congratulations LAist on three million pageviews for July!

using a mostly all-volunteer army of bloggers, photographers, and editors, LAist has totally decimated any of their previous traffic records with an impressive 3.1 million page views in july!

kudos to zach, lindsay, andy and the whole team. if theres anyone who knows how difficult it is to get people to click to LAist it’s me. it seems like just yesterday that gothamist publisher jake dobkin and i were at the formosa trying to figure out ways that LAist could reach its monthly goals of 500k and later 1 million, and now it’s quite beautiful to watch the kids triple that with the greatest of ease.

it’s also a testament to jake and executive editor jen chung‘s blueprint that volunteers can provide quality reporting, analysis, art, and insight on the local level in such a way that readership can grow and grow.

the concept of the group blog was one that i was aware of before being hired by LAist but i never really knew its true power until i worked there. now at the Times i preach the gospel of the group effort not just every day, but several times a day.

LAist success is also due to an orgy of posts every day, seven days a week. when you reward readers with new posts every time they visit, from a variety of points of view, you give them reasons to return several times a day. the one, two, or three posts a day from a solo blog is fine, but readers will find a way to “catch up” mid week or at the end of the week and you will only get one or two pageviews a week per loyal reader. but if you can organize a team to produce, say, 20 posts a day, every day, then your loyal readers will happily return several times a day – and they’ll tell their friends.

it always makes me smile to see LAist whomp all over its so called competition and when i was told that they were about to hit that goal i was awestruck. three million clicks in a month is truly amazing and all should bow at that milestone.

my three favorite LAist posts of July? glad you asked.

by far the most amazing one, to me, was Elise’s Neighborhood Project of Leimert Park.

a close second was Zach’s kayaking the LA River three part photo essay of love

and third, but not least, is Elise’s LAistory about the Lions Drag Strip

rock on rockers and keep up the inspiring work!

photo of an LAist bbq “meeting” at andy sternberg’s bachelor pad last summer by Sonny I. LaVista

Leave a Reply