BVBL Is #1 In Northern Virginia
By Greg L | 22 August 2007 | Virginia Politics, Blogs | 18 Comments
It’s official. BVBL is the big dog in Northern Virginia. From the regional blog traffic analysis appearing on NLS this morning:
Northern Virginia
BVBL: 610 Readers a Day (36.0%)
NLS: 572 Readers a Day (33.8%)
RK: 511 Readers a Day (30.2%)
How in the heck did BVBL become the largest blog in Northern Virginia?
The answer I’m certain is forthcoming on NLS, but I’m pretty sure has to do with the huge proportion of Prince William County residents who are now reading blogs, and BVBL in particular. The area is poorly served by local newspapers, which don’t cover local politics in any meaningful detail, and the regional newspapers and television stations rarely cover anything more than the most significant stories which folks know about anyways. For those folks wanting to understand what’s going on in local politics, there’s one source of information that is focused on this need, and that is BVBL.
If you live in Fairfax, there’s plenty of local political coverage, and the area gets plenty of attention from the Washington Post, the Washington Times and the area’s television stations. Loudoun has competing media outlets as well. But who is competing with the Manassas Journal Messenger? No one. The Potomac News, which is supposed to cover Prince William County is nothing more than a repackaging of the content and editorials of the Manassas Journal-Messenger. While the Gainesville Times competes decently in one portion of Prince William County, it’s a weekly newspaper, and folks these days don’t want to wait a day, much less a week to find out what’s going on.
There will certainly be a discussion about whether blogs that focus on their geographic area are the new model for political blogs, shifting from those that have a statewide or national focus. There may be some merit to that perspective, although the circumstances in Prince William are somewhat unique which makes a broader discussion about this a little difficult.
There’s also effort. I work darned hard at this. Trying to put out five or more stories a day, which aren’t simply commentary, but actually involve some research and reporting, is a lot of work, and having fresh content does a lot to draw and retain readers. Not too many blogs are generating that amount of content, and those that consistently do also happen to be the ones generating the volume of hourly traffic that makes Ben Tribbet’s analysis possible.
Now if only this were as financially rewarding as the effort required to pull this off…
UPDATE: NLS now has the breakdown by locality in Northern Virginia. Here’s your answer:
Prince William County/Manassas and Manassas Park City
BVBL: 394 Readers a Day (74.8%)
NLS: 76 Readers a Day (14.4%)
RK: 57 Readers a Day (10.8%)
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18 Comments
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Because the news (in all forms) is liberal. This blog (and guys like Lou Dobbs) put political correctness aside so that the truth can be told. Plain and simple.
Congrats! Reminder anyone who would like to cancel their subscription to The Manassas Journal Messenger or other rag PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING YOUR REFUND TO BVBL OR HELP SAVE MANASAS, thank you Greg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also send some of those refunds to the Tom Tancredo campaign!
http://www.americanpatrol.com/
Speaking of Tom…watch the video of him regarding santuary cities!
At BVBLs level the financial rewards will come, if you want it. I heard of a Virginia political blog that sold for low six figures, and it was probably not as widely read as BVBL.
Way to go Greg!! We shouldn’t have to settle for just the “Journal Mess” and “Pot News”. Keep up the great work!!
Question: How do they come up with the figure of how many readers a day? By subscription?
BVBL is also read by Congressmen in New York, political interest groups in Illinois, California, Oregon, Maryland and other states.
Greg - you have set the bar high as far as the conduct and standars of Blogs of which you have every right to be proud. Keep up the good work and I will ALWAYS be in your corner, my friend. It is an honor to know you.
Thanks Greg. You’ve been the catalyst.
Greg,
Congratulations. You have done amazing work with this blog. Your coverage of local politics rivals any other source, but the investigative reporting you have done in Manassas Park really sets you apart. Now if you could just get paid for this.
The statistics I understand were obtained from sitemeter, and the figures represent the traffic over a period of probably two hours. I think multiple samples were taken at different times, since the traffic patterns change when folks come home from work in the evening.
Sitemeter doesn’t register traffic for those users who have image loading turned off, and in some cases when folks disable javascript. It also filters out what it thinks may be crawlers and bots, so the statistics from my servers are significantly greater than what sitemeter reports. For head-to-head comparisons, it’s not bad though, since it discounts the same traffic (or fails to register it) for everyone.
Greg,
You have done a fantastic job. If you ever start a newspaper, you will put MJM out of business for good. I know you are probably too busy for that but I can dream can’t I.
“How in the heck did BVBL become the largest blog in Northern Virginia?”
I’ll bet I know two blog-failures who are asking the same question… one who is banned, and the other who can’t spell and has an affinity for Star Wars.
Your blog is the largest in NV because you provide information that we need and is not going to be provided by the press. And I appreciate the insight from so many of the commenters. Thanks!
Good one “Batson”!!!!
BVBL kicks ass, that’s why!
Hey, some credit to the original BVBL, may he slumber in peace. Nothing against the mad Ukrainian, but he did inherit the blog, ya know. Having vanquished poor confused Chapman, the original BVBL (or OBVBL, as he is known in the ‘hood) assumed his/her place in Valhalla. But maybe, when the need is great, OBVBL will return…………
It is my fondest wish that at some point he will.
If you’re out there, my old friend, whenever you want to come back, the BVBL identity has been deliberately reserved for your use.