Overnight, another milestone occurred. As of 6:20 AM PST, the WUWT hit counter shows:
Thank you readers, thank you moderators, thank you guest contributors.
Traffic has slowed from about half of what it was during the heady days of Climategate and Copenhagen in December, but I note that this is not unique to WUWT, as other climate blogs have also experienced similar drops since then. However I’m pleased to say that WUWT has kept many new readers since then.
Here’s an Alexa comparison of WUWT and four other commonly visited climate websites:
For my part, I’ve gone through a period of exhaustion and illness due to keeping up the pace a couple of weeks back, and for awhile, resorted to posting a lot of press releases rather than analysis and commentary.
This is why I value the work of our volunteer moderation team and our guest contributors so much. You have my heartfelt thanks for your continued efforts.
At the moment, I’m facing survival issues with my own business due to the downturn the economy has suffered, and I’ll be unable to put as much time into WUWT as I have in the past. Even the Google Ad words hits have dropped off as the economy cools. The economy has finally caught up to my little niche.
Given the situation, I hope readers will forgive me if I showcase a weather station product or two in the future as a way to gain revenue. WUWT gets more hits than my business does, so I’d be a fool not to take advantage of this traffic. I figure many WUWT readers might be interested in some of the weather products I’ve invented and offer. Most recently I’ve been working on a personal weather radar channel, a small box that you can add to the back of any flat screen LCD TV/monitor, that gives you 24/7 automated radar display for your location, and without any data fees. Look for that in a week or two.
Again, thank you all for making WUWT the most visited climate science blog in the world. – Anthony
Done! Thanks for the reminder, Leif!
Congratulations and many thanks Anthony, for the efforts that must be really exhausting. All the information (and entertainment!) provided here is for sure worth a donation from time to time.
Please keep it up!
Andrew, the moderators, and the contributors…
I can’t go a day without reading this website! Where and how do you get the time to keep updating it!?!? I have my own blog(s) but can never find the time to keep feeding it.
Thank you for doing what you do, and keep up the excellent work.
Best regards,
Kev.
Anthony, since your site has become skeptic central it would be prudent to use this to your advantage even more and let all the well known scientists that they are welcome to submit commentary whenever they like. I know Dr. Spencer and Dr. Pielke have regularly which is excellent but I would suggest adding more to the roster, like Dr. Michaels, Dr. Lomborg ect… Anyone who frequently writes Op-eds.
Hi Anthony,
Just sent a little more dosh in your direction – I hope things turn around. My husband calls himself a WUWT widower because I’ve been spending so much time at your site, so I owe you! I’ve had to cut back a bit because I desperately need to get some work done, but a daily visit is a necessity. Congratulations on 40 million hits! I’m really looking forward to the unveiling of your surface stations paper – bet the hits start coming thick and fast when that happens. I’d like to echo the desire of someone above who wants a WUWT mug – and I’d like a T-shirt, preferably with a picture of one of the or two of the worst surface stations (I know – hard to choose).
I am seventy years of age and in semi retirement in spain. I think that i am fairly well informed about mgw and i am appalled by what is happening in the world today. The worst part is the feeling of impotence and this is why i love to vist wuwt and climate audit. You are personably responsible for giving me hope that somehow or other, this hoax will be recognised for what it is. I find it frightening that the fraud has been exposed in so many ways and yet the waggon appears to be rolling inexorably on. Without my daily fix of wuwt to keep me going, i dread to think how depressed i might become. Very many thanks for all the hard work that you have put in and a special thanks to your family for allowing you to do it.
Please find a way to continue to provide your avid viewers with more of the same sober observations about the climate.
Just to add to your burden, I think that someone should address the nomeclature of the climate debate because i find it to be very strange.
I think that if the climate wasn’t changing, then we would really have a problem, so agreeing with climate change doesn’t really mean anything.
Just do what it takes to keep going Anthony, i am certain that that is the concensus view.
Congrats. This blog kills fascists. The mere mention of it drives some people to apoplexy. I’m so happy for your success. I hope the spirit this blog engenders is needed so very much in these troubling days. Three cheers for Anthony. Long live the ‘Climate King’.
