When Gnome Stew launched on May 12th, 2008, we had a bit more than 60 registered members and 250 RSS and email subscribers (thanks to some pre-launch buzz).
In the 7.5 months since then, we’ve reached a level of readership that far exceeds anything I had expected. To put these numbers in perspective, it took my first GMing blog, Treasure Tables, two years to reach roughly the point the Stew has reached in less than one year.
- 625+ registered members (a tenfold increase!)
- 1,230+ RSS and email subscribers (nearly a fivefold increase!)
- Over 103,000 unique visitors (173,000 total visits)
- …and of those 103,000, over 69,000 visited more than once
- Over 344,000 pageviews
- We gnomes have posted more than 265 articles
- …and those articles have received more than 3,000 comments
That, I have to say, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And somewhere in there, Gnome Stew became the most widely read blog dedicated exclusively to game mastering on the planet (which still boggles my mind a bit, I must admit!).
My thanks to my fellow gnomes, our amazing readers and members, and our advertisers for making 2008 a banner year for the Stew. Most of all, thanks for reading our work — that’s what makes it all worthwhile.
From all of us gnomes, Happy New Year! May your 2009 be filled with gaming, GMing, family, and all manner of other good things.
Thumbs up to you guys for a great year, and looking forward to much more of the same in 2009!
Good work, gnomes!
Freaking awesome! We haven’t even finished up our rookie year! 🙂
You guys are great! Keep up the good work!
You guys achieved so much in so little time I’m impressed! Keep up the excellent work!
Thanks, everyone!
There’s been some chatter about these stats on our internal mailing list — we’re all pretty surprised by the numbers.
Happy New Year!
Martin has always freely praised his contributors for the success of the site — but I have to say that Martin’s leadership/guidance/vision is the combination that really stirs the stew.
Martin understood from the beginning what Gnome Stew needed to become to be a good service to the gaming community. He’s always been clear about expectations/goals of the contributors.
Moreover, the mix of contributors has been a key part of the recipe. Clearly, we bring different perspectives/experiences to the table, and Martin has been keen to recognize the different roles we fill.
Plus, writing for the Stew has been a blast.
I’ve been gaming for extremely close to 30 years now (January 16th to 19th is the anniversary of my first game), and I’ve been GMing off and on through most of that. This board (and I see it more as a board than a blog) has really given me a lot to think about, even stuff I thought I knew pretty well, or had all of the answers about.
Thanks, gnomes, for all the hard work and great articles!
I came because of the Ennie nomination, and I suspect by that big spike there near July that I wasn’t the only one.
@The Stray7 – I’m hoping to snag us a nomination for 2009, but we weren’t nominated (or entered, for that matter) in the 2008 ENnies. Maybe you’re thinking of Dungeonmastering.com? Yax won Best Fan Product for 2008. 🙂
If memory serves, that spike in July was when FeedBurner started recognizing Google Reader hits. I’d bet that most of those folks were actually reading before July, but not being recorded. Several other RPG blogs noticed the same spike.
@Troy E. Taylor – I pretty much have to give a strong second to Troy’s comments: Martin’s got the vision, and has been a great leader. And writing for the Stew has been a lot of fun!
Here’s to the ENnies!