Happy traffic stats, ScienceBasedMedicine.org news ∞
PainScience.com traffic hasn’t dipped under 10,000 visitors/per day in several months now, and is usually over 12,000, which is pushing half a million a year. That’s quite good for an independently run website, and only a bit less than Science-Based Medicine, an important medical blog with many distinguished contributors.
I know their stats because I’m SBM’s assistant editor. SBM has more and bigger spikes of traffic, but is otherwise the same as “little” ol’ PainScience.com. I can often check Google Analytics and see, in real-time, more people reading PainScience.com than ScienceBasedMedicine.org — which blows my mind. What I’m trying to do here certainly matters, but it doesn’t remotely have the gravitas and range of SBM’s subject matter. SBM should have ten times my traffic, and probably will someday. We’ve been doing a lot more to promote it this year. For instance, ScienceBasedMedicine.org has had an active and well-tended Twitter account for a few months now, and just recently we added an official ScienceBasedMedicine.org Facebook page as well.
I’m quite proud of what little credit I can take for these projects. Late in 2012, I volunteered to find someone to manage social media for SBM. I was sorely tempted to take on the job myself, but I came to my senses: I’m overwhelmed already, and it was going to be a big enough job just finding someone good to do the job for us. Sure enough, that chore was stuck in my inbox like a burr for months. My own initial recruitment effort was an abject failure. I was defeated by an exasperating series of delegatory hassles and disappointments with early candidates. (Try to get anyone do any major volunteer job, and you’ll soon find yourself muttering furiously, “What is wrong with people?”)
Eventually a volunteer came out of nowhere, no thanks to me: New York medical student, Bobby Hannum, just turned up one day offering to help. But I did work with him to get him up to speed, by golly, and I still get a kick out of how he treats me with earnest deference, as though I’m actually important or something. Someday-Doctor Hannum is really doing it well on his own. A warm public thanks to Bobby for his great work and generosity. Now, please go like the fine Facebook page he created: