This weekend should see the 25 millionth page view for the iSteve family of web pages, at least since I installed a counter in December 2002. That number represents primarily my blog, plus some old stuff by me such as UPI, National Post, and National Review articles that I archive on my iSteve.com website. That figure doesn't include my articles for VDARE, Taki's Magazine, The American Conservative and so forth.
Perhaps the peak month was May of this year at 431,869 page views.
I want to thank you all for all the clicking.
Posts
68 comments:
Wow. That's a lot of clicks. Congrats. You are a great thinker and writer, Steve.
As much as I love my Ipod and respect what Jobs did, Isteve has done a lot more for me over the last 10 years.
Did you talk about Sex or the Jews in May?
Just curious.
This also doesn't include the people who read you through Google Reader. The said Reader tells me that 1,463 people have subscribed to you through it.
25M page views?! your virtual carbon footprint is TOO BIG! (~_^)
srsly, that's awesome. congrats! (^_^)
Yeah, but it's the same 100 people that opened your webpage 250,000 times in 9 years. I hardly consider that an accomplishment.
"Yeah, but it's the same 100 people that opened your webpage 250,000 times in 9 years. I hardly consider that an accomplishment."
He's so interesting, you have to go back a quarter-million times!
I think that'd be a BIGGER success.
I read this blog obsessively because I am fascinated with evil, and the things Steve Sailer writes are so breathtakingly evil, dishonest and wrongheaded I just cannot look away.
WattsUpWithThat is closing in on 93,000,000 page views, and should reach 100,000,000 page views a little after the new year.
"I read this blog obsessively because I am fascinated with evil, and the things Steve Sailer writes are so breathtakingly evil, dishonest and wrongheaded I just cannot look away."
Can you repost your comment? The part where you give examples got cut off.
"I read this blog obsessively because I am fascinated with evil, and the things Steve Sailer writes are so breathtakingly evil, dishonest and wrongheaded I just cannot look away."
If you are reading, it's for you.
"Did you talk about Sex or the Jews in May?"
Do Jews really rank up there with sex?
I like evil too, but it's not why I read the blog. Steve's point about movie theaters dying out after urban crime + home A/C kept the women folk away has been frequently used by moi in social brinksmanship.
For some reason, I found accessing iSteve very difficult a few days ago.
"Do Jews really rank up there with sex?"
All depends on how you select your sex partners.
"As much as I love my Ipod and respect what Jobs did, Isteve has done a lot more for me over the last 10 years."
I'm still trying to figure out why I read iSteve. Frankly, it hasn't benefited me in any way.
I have been reading iSteve pretty much daily since mid-2002. So I probably account for around 5-10k of those hits. I seem to recall you once complaining about only getting a few hundred hits a day - looks like traffic's picked up a bit.
Got a little over 100,000 page views during the last week.
Every morning I check Google news and then Steve Sailer for items that will never be emphasized elsewhere.
I think Steve is really Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in '65. Free Speech was useful back then for the Left to eat away at the Establishment, now the Left is the Establishment and Free Speech has a different face, an ugly rat face that needs to be shushed into the corners of the journalistic world. Steve lets the rat of Free Speech out from under the wainscoting. Status conscious conformists of the New Establishment can't stand that irritating squeaking in the background.
Ou sont le Mario Savios d'anton?
Where are the Mario Savios of yesteryear?
I must be the 25 millionth visitor - this would explain the email for a free iPod I got!
Congrats Steve!
Thanks to Mr.Sailer for all the good work! I sent him a bit of cash by Paypal for the valuable service he provides as I check in here day after day. The cumulative effect of reading Steve's site is that the political and social scene in the USA starts to make some kind of crazy sense. Think about how rare a gift that is!
If you had a dime for every click...
Steve is the Limbaugh of the internet, except that he's just about always right, and much deeper. No, that's not good enough. He's more like a modern Mencken. Or, better, he's to people nerds what Asimov was to science nerds. Those of us who appreciate Steve should do our best to spread the word and get him more and better clicks. Lord knows I do.
You're welcome and thank you.
Or as you-know-who would say:
Your welcome and thank-you.
I know Steve has explained why he will not spend a penny or a minute to update the blog design, but here is an argument why he is wrong.
