600,000

On 19 June the blog reached 500,000 and just a moment ago, 102 days later, it achieved 600,000. I am aware that most citizens will continue with their post-Sunday lunch nap, but I judge that my select group of readers will at least raise one eyebrow before returning to their even more serious reading. The total is far higher than I conceived possible when I began the blog two years and 10 months ago, when I felt lucky if I got 20 readers a day. The current daily page-view rate is roughly a thousand.

 

The snapshot of the past month shows a pronounced ISIR conference peak, and the most popular posts in that period are all about the conference.

The all-time greats remain the familiar old posts, with a few additions in the lower ranks:

 

Where do readers come from?

 

Readers are almost 6 times more likely to be in the US than the UK. The peak age for readers is 18-35 range, going down gradually to age 65+. So, the message is getting through to those who have most of their working life ahead of them, and might make decisions based on intelligence results. Readers are interested in science, news and politics. In terms of how they get to the blog, last month 4080 visitors came directly (loyal established readers?)  3912 through social media (loyal plus new readers?)  2822 through “organic search” (searchers for knowledge?) and  2634 through referral (new readers willing to admit they are searching for knowledge?).

There is a tendency for the longer essays to get correspondingly longer reading times, suggesting readers stick with the content. The item on whether Asians were bright but lacking in curiosity made people read for 6 minutes, whilst shorter conference announcements got half that duration of attention, all consistent with visitors being real readers.

Twitter is my hyper-active front-runner for the slower meditative page-turners of my blog. Precis is good for the mind. I have a few more followers (now at 1,262) which is welcome. Of course, I want the right sort of followers: those who contribute to knowledge, even when they just ask questions. I tweet sparingly (on average 3 or 4 a day) and virtually always only about blog posts or published work. I get 107 retweets per 100 tweets, and almost always respond to tweets with further answers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Request: Could I ask university teachers and researchers to select one of their students, and get them to critique one of my posts, or to take up one of the suggestions for further research? It would be good to have more psychology student readers (not that I know how many of my readers are in that category) and I think that will come if psychology teachers get their students to have a look at the blog.

If you have any suggestions for getting more blog readers please let me know.

The Donate button is down on the bottom right. Just one gentle press does the trick. $35 buys readership of a pay-walled paper (this is just a price guideline) $20 buys a printer ink cartridge, $15 any number of coloured pencils. What more do I need, other than to keep up my enthusiasm, secure in the knowledge my readers are changing the world?