we had 526 members. That level of growth, in the complete absence of paid advertising, is cause for great celebration. Even more encouraging is the steady addition of 5 or 10 more qualified blogs a week.
And yet, there are so many more of us out there. I can think of a few (very few) notable nature blogs that haven’t joined yet and see that certain categories are woefully underrepresented. For example, HIKING & OUTDOORS bloggers have yet to embrace the NBN as a group, even though outdoors is where the nature is.
The count of 526 NBN members is itself misleading. By my rough calculations, only 400 or so of that number are actually active and have their tracking code installed. Remember that the only way to have your site traffic, which determines your placement on the toplist, counted is to install the code you receive upon acceptance to the NBN. If you’re unsure how to do this, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below.
I’m sure many of you will be interested to know how many readers the collective blogs of the Nature Blog Network reach. Would you believe that on the last day of October 2008 we served approximately 38,758 unique page views and 62,800 total page views?
How about that in the entire month of October 2008, those blogs on the NBN who had installed their tracking code delivered roughly 1,195,957 unique and 1,994,271 total page views? This was a considerable increase over the September 2008 tally of 1,099,047 unique and 1,832,914 total page views.
Last but not least, it may interest you to know that since the inception of the NBN, members have served a total of approximately 8,443,075 unique and 14,180,334 total page views. Wow, that is a lot of readers!
Collectively, we reach a broad and deep audience. Sure, very often we’re talking among ourselves rather than to the world at large. Yet, whatever your readership, whatever your constituency, you are part of a group of micropublishers that share at least some traits and interests with you. If we can find our common cause and promote out interests to xxx readers a week or more, we can realize the potential inherent in this type of network. That, to me, is extremely exciting.