I first discovered iSteve through Google. Of course, if you search for certain topics he is the first or only hit. The first ten times I got a hit, I assumed he was just some crank on the internet. After all, that's what the design makes it look like. A marketing person should know that. Furthermore, I was appalled and horrified by the point of view. I had a completely NY Times/ liberal arts college / SWPL / neocon view of the world. I was horrified that someone was allowed to think these thoughts.
But over time, the sheer geniality, reasonableness, and self-deprecating nature of the writing started to have an effect, along with the important point that Steve relies on facts, logic, and empirically testable propositions to make his points. It became hard not to notice that most opposition to Steveism is of the "Point and Splutter" variety, and that Diversityism has all the characteristics of a pious theology for atheists.
Now I'm a dedicated iSteve reader and link to his pieces in the comments sections of as many MSM sites as I can. But, I would argue, the design of the site is still a big problem. It makes a really bad first impression. It gives Googlers another reason to ignore it. "This is just some racist crank on the internet!"
So here's my proposal. Steve should set up a special fund to take donations solely for the purpose of improving the design and presentation of his writing. I would donate to that. It doesn't cost that much to have a slick, professional-looking site. Have you seen the websites of the SPLC, ACLU? There's no reason Steve can't look that good.
It should also cover exploration beyond the blog format. "Blog" screams "amateur." How about repackaging some of the themes in e-book format? Look at how well Tyler Cowen did with "The Great Stagnation." A few well-packaged, well-designed e-books (or print-on-demand) could burn up the charts on Amazon. I'd buy them. I have a proposal for the first title: a poke in the eye to the NYT series of the same title. "How Race Is Lived In America." I predict it would sell very well. Or, "The Handbook of Race In America." You might find students citing it in their course assignments. Or "1,001 Surprising Facts About Race In America." Everyone loves list books.
So, Steve, for the next 25M views, I hope you turn your attention to design and marketing. See how much people will give to support that. I think it could take your ideas a lot farther.
So roughly 10,000 readers for your average post! That's equivalent to the circulation what used to be called a "little magazine" -- with, in your case, hopefully, an unusually discerning and influential readership.
Only time will tell the extent to which your journalism is modifying elite thinking on the kinds of issues you write about, both in this country and overseas.
I wish you continuing success and real satisfaction from the exercise of your talent.
I want to thank you for being so clickable. Would "clickabile" be a good pseudo-Italian word for it?
What can I say?
There are a lot of aggrieved White cranks out there. This is their pornography.
Conatus,
great comparison
Anonymous said,
"Furthermore, I was appalled and horrified by the point of view. I had a completely NY Times/ liberal arts college / SWPL / neocon view of the world. I was horrified that someone was allowed to think these thoughts.
"But over time, the sheer geniality, reasonableness, and self-deprecating nature of the writing started to have an effect, along with the important point that Steve relies on facts, logic, and empirically testable propositions to make his points."
Feeling as you did (having a NYTimes, lib point of view), it's to your credit you kept coming back. I suspect the reason you kept coming back was that lying under the surface of your NYTimes points of view were gnawing doubts about what you had been fed over the years in college and what you and your friends learned to mouth, and you found Steve, a man who dared put to paper (to a computer screen actually) what your "lying" eyes had been trying to tell you.
Please never muck up your website with awful graphics, Steve. I like it plain and with the easy links on the side.
Oh, that's the other thing. I love the links. Thanks to you, other blogs get a lot of traffic too.
"Perhaps the peak month was May of this year at 431,869 page views."
I think half of that was by Whiskey.
"I know Steve has explained why he will not spend a penny or a minute to update the blog design, but here is an argument why he is wrong."
You can add lots of cool visuals for free. Just play with the template design tools.
"But over time, the sheer geniality, reasonableness, and self-deprecating nature of the writing started to have an effect, along with the important point that Steve relies on facts, logic, and empirically testable propositions to make his points... But, I would argue, the design of the site is still a big problem. It makes a really bad first impression."
But the unassumingness of the blog design is integral to the 'geniality' and 'reasonableness'.
It's like Sailer is saying he's a waspy essentialist who doesn't like to 'sauce it up'. He's a meat-and-potatoes man, and he wants people to notice the flavors of the actual thing than have them masked by matters of style, pizzazz, and fashion.
So, in a way, it makes sense that Sailer doesn't and shouldn't go for flamboyance.
Congrats, iSteve is an oasis of sanity (and I say this as another person converted by iSteve from a somewhat SWPLian viewpoint).
Curious, haw your viewership continuously accelerated over the years? Has it mostly accelerated more recently?
