For the last 30 days, The Truth About Guns (TTAG) has seen a massive traffic spike. We went from about 1.4m to 1.6m pageviews per month in November and December (a comfortable lead over our competitors) to well over 2m pageviews per month. And we’re still going. With current trends I wouldn’t be surprised if we hit 3m pageviews per month by the middle of February. The short version is: we’re doing amazingly well with no end in sight. Make the jump for the long version.

For the first half of January, TTAG was chugging along at about 50k to 60k pageviews per day. We’ve been steadily gaining readers and that upward trend continues. The second our SHOT coverage went live the site traffic exploded.

During SHOT, 69k views per day was our WORST day that week: the Monday of Media Day at the Range, when we were too busy shooting to post (until the evening). Tuesday quickly became our #1 day for “most traffic in 24 hours” with 92,720. Wednesday stole that title with 110,329 pageviews. Thursday broke 100,000 but failed to make it to the top of the charts, and Friday (when the show was basically over) we brought in 88,277 pageviews.

Our SHOT Show coverage was the most widely read stuff we’ve ever done. In terms of that coverage, we four writers absolutely spanked the competition. While other bloggers were hoarding their stories for release in the coming weeks TTAG was publishing everything almost live, running between the show floor and the press room to bring you every story within 30 minutes of us being at the booth talking to the guys and fondling the products.

Like everything there’s a couple stories we missed, and we picked up a couple stories the competition missed, but at the end of the day if you read our blog regularly then you’ve got the whole SHOT picture by now.

The Google Analytics totals above are as of 2:39pm, January 27. Here’s the important part (at least for our future): the SHOT Show bump is here to stay.

As I said, 50-60k was our “standard” day before SHOT Show. A week later we haven’t dipped below 70k. Here are the numbers for the last 30 days:

  • 951,304 Visits
  • 648,347 Unique Visitors
  • 2,022,710 Pageviews
  • 3:00 Average Time On Site

I know that’s a little abstract, so let’s break it down a bit and compare these to magazine readership statistics.

  • More people read our content than magazines, and they actually look at it instead of thumbing through. 648,347 unique visitors is somewhat comprable to the circulation of a magazine. Where Guns & Ammo Magazine sends their stuff out to 443k people who might read it, we have 648k+ people who come to us and who we know are reading our content.
  • People care about our opinions and listen to our advice. 3:00 Average Time On Site means that people don’t just come to look at a picture and leave. Their eyeballs are on our pages for three full minutes while they look around; many of them doing this multiple times per day. They’re not just thumbing through as they would a magazine, they’re actually reading and thinking.
  • More opportunities to present advertising than any other website. 2,022,710 pageviews means that 2,022,710 times in the past 30 days a person has been presented with an advertisment on our website. That’s 2,022,710 opportunities to tell someone about a new product, inform them about an oldie but a goodie, and grab their attention to boost your sales. Magazines typically only get read once, but our readers come back again and again.

According to these trends I don’t see any signs of us slowing down. We’ve reached a new “baseline” for traffic, we’re picking up readers left and right, and there’s no ceiling in sight. Life is good. If only we could get some more advertising money. Speaking of which, if you want to advertise ping [email protected] for more information.

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26 COMMENTS

  1. When a article especially catches my attention I send to all my friends the link to the TTAG page. This gets folks used to coming here and spreads the word. For example, the article on a possible Arizona militia a few days ago, I sent to my nephew a retired deputy still working in the court house. He loved it and sent it to all the cops there, about 60 of them. Many of them loved it and sent it on. I’d bet there were over 100 page hits from that one forward of your article.

    I’ll do the same today on the gun handling article, it’s good solid information.

    Don’t be surprised about the hits on the site, it is the result of great articles, good comments, and an “active” site.

  2. TTAG seems to have figured out a novel concept, that by frequent posting of actual content, you get more viewers. This is something many firearm publications seem to take a pass on.

    • Not to mention the comment section. Allowing near-as-dammit unmoderated discussion and knowledge-sharing brings in (and back) those of us who crave more than just the opinion of the writer.

      • And we appreciate the enormous contribution that our Armed Intelligentsia make to our success. We couldn’t do it without you. Well we could, but where’s the fun in that?

      • I agree on the moderation comment. It’s definitely an attribute that sets your blog apart from our opponents on the anti-gun side.

  6. Damn! You get more page views in a month than the leading anti-gun blog has probably gotten in its lifetime. Congrats on obliterating the opposition.

  7. I’ve noticed your gun reviews callously flout custom: You fail to glorify every single firearm reviewed. You keep the mood cheerful by adding a bit of tangential humor rather than simply hiding the fact that a particular gun actually has flaws that go beyond “made on Monday.” Keep it that way, please.

  8. Most days I keep TTAG open in a page on my computer at work and refresh about every 15-30 minutes for 8 hours. Not to mention the permenantly open page on my phone that I constantly refresh when not at work. You guys have way too much of a monopoly on my attention lol.

  9. I barely ever comment, but one of the reasons I have been hooked to this site for months is the comments by other users. Some are funny, but many are just plain informative. There are several users on here willing to write paragraphs in a single response. When I read the gun and gear reviews I always check the comment section to see what other user’s experience has been with a certain product. Some comments are like a whole other review in and of themselves.

    On top of that, the great guys who run this site actually take the time to read and respond to comments. Quite often articles are updated to fix a mistake or make a sentence more clear based on a comment by another user. This shows me (and the everyone else reading) that TTAG cares about the accuracy and portrayal of the content they post and aren’t afraid to admit their mistakes. All of this makes for enjoyable reading and a great site which I visit everyday. Keep up the good work!

    • Thanks for reading and it’s true: Dan and I (at the least) read every single comment. If we get something wrong, we put it right.

      We are slaves to the TTAG brand, which our readers own as much as we do. Well, more. If you ever need to contact me, ping [email protected].

  10. It has absolutely been my pleasure to repost and share many of the story on this site. I have also directed many of my friends to the site when they’re looking for info or advise. I hope it continues. Thanks fellows for all that you have done.

  11. 2 million? Holy cr@p!

    And the picture — I know that’s Dan on the right and Tim Conway in the middle, but who’s the girl with the holsters?

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