This will be far from the most objective story I’ve written for the Western Standard, so reader beware of my evident self-interest in its contents, but it’s hard for me to resist sharing the news..When we re-launched the Western Standard on October 21st, we projected a monthly readership of 5,000 pageviews for November. We quickly threw that number out the window as we realized that what we were offering had a demand much greater than what we expected. In the end, we closed our first full month (November) with more than 760,000 page views, and 233,000 individual readers..We crunched the numbers against our competitors, and results have me scraping my lower lip off of my keyboard: the Western Standard ranks number three across all four Western Canadian provinces..To get these numbers, we took publicly available data on the pageviews of other major news websites and subtracted the bounce rate (viewers that immediately leave), and compared it with our own Google Analytics..Using this metric, the Western Standard had a 639,000 pageviews in November, beat only by the Vancouver Sun (1,068,000) and the Calgary Herald (839,000)..Closest on our tail was the Winnipeg Free Press (540,000) and the Edmonton Journal (532,000)..This isn’t to say that the data is ironclad. Not all major news websites were available to compare against (CBC, Star Metro, Global and the Victoria Times Colonist). In some cases, we asked competitors for their web traffic stats, but were refused in every case. For transparency’s sake, I have included a screen shot of the Western Standard’s raw data here..Why, How?.Even more difficult than giving an objective analysis of the data in the Western Standard’s success, is giving an objective reason for our early success. But I’ll try..The original WS team saw an opening in the media market, like any disruptive business. We saw a media landscape with a few old, establishment players that tried to service the entire market as they have been consolidated behind a few big players. For Westerners in particular, this meant a media dominated by corporate and government interests in Eastern Canada and the United States..We didn’t just want to fill the void with right-wing, angry columnists (like yours truly), but provide a genuine news and opinion platform that could be trusted. That is why we brought on not just great opinion columnists, but fair, strait-laced news reporters. As those who read the WS regularly can attest, there isn’t any ideological slant to our new coverage. The only difference in our news from the fair reporters in the mainstream media (there are a few) is that we focus on and follow issues that they largely ignore, or dismiss..In doing so, we have built a readership that isn’t what most would expect of a platform that openly discusses hard-libertarian and conservative issues, and questions the West’s status in confederation.. The numbers are in: Western Standard is the #3 news site in Western Canada . The numbers are in: Western Standard is the #3 news site in Western Canada .Traditional wisdom would have us expect that the WS’s readership should be old men. While they undoubtedly count for some of our readership, we are nearly gender balanced (46 per cent women), and young (61 per cent under age 35)..We still have a long ways to go to make the Western Standard a success. While we have huge readership numbers, we still need to build out the business-side of the WS to secure advertisers to make it financially viable.. Trudeau on WE scandal: Case closed .We have had early success in building our membership however. In the absence of a paywall subscription, large numbers of readers have decided to generously open their wallets to make small, monthly contributions to help us make ends meet. If you haven’t done so already, please consider becoming a member..None of this would have been possible without our early members, and our dedicated team of staff and contributors, who have thus far done this as a labour of love..To our Members, staff, and contributors, thank you for helping to make the Western Standard such an early success..Derek Fildebrandt is the Publisher of the Western Standard and President of Wildrose Media Corp. publisher@westernstandardonline.com