OT:
Race debate over Silicon Valley documentary heats up on Twitter
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/race-debate-over-silicon-valley-documentary-heats-up-on-twitter/2011/10/12/gIQAfzwBQM_blog.html?hpid=z12
Mr. Sailer,
Thank you! I try and check out your blog every day and have immensely enjoyed your work. Please keep on doing what you do.
RGM
Congratulations Mr. Sailer.
Congratulations - surely an appropriate time for the story of Tweeter the parrakeet.
@Baloo:
I agree100% I too spread the word except that merely mentioning Steve Sailer got me banned/deleted and harangued as a "troll" on FREEREPUBLIC.com
ELVISNIXON instantly became persona non grata and all evidence of my existence erased in double quick stalinist style.
Apparently they object to "The Sailer Strategy"
Anon concerned with Steve's site design:
Probably the most encouraging thing any of us can hear is that someone formerly blinded by NYT-think could reach your place. Tell us more about yourself. How old are you? If you're only recently out of college, how likely is it that others your age might experience the same? What's the real feeling among lib-arts grads about "diversity" genuflection? What happened to the reflexive skepticism of youth (i.e. why listen to a 63-year old Al Gore)?
Peter Frost, at Bringing Reproductive Maturity into the Picture or something.
This article has relevance to family formation and reproductive success.
It points out that in Europe, because of the lack of access to land, there had likely been selection for later family formation and delayed reproduction.
This changed in the new world, with Europeans facing selection for earlier age-at-first-reproduction (AFR) and thus higher fertility for those with genes for earlier AFR.
I think this is relevant to Steve's Red-State/Blue-State argument and family formation.
Perhaps those in the elites who put an emphasis on inviting the world do so to allow them to maintain electability (and thus keep their snouts in the public trough) in the face of those who can out-breed them.
I agree that a slicker design for a better first impression would be a good idea. Also, how does everyone feel about a upvote/downvote system for the comments?
In addition to the volume, I suspect that the iSteve crowd is a pretty self-selecting group of:
* knuckle-dragging hate-filled neanderthal conservatives
* outraged liberal morally superiors armed here to enforce secular PC religious dogma
* curious/bored thought makers seeking new ideas that could be refashioned for decent society
I wish I could quit you.
"If you had a dime for every click."
I'll bet Steve wishes the same thing.
$18 beer caused the Great Recession
http://www.aaronklein.com/2011/10/what-caused-the-great-recession/
-- it's an analogy for the housing crisis. Some humans may find it makes things clearer.
I donated !!
Congrats! Well deserved.
1. I like the website look the way it is. Clean, simple, straightforward -- it reflects well the tone of Steve's writing.
2. The comments are easily the best I've ever seen. Lots of good information tossed in. High ratio of interesting comments to stupid ones. Surprisingly literate on average. These past few threads about the hippies have been surprisingly interesting. I always enjoy the personal stories because you learn things you never see in the MSM from people who have actually been there and actually know.
Sorry, Steve, 24 million are me checking up.
"You can add lots of cool visuals for free. Just play with the template design tools."
Visuals distract from the words which express the ideas, get it?
BTW, because of what a poster said about the great visuals of the ACLU website, I clicked there--it confirmed my point. Blah!
Speaking of interesting commentators, whatever happened to Albertosaurus? He used to comment a lot, haven't seen anything by him recently...
Does that mean you have 25 million dollars?
Maya said...
"Did you talk about Sex or the Jews in May?"
Do Jews really rank up there with sex?
Just you wait for the JewSex threads. I'm predicting 1,000+ comments (from Whiskey alone)
Steve -
You are the best. Keep up the good work.
Would you consider disabling open commenting? For every 1-2 examples of insightful anon comments I'm reading about 15 unfunny rants concerning beta males vs. black social workers in the Israeli software industry, and so forth (for all I know these originate from one person). Registering a Blogger account is not onerous.
Obviously it won't stop veteran blowhards like Comiskey and Ruth but extreme moderation in defense of readability is no vice, especially when we're not paying. 2c
"Also, how does everyone feel about a upvote/downvote system for the comments?"
No, serves no purpose.
I agree that a slicker design for a better first impression would be a good idea. Also, how does everyone feel about a upvote/downvote system for the comments?
Name one site where that has ever improved anything.
Also, you have to figure that's exactly the sort of thing the opposition would advocate. (So they can swarm and vote down truth-telling and vote up BS.)