Anthony – do whatever it takes! We appreciate all that you do!
In all seriousness WUWT, you should be pleased to see the extraordinary effect yours and like-minded people’s efforts have had. It is doubtful that without this site, the UK Science Museum would have changed their pitch to accept the skeptic’s (i.e. scientific method) view.
There have been many other triumphs – not the least in allowing vast numbers of people to witness the less than perfect work of alarmists. Admitting to their flaws is an achievement unheard of only a few years ago. Bracing. Congratulations AW, Charles, et al!!
Anthony and Moderators
Thank you all.
Take care of you and your families first.
To bad you couldn’t move your operations to AZ were the taxes are a little lower.
Tip Jar time.
Thanks again
IPCC/UN Choo-Choo has a “robust” server. For sale, Cheap. Peer reviewed. See AlGW for detales.
It was a dark and stormy night, and Choo-Choo’s MannJones “neutral” server was robusting the air conditioner, when Suzy busted open with …… sorry….. “don’t trust me” …..
…-
“UN climate change chief Rajendra Pachauri says sorry — and switches to neutral
The outspoken chairman of the UN’s climate change body is to adopt a neutral advisory role and has agreed to stop making statements demanding new taxes and other radical policies on cutting emissions.
In an interview with The Times, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, apologised for his organisation’s handling of complaints about errors in its report.
He also apologised for describing as “voodoo science” an Indian Government report which challenged the IPCC’s claims about the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers.
But Dr Pachauri, 70, rejected calls for his resignation and insisted he would remain as chairman until after publication of the IPCC’s next report in 2014.
He claimed he had the support of all the world’s governments and denied that, by remaining in post, he was undermining the IPCC’s chances of regaining credibility with the public.
“It is not correct to say there are people who don’t trust me,” he said.
He admitted it had been a mistake to give the impression, in many interviews, that he was advocating specific actions to cut emissions. Last year, he called for higher taxes on aviation and motoring, said people should eat less meat, and proposed that hotel rooms should have electricity meters to charge people extra for using air conditioning.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7078140.ece
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi
Kevin Cave (16:14:38)
Can’t say for the others, but I’m a contributor. Following my lifelong mantra of “Retire early … and often”, I am once again retired. I could get lured out of retirement by a good job offer in the North Bay (I’m living about an hour north of San Francisco) … or by increasing hunger …
At any rate, that’s how I have time. Anthony, on the other hand, has a job … and my intense admiration.
Ugh. s/Andrew/Anthony/
You knew what I meant 😉
*blush*
I may or may not still be a teensy bit drunk this morning *embarrassed grin*
””””Leif Svalgaard (11:01:21) : Folks, hit the DONATE button !”””’
Leif,
Done and I wish Anthony well.
PS – Coming to SF on Monday for a week. Tuition payment already in SF. Deliver it?
John
Anthony,
The emotional sense-of-life that I see at WUWT is cheerful hope. You give me hope, daily (actually hourly). : )
Please take care of yourself.
Hey, I do yardwork gratis : )
I drive by Chico weekly when I am in CA, on my way to flyfishing up on the Pit River near Burney. I could drop off some fresh trout on the way back. Nothing like native CA rainbows cooked up chinese style. My own secret recipe.
CHEER UP.
John
Anthony, Thanx to you and all for this gift.
I visit another site everyday called Heating Help, run by Dan Holohan. That is what I do, heating. The reason that I mention this, is because I find the two of you to be very similar with your passion to your subject. But the other reason I mention Heating Help, is because Dan is very good at marketing. Please check out his site for some ideas. I can tell you that no one that visit’s his site has any problem with his sales. We know that if we want to keep an excellent resource like this going, it has to be funded!
http://www.heatinghelp.com/
Anthony – you are running a brilliant site! Well done on the numbers, far more people are getting real news here than in the dreadful MSM.
On my screen I can see about about 5 x 10 inches of grey dead space on each side of your blog!!! Get it packed out with ads man – and get that revenue streaming in. I’m sure none of us would really mind as it’s the quality of your articles that we come here for.
