Econ Blog Traffic

Holy snikes! I just saw this traffic comparo (via an L.A.Times article, mostly about Marginal Revolution) about econ blog traffic.

Apparently BP is on of the top econ traffic getters:

Gongol

Economists who author blogs are drawing fans who see nothing dismal about the discipline.:

"This interest in the topic translates to blog traffic. Of the top 100 sites in the blogosphere, four or five are about economics, said Brian Gongol, a small-business owner who compiles blog ratings and is an econo-blogger himself. That alone is surprising.

Greenspan aside, economists are rarely well-known among the public. Ever heard of Ludwig von Mises?

The blogs aren’t limited to economists at name-brand universities, either. Gongol estimates that four of the top 10 (including his) aren’t even written by academics. He writes his in his Des Moines house, far from the centers of academia — when he’s not too busy doing his "real" job selling water-treatment equipment.

Indeed, blogging doesn’t seem to be the kind of activity that an economics textbook would endorse. A cost-benefit analysis might conclude that the economist pours time into a blog and gets little or no financial reward. Few blogs, for example, have ads to generate revenue. It would follow, then, that the most prominent economists would lose the most from blogging. But not all economists concur that time spent blogging is a waste."

Pretty cool!

>

Source:
Now online: slide-rule celebrities
Alana Semuels
L.A. Times, November 23, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-econoblogs23nov23,0,4172561.story?

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. rtalcott commented on Nov 29

    More well deserved recognition!

    I don’t know how you find the time to do this AND your day job!
    rt

  2. Bob A commented on Nov 29

    The King!

  3. User commented on Nov 29

    I can’t find out how where to send this, so I’ll try this method.

    I recently did a Google search, and one of the hits was one of your pages. Unfortunately, there were about 500 items (graphics?) to download, so it took a couple of minutes. Then, after waiting all that time, I went to “find” and searched for a word. The task took 100% of my CPU resources, and would not stop searching. The task manager just said “not responding”, and so I had to force-quit IE.

    Hence, please break up your webpages into smaller blocks so the download and “find” times are quicker, and the browser does not crash!

    Thank you.

  4. DealBreaker.com commented on Nov 29

    Economists As Celebrities: Stop The Insanity

    The LA Times is running a piece on economists as celebrities (hat tip Barry). Well, they’re not quite celebrities yet. More like blogebrities. But we’ve got to stop this before it goes any further. You people realize that if we…

  5. Aaron commented on Nov 29

    User… you might want to check the polarity of the flux capacitor on your motherboard, it could be out of tune. When mine is, it feels like 1998 all over again.

  6. MAS (San Diego) commented on Nov 29

    User —
    This page is not heavy.

    Documents (1 file) 12 kb
    Images (45 files) 267 kb
    Style Sheets (1 file) 5 kb

    Total 295 kb

    USAToday’s home page is more:
    339 kb

  7. tom commented on Nov 29

    Congrats, 23,000 pageviews is huge! Welcome to the bigtime!

  8. jj commented on Nov 29

    congrats !!!!

    well deserved

  9. bodanker commented on Nov 29

    User,

    Here’s your problem:
    “The task manager just said “not responding”, and so I had to force-quit IE.”

    My Rx: Firefox. ;)

  10. me commented on Nov 29

    What all the good comments said.

  11. ari5000 commented on Nov 29

    Barry,

    Time to sell out to MSN.finance for a cool $10 million in stock.

  12. tman commented on Nov 29

    I’m surprised Roubini didn’t show up on the list.

  13. livefreeordieslow commented on Nov 29

    How big are you? — You bumped NYT to become my friggin’ homepage, dude. No higher compliment in WWW.

  14. Caravaggio commented on Nov 30

    ‘I’m surprised Roubini didn’t show up on the list.’

    I think its only blog with public stat counters attached to them that make the list.

    And congrats to BP on making the top spot. Marginal Revolution comes in at a deserved second, but I prefer BP for its market focus.

  15. OldVet commented on Nov 30

    Barry, very well done. I’m a retired economist who now trades regularly in stocks, ETF’s, bonds, and currencies – and I appreciate the fresh approach that takes into account the vagaries of psychology. Thanks again.

  16. astraea commented on Dec 1

    frankly speaking, i knew here by the article=)

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