It’s hard to believe that 2015 is already halfway over. There’s only two weekends of Pro Watercross Tour remaining before the debut of the all-new World Championships in Naples, Florida, there’s four more stops of the ever-popular AquaX USA races, and well, still plenty of summertime left for all of us personal watercraft enthusiasts to enjoy on the water. Thus far, the weather has been great (albeit a little hot. Although it likely has nothing to do with Al Gore), the industry is firing on all eight cylinders and there’s some seriously exciting stuff coming from the OE’s and aftermarket.
It all sounds pretty great, right? We sure think so, and we’ll tell you why: With June kicking off the first real months of summer, The Watercraft Journal jumped another 15% in readership, raising its all-time monthly readership to a staggering 25,500-plus individual readers. To put this in perspective, currently, the only print magazine maintains just over 2,400 bi-monthly subscribers, and while serving as Editor of Personal Watercraft illustrated (between 2007-2010) we maxed out at 17,000 subscribers during its peak summer months. Yet, these numbers come into focus when realizing that in 6 short months, The Watercraft Journal has welcomed over 100,000 unique readers.
Considering we have a swathe of new skis coming from both Yamaha and Sea-Doo for 2016, as well as stellar coverage coming from both the Pro Watercross World Championships and the IJSBA World Finals, we are on target to reach over a quarter-million unique readers in 2015. That number not only secures The Watercraft Journal as the single-most popular PWC magazine today, but even pulls ahead of the numbers from industry favorites Splash and Jet Sports from yesteryear.
Best of all, many companies are realizing that merely paying for digital ad placing on random forums, blogs and websites or coughing up big money for flashy full pages ads aren’t garnering the response that they were promised; all the while, several advertisers for The Watercraft Journal are witnessing massive spikes in national and international sales, increased website traffic, inquiries and sales leads than ever before. Why? Unlike print or blogs, we engage our readers with compelling, entertaining and informative content that highlights our advertisers’ products in a way people can relate.
June 2015
January-through-June 2015
Like Clockwork
Inconsistency is unreliability. If you promise to deliver, you’ve made a promise. If you can’t keep that promise, you won’t keep your readers for too long. If they can’t count on you to produce fresh, entertaining and informative content each and every day, you’re dead. That is why The Watercraft Journal excels. We publish 100-percent originally-written content from across the whole industry, not just some extreme niche. We speak to more readers, more interests and more enthusiasts than anywhere else. Don’t believe us? Just look at the numbers, because the scoreboard never lies. We’ve never missed a single day in our two years of daily publishing.
News articles published in May: 24
Feature articles published in May: 16
Total feature word count: 14,405 words
News articles published in June: 23
Feature articles published in June: 15
Total feature word count: 12,477 words*
*When this number is translated to print publication standards equals a 108-page magazine. Please note that this number does not include an average of two uniquely-written news articles published daily.
A Useful Resource
Successful magazine content has to accomplish two things: entertain and inform. If you dedicate your efforts to producing fun fluff, readers will quickly learn that your publication is the equivalent to cotton candy. If you’re nothing but dense tutorials, you’ll be a great point of reference, but ultimately no fun to read. Striking the perfect balance between the two adds variety to two very differing tones of content. If the magazine you’re buying ads with can’t seem to find that balance, you know what you’re getting and who they are reaching. The Watercraft Journal prides itself on publishing a wide swathe of content because that’s who our readership is.
May
Total number unique readers: 22,423
Total number of articles read: 47,468
Percentage of new readers: 70.0%
June
Total number unique readers: 25,510*
Total number of articles read: 54,077
Percentage of new readers: 68.6%
*This number is considered equal to an individual sale of a single copy of a magazine.
Where Do You Find Us?
Oh my, there’s a lot of noise out there. Everybody’s sending invites to Reddit, Google+ and even Pinterest. And while there are millions of people there, chances are, you’ve never been there looking for jet ski-related content. Social Media can be distracting (at best) and that’s why we keep our focus on our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and weekly newsletters. By cultivating these avenues with daily updates and links to The Watercraft Journal, we’ve pulled ahead of our competitors without burying our readers in a wave of social media noise.
June Facebook readers: 13,303
June Facebook weekly reach: 8,430
Top Five countries: United States, France, Japan, Australia, United Kingdom
What is Going On Here?
C’mon, you already know the answer to that question! The Watercraft Journal continues to bring the bvery best content from all around the wide, wide world of the PWC sport – be it touring, exploring, closed course buoy racing, drag racing, freeride, freestyle, meets, rides and just about everything else imaginable. We’ve got some incredibly exciting stuff coming down the pike – and we already have the inside scoop on what new skis and products are coming next year (some of which we’ve already leaked), so there’s plenty reason to keep a close eye on the single-most popular personal watercraft magazine in America.
