Though most of my efforts this year were directed toward promoting one book and completing another, my three websites continued to attract an audience. Combined, they recorded more than 5.5 million page views during 2012, nearly doubling the numbers of the previous-best year, 2011. Thank you for helping make these numbers possible!
The vast majority of visitor eyeballs focused on posts published at BobMcCarty.com, my flagship site that launched in October 2006. At the same time, however, a decent number also read news and updates at the 16-month-old site promoting my first book, Three Days In August, and the eight-month-old virtual home to my soon-to-be-published second book, the working title of which is THE CLAPPER MEMO.
The most popular non-book-related posts of the year focused, not surprisingly, on politics. Among the Top 10, three involved coverage of Republican Party politics.
In the top spot was my post, “St. Patrick’s Day Massacre” Takes Place During GOP Presidential Caucus in St. Charles, Missouri. Published March 17, it was followed by 14 other related posts which combined to make the St. Charles County (Mo.) GOP Caucus the most-popular subject matter of the year.
Gen. David Petraeus
The second-most-popular post of the year, CIA Director’s Resignation Raises Several Troubling Questions, was published Nov. 10 and, sadly, the questions I asked remain largely unanswered.
In third place was another caucus-related post, St. Charles County GOP Chair Says Caucus Letter “Actually Drafted by Santorum’s Campaign Team,” published March 22.
In fourth place was a piece, Senator Marco Rubio Not “Natural Born Citizen.” Published April 24, it must raised the hackles of GOP loyalists by pointing out that the Florida Republican isn’t eligible to run for president in 2016 — unless, that is, the same standards of qualification applied to Barack Obama are employed for him.
Fifth-place honors went to another caucus-related post, Source, Phone Message Revealed in St. Charles County Republican Central Committee Scandal, which garnered quite a bit of local media coverage during the month of March.
Read the series about the Weldon Spring Site.
On Jan. 23, I published the sixth-most-popular post, Missouri Health Agency Officials Refuse to Answer Questions About New Weldon Spring Cancer Report. It served as a launching pad for my series, “Uphill Battle for Answers,” which included seven additional posts.
On the one hand, I was surprised to see my post, Wishing for a “One-Handed Economist,” finish in seventh place. On the other hand, I wasn’t. Read it, and you’ll understand why “the buck stops here.”
Again, quite unexpectedly, eighth place went to a Jan. 10 post, Harvard Law Classmate of Obama Releases Transcript as Part of Run for Missouri Governor, which contained interesting news from Bill Randles, a 2012 GOP candidate for governor.
Rounding out the Top 10 were two posts by guest writer Paul R. Hollrah published April 27 and March 15, respectively.
In his ninth-place piece, A Fish Rots From the Head, Hollrah asks the question, “How could the Turks have known about Barack Obama so many centuries before he was born?”
If the headline, Barack Obama — Worst ‘Knock! Knock!’ Joke Ever, doesn’t make Hollrah’s tenth-place effort worth reading, then mentions of the Jamaican Bobsled Team and the Siberian Synchronized Swim Team surely will.
Again, thanks for your support! Please come back often!
UPDATE 1/03/2012 at 7:53 a.m. Central: As a final “thank you,” I wanted to share some exact numbers as an update to this post. During 2012, readers viewed 5,540,602 pages on my websites: BobMcCarty.com, http://ThreeDaysInAugust.com and TheClapperMemo.com. Thanks again! Despite the gloomy eco-political outlook, I’m looking forward to a successful 2013. Hope you are, too!
Bob McCarty is the author of Three Days In August: A U.S. Army Special Forces Soldier’s Fight For Military Justice, a nonfiction book that’s available in paperback and ebook via most online booksellers, including Amazon.com. His second book, THE CLAPPER MEMO, is coming soon.