Silver
That's an impressive number. Congrats Steve. I think the format is fine, the number of comments should let any new visitor know right away that the site has heavy traffic and is not just some obscure corner of the WWW. What's a typical page view to comment ratio I wonder?
I would encourage more books. Authoring books will give you more of a credential to get on TV or radio- if you'd really want to do that. If you do that, make sure it's 100% on your own terms so they can't edit you to pieces. I'd say you should write one on education. It's got the broadest appeal of your topics because everybody's been educated and a lot of people have kids and a lot of people are teachers and a lot of people know there is an elephant in the room. We all spend tax money on it and a lot of people are frustrated by diminishing returns. You could basically string together a bunch of your posts on it, mix in some more research and a few annectdotes, interview some kids and parents. If you were to go around interviewing NAM kids it would probably spark some headlines anyway...
ACROSS THE BORDER
BEYOND THE LAW
Flaws in the justice system help fugitives cross America's borders and avoid capture
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/fugitives/
Yes, more books. And you should look around for a paleoconservative cartoonist to illustrate them.
Yeah, but it's the same 100 people that opened your webpage 250,000 times in 9 years. I hardly consider that an accomplishment.
AFAIK the definitive word on internet traffic still hasnt come down yet. To what extent are repeat viewings counted? The same person viewing the site from different PCs, devices etc? Is 25 million unique page views somehow better than a hard core of readers coming back for more? Seems to me the latter is more persuasive.
Id just like to chime in that I too was once someone of rather SWPL leanings. A British version. Guardian reader, pro-BBC, Labour voting.
Steve, more than anyone else online, steered me toward the light and I woke up.
I even voted BNP at the last election. Thats how far Ive fallen from the left/liberal mainstream. *gasp*
Obviously it won't stop veteran blowhards like Comiskey and Ruth
Ive been reading Steve since before comments were enabled and these two names dont jump out at me as veteran commenters. Are you at the right blog mate?
Speaking of interesting commentators, whatever happened to Albertosaurus? He used to comment a lot, haven't seen anything by him recently...
Ive wondered that too.
He did say a year or two back that he had some heart condition that would strike him dead one day without warning. Seemed quite happy about it. Im hoping that has not yet come to pass.
"Would you consider disabling open commenting?"
Why? The comments are moderated by Steve.
I'd suggest a higher standard in the comments. Too many are off-topic or deal with "Whiskey" and his 'friends'.
Of course, if they're paying Steve, that's different.
More stringent moderation is one alternative, yes. I can only assume that Sailer isn't doing that lest he be accused of Internet Crime #1 aka "censorship." Were accounts mandatory it might lead to fewer comments after the pattern, "Why hasn't Steve written about [X unrelated news-event] yet? Here's a thesis cross-posted from my own jackass blog"
I am Anon 7:57am who thanked Steve for leading me out of the depths of ignorance and requested a spruced-up design. Let me clarify a few points.
I don't mean the current design is bad, just that it looks completely generic, like Steve sat down at the computer one day and clicked on one of the default Blogger options. It has the implicit connotation: "I'm not putting many resources into this blog."
Of course, we nerds and unprejudiced people will see past the inexpensive-looking design and judge the ideas on their merits. But I think there are lots of people who won't stay to read if the blog looks like it's a one-man operation, but who might pause longer if it looks more "professional."
Here's what I mean by professional:
The Harvard Business Review blogs
http://blogs.hbr.org/
The American Enterprise Institute blogs
http://blog.american.com/
They're nothing fancy really, just a bit more slick and buttoned-down-looking than the generic Blogger template that we have here. What about starting with a professionally designed logo, to replace the generic title up top?
Also, not to take away from the copious credit I give Steve for my epiphanic conversion to Steveism, but the key precondition was actually living up close in a big city near the vibrantly diverse underclass. You don't realize how unpleasant it is until you've lived there.
A big part of the problem is that the wealthy SWPL crowd never really have to encounter this, and their concrete experience of diversity is the well-mannered, button-down kind of diversity you find in an Ivy League classroom or on Martha's Vineyard, where everyone seems to get along, everyone's doing well, so what's the problem?
Related: somewhere there was a post about how high-IQ types may be on average more pro-social and cooperative. That's part of the problem too. If your experience of life is defined by the Google corporate campus or your Ivy League a cappella group, you're probably more likely to fall for rosy fictions and pretty lies about human nature.
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