02/22/2017
It was not a quiet year for VDARE.com.In fact, it was kind of a roller coaster.
I’ll start at the end, with our year-end appeal: I want to thank everyone who generously gave to our biggest fundraiser of the year! It was a nail-biter in terms of meeting our goal, but I’m delighted to report that we, just like last year, not only exceeded our goal but also set a record for donations (at the last second!). Our goal was $100,000 and we brought in over $116,000 between November and January!
Web Traffic: Overall, our numbers are consistently up. We had a slight snowball in sessions over the course of the year, culminating in a 25% increase in
November was our peak month in terms of unique users with 231,540. Our slowest month was December with 160,888. December is traditionally our lowest month in terms of traffic, which I assume is a result of the intensity of our fundraising (the click-through layer also increases our bounce rate slightly), although I suppose it could also reflect the myriad of distractions the Christmas season brings to most of us.
December is an interesting month: despite the increasing bounce rate and reduced number of users, we see peak numbers in terms of time-on-site (4 minutes) and pages per session (just over 3). Does this mean that the fundraising and Christmas season skims off our most fleeting readers and leaves only the die-hards?
We had several major spikes, most significant being November 14 with 38,147 sessions, which was on a blog post titled “Trump Supporter Martyred: RIP Thomas Shaw Jr., 75–Stabbed By 21-Year Old Black Man,” by James Kirkpatrick, which went viral on Facebook. Other spikes included:
We also produced some interesting side publications, and have had success with a new model of getting our publications out there while also getting valuable audience information and revenue. Last spring, we released the ebook, “On Trump,” which served as a compendium of VDARE.com’s coverage from our prescient discussion of his run in early 2015, to his meteoric ride to the top of the Republican ticket.
Also released in ebook were two volumes of the RADIO DERB transcripts, and John Derbyshire’s novel Fire From The Sun. We made RADIO VDARE available on iTunes.
The yearly VDARE.com Anthology was scrapped this year, in favor of a more timely, more beautiful and more accessible Quarterly magazine, and subscriptions are steadily accumulating.
Meetups: 2016 was the year we really took VDARE.com on the road. Peter and I hosted VDARE.com get-togethers in Southern California, Raleigh, NC; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Nashville, TN; Washington, DC and New York City. Attendance ranged from 15-80 people in each locale, and all were enthusiastic. In addition, we met with many, many individual donors across the country. Perhaps the most dramatic was a fundraising dinner we held on Capitol Hill — two days before the election!
Revenues and Fundraising: Politics and social change are often long games, especially when you’re trying to turn a ship as large and malicious as the USS Treason Lobby. Our successes must be celebrated, and every day I wake up thinking “Isn’t it GRAND!” Trump’s Presidency has given us one last chance to save the country. But is it enough to save VDARE.com? I think so.
It’s no secret that we are a scrappy organization. Despite a couple of desperate looking months in the late summer — presumably as a result of our traditional donor base being distracted by the election fundraising — we did see moderate growth. Our donor base appears to be diversifying:
2016 was an incredible victory year for immigration patriots, and despite the inevitable growing pains we continue to experience as a burgeoning movement, I’m totally confident that the cat is not going back into the bag in terms of immigration, Political Correctness and American national identity. That said, I feel overwhelming impatience.
Our yearly budget for the entire organization is less than $500,000 per year, a drop in the bucket compared to our competitors.
Peter Brimelow, James Fulford, John Derbyshire, Steve Sailer, James Kirkpatrick — these people have made serious personal sacrifices for this cause. Year after year we have adapted to the increasingly Politically Correct environment that has so inhibited the flourishing of our movement. If this were a just world, these men would be publicly acknowledged as the heroes they are. Before they can pause to celebrate broader victories, we have to secure our position as the voice of the historic American nation. In order for that to happen, whether by VDARE Foundation or through other sympathetic institutions, we need three things:
Lydia Brimelow, pictured right with daughter Felicity, is Chief Advancement Officer for VDARE.com.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.