Every so often we do a post that has nothing to do with the news of the day but rather about TPM itself. So if you’re into future of news discussions and audience metrics follow me after the jump. If not, definitely enjoy some of the quality news product on the right.
We kicked off our new expansion in January. And as you can see, we’ve had big audience growth already this year. Since January 2009, TPM’s audience has roughly doubled in size. So far in 2011, TPM’s numbers are up 39% year over year. And for May our numbers were up 85%. (One point to keep in mind: every news site had a rock solid May and pretty much for one reason: Osama bin Laden. But TPM’s numbers were growing rapidly before that.)
Now, lots of news sites have audience growth stories. What sets TPM apart is that TPM is an independent operation with no wild venture capital infusions (we raised small sums in 2009 & ’11 from private investors) behind it and no big media corporation feeding it dollars and traffic. Once you take those two factors out, it removes virtually all our competitors from the equation.
So what does that amount to beside a pat on the back for our amazing staff? Basically this. If you have a web-native news and business model, you can build a news organization more or less from scratch and grow fast without big infusions of outside capital. And it’s not just our staff. Our audience has always been key to our editorial model. I cannot think of a major story we’ve been on where audience input (of various kinds) hasn’t been a crucial part of the equation. More recently, reader amplification through social media has been one of the core drivers of audience growth. Sustained engagement with readers is the core of our success as a company, across the spectrum from news tips to revenue models.
(Source: Google Analytics)