PS: $20 in the tip jar.
COME ON PEOPLE! Support something VERY valuable… or lose it!
Anthony, you need to place a box Google ad in the top right corner where your award is now and a banner add above the first post as a permanent ad.
congratulations and thanks to A, guest posters, and mods for a great and stimulating site.
and i come just to read the amusing comments 😉
I have really enjoyed your website since I discovered it. Don’t even think about leaving us!
Too bad the warmers/alarmists don’t really tell it like it is. But, hey, you got ’em beat by a mile. Even if you slow down I’ll be checking in often.
Hi Anthony,
I started coming here around the emergence of Climategate, and visit WUWT pretty much every day. This is a terrific site and I hope that your health improves, your business perks up, and all else that could possibly go well with you does so.
I would not like to lose this site because I think it is doing a very important job. I don’t know about anyone else, but if there were some kind of app. on the page that displayed how much you’d ideally need to get in the way of income from the site every month, and if somehow that could be kept updated, we’d all have a visual summary of the situation that would act as incentive to contribute in some way. It needn’t be presented in monetary terms, but could be something symbolic like a thermometer, perhaps.
I didn’t know you might be struggling a bit in the current economic climate, but I feel concerned enough to suggest this idea and also to make a visit to the tip jar, which will be my first one, I am ashamed to say. I don’t personally feel this site would be any the less valuable if the number of postings per day dropped to half what it is now. I know that sometimes because there may be several posts in a day, I may skip over some of them. But if there were only one or two, I’d probably spend no less time here and get as much from it as at present.
I certainly don’t have any problems with your taking advantage of the site to generate some income. As you intimate, you’d be foolish not to. You have millions of visitors, and there must be a way to create an income stream.
Flogging weather station stuff is all very well, but as someone else has remarked, what counts is the *right* stuff. Why rely on Google if you could generate click-through income in other ways? My mind turns to the Amazon affiliate program: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
“aStore is a new Associates product that gives you the power to create a professional online store, in minutes and without the need for programming skills, that can be embedded within or linked to from your website.”
I don’t think you should be embarrassed to make any link to such a store prominent. You could populate the store with stuff that you think will interest your readers, or include all Amazon products if you wanted. I’m sure many of your readers buy stuff from Amazon, and if they knew buying by click-through from you would generate income to keep WUWT going, they’d be happy to do that.
Everyone knows you are dedicated to WUWT and a genuine person and aren’t primarily interested in making the site a commercial one per se. I don’t think you should be too worried about appearing brash in a good cause: everyone is on your side and wants to help. All power to your elbow, mate.
Anthony.
Brilliant work.
I reckon that if you summed the total hits of Real Climate, Joe Romm, Tamino etc., etc…, all together you still wouldn’t get close to the kind of numbers you are achieving here. And that says a heck of a lot to me.
I agree with those who say to hit the tip jar now and again. I’ve decided from now on to make a regular monthly contribution. The world needs WUWT!
As we say in Scotland: “Many a mickle mak’s a muckle”!
(A rough translation: “A lot of little things add up to a big thing”.)
Anthony,
As someone going through the process of setting up and running their own business I can empathise with the amount of time, effort and commitment it takes; so one question naturally springs to mind: “How the hell have you managed to do that and run WUWT?”. No wonder you’ve been tired and ill my dear chap, my best wishes to you and your family Anthony.
I’ve bunged a little something to the surfacestations project but I’d like to second/third/fourth those comments with regard to a sideline in WUWT merchandise. I realise it’s potentially more work but [a] you already have the business mechanisms in place for product selling, distribution and payment collection, [b] I think you’d get readers on this site to post designs in and [c] I think it could be a nice money spinner.
All the best, and that promise of a pint still stands!
Cheers
Mark
A well-deserved measure of your ethical and scientific standards, Anthony.
As a self-emplyed person, I too have found the current economic climate has not been great for attracting clients, so I sympathise with you. When I sell my next commission some of the proceeds will be spent on some gear from you. Then I can bore my wife and family even more than I do now about the weather and the climate 🙂
If this where a printed magazine or newspaper I would gladly run and pay for it