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I've been crunching numbers and doing data analysis on my website readership, and a few things have become clear, namely that the effort I put into it isn't commensurate with the actual readership of the site.
Readership has trended down slowly but steadily since the 2013-2015 period, when I reached all-time highs. The obvious answer is that the primary readership for my website was fans of and haters of America Unearthed.
After that show ended, readership declined markedly. Its revival did not bring them back, but that's part of a larger trend. My most-read posts are tied to TV episodes of shitty cable shows. The majority of readers those days arrive via Google search and only read that post.
With none of the shows currently airing, my readership has reached an all-time low. Currently, my most-read page on any given day is my translation of the Akhbar al-zaman, which has been online for years.
As we learned this spring, the audience for cable fake history shows has shrunk over the past five years, except for "Oak Island." Currently less than 1% of Americans are in that audience, with a hardcore core of just 350K. That's down immensely (by up to 2/3) from a decade ago.
During the high point of my blog in 2013-2015, I had about 100,000 readers. I won't share the current total, but the downward trend ongoing for five years has led to a point where it's almost pointless to write when a tweet gets more readership.
After 20 years of writing, I feel like it's time to concede that success isn't happening for me. I wrote a goddam magazine cover story last year. Guess how many offers to write or even just responses to pitches I received afterward.
Yes, zero. Not once after that did I even get a rejection, let alone an acceptance from any publication anywhere. Just silence. I only got that magazine story because the editor read my blog. He's gone now. Literary agents similarly find no value in my work.
Which is weird, right? It's not as though I can't write. I've worked with marketing experts, met with editors, networked. But, for whatever reason, nobody is much interested and may never be.
Anyway, it's a long way around asking whether writing so much for so few people to read, at least until there is another moment of excitement over fake history, is really worth the time--and all the hate.
