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As Horn Matters approaches its third year, now is a good time to take a look at who our readers are and where they are from. Generally speaking all of our site statistics continue to climb, and we are particularly excited to see a rise in international and mobile traffic.
For those not familiar, Horn Matters was officially launched on September 1, 2009. Before that date John and I operated our own separate horn-related websites (we called them blogs back then) and over a period of years, we had both accumulated a large library of content.
Background
John and I have been colleagues since our student days at Eastman, and at some point in early 2009 we got the bright idea to merge our content and efforts into one massive web site. Because we both live in Phoenix, Arizona and also because we have a history of working together on the International Horn Society site, it seemed like a logical move.
The rest is history more-or-less, and we have since rolled the site under the business umbrella of Horn Notes Edition LLC in order to protect ourselves, our advertisers, our visitors and our content.
In defining what Horn Matters is as a content provider, we have branched out from the outdated idea of Horn Matters as being a merely a blog. We look at it instead as more of an online magazine.
From our About Us page:
Horn Matters is an online magazine co-founded by John Ericson and Bruce Hembd. Bruce and John bring together a wide range of experiences, tips and stories to Horn Matters.
The missions of Horn Matters are to encourage, inspire, inform, and challenge horn players and to promote the best instrument ever, the French horn.
(More.)
We currently have over 1,700 articles of great information to look through – and this number grows every day. While our main focus is on matters related to the horn, we also like to occasionally address topics of interest to brass players at-large and to classical musicians in general.
Who reads Horn Matters?
Since September 1, 2009, a whopping 421,149 people have visited the Horn Matters site.
Here is a breakdown of those unique visitors organized by country, according to our Google Analytics tools.
- United States 297,003
- United Kingdom 24,322
- Canada 18,909
- Australia 10,722
- Germany 7,625
- France 4,120
- Belgium 3,750
- Italy 3,385
- Spain 3,085
- Netherlands 2,930
While the vast majority of our readers originate from the USA, we are excited to see a slight rise in international traffic, when compared to stats from 2011.
The grand total of page views has added up to over 1.2 million (1,289,461 to be exact). For a niche web site devoted to the French horn, those are some pretty impressive numbers!
The current year, 2012
From January 1st of this year to today, the numbers look like this:
- Visits: 102,669
- Unique Visitors: 58,256
- Pageviews: 234,969
By country:
- United States 71,003
- United Kingdom 6,266
- Canada 4,792
- Australia 2,269
- Germany 1,880
- Italy 909
- Spain 763
- France 757
- Singapore 706
- Norway 685
Going mobile
One trend that we have been keeping our eye on is the big increase in mobile traffic.
In the past year alone, the number of mobile users has increased almost ten-fold, from about 1% of visitors to about 10% of visitors. With the increasing popularity of smart phones and tablets we expect this trend to continue on its sharp, upward climb.
In tandem with the main web site, our Facebook page currently has over 4,200 followers, and that number also continues to grow every day. Besides functioning as a feed for site articles, it also provides a platform for sharing miscellaneous items of interest that do not necessarily merit a full write-up.
From our Facebook page we are able to glean more specific demographics than we can from Google, but unfortunately Facebook only allows data from the past 90 days.
That caveat aside, the proportions illustrated in this chart have more-or-less remained the same. A large chunk of our Facebook audience falls into the 18-24 age range.
Of the approximate 4,200 followers on Facebook, a breakdown of the top 15 countries looks like this:
- United States of America 2,396
- United Kingdom 190
- Spain 146
- Italy 139
- Australia 137
- Canada 101
- Germany 89
- France 68
- Brazil 60
- Norway 60
- Mexico 59
- Sweden 55
- Venezuela 54
- Portugal 44
- Austria 40
The perks of Horn Matters advertising
Related to the topic of web traffic, one question might come to mind: why does the Horn Matters site support and encourage banner advertising?
The answer is pretty simple.
While we are not looking to get rich from selling banner ads we do enjoy providing a free, open-door resource for horn players to get good, solid information at their fingertips. That being said, maintaining and supporting a web site costs money; creating interesting and useful content takes time and effort.
We welcome inquiries from horn and brass related advertisers interested in promoting their products and services to our huge online audience. When compared to expensive and limited-engagement print advertising, our ad services and rates here at Horn Matters are really a smart choice.
Contact us now
There are plenty of spots left – including a prime spot above each article. For more information, please take a look at our Banner Advertising page.
We would love to hear from you!
