Today is a special day as we celebrate the second anniversary of launching The Watercraft Journal. So we’re not going to solely review the past month’s performance, but look back over the past two years’ performance of the internet’s only daily PWC magazine. In fact, The Watercraft Journal marks a series of firsts for the personal watercraft industry that bear noting: Again, it is the only digital publication in our industry to publish new, informative and entertaining articles each and every day, but it is 100-percent subscription-free. There’s no downloads. No apps to buy. No bulky PDFs to download. If you’ve got access to the internet, you can read what we publish.
This level of unprecedented access has catapulted The Watercraft Journal ahead of all other magazines, blogs, news aggregates and even several forums in both readership and popularity. And since The Watercraft Journal has never missed a day (except intentionally, for major holidays. And although we didn’t publish anything, last Christmas was conspicuously popular. Apparently, you get bored hanging around with the family). Our new twice-a-day publishing schedule also caters to our Australian and Japanese readers, as well as our North American friends, publishing one article at midnight Central Standard (CST) and the second in mid-morning. But of course, as a reader, you already know this.
What you might not already know is that The Watercraft Journal machine is equally as well-oiled behind the scenes. Our collaborative contributors are all paid inside of 45 days of invoicing, and are never short on work to do. Our advertisers – for which all of us at The Watercraft Journal are immensely grateful – are our biggest advocates, as The Watercraft Journal’s readers are active buyers of their products. Sure, ad clicks might not rival that of Google, but they are introduced to and learn about your products, and then buy them equipped with the information they learned here. And we’ve got the right age demographic and written testimonies to prove it.
That is what a healthy, reciprocal professional business relationship is. And frankly, many are surprised how well it works. Our product reviews, ride tests and event reports have been directly responsible for added attendance, increased sales and greater brand (and product) awareness that through any other PWC magazine. Likewise, The Watercraft Journal is the only remaining privately-owned PWC publication in North America. No marketing agency, group publisher or top level advertiser has final say on what is printed in The Watercraft Journal. While others jettison off portions of their content to cover content outside of the industry, we remain true to the core sport.
November 2013 to November 2014 vs. November 2014 to November 2015
November 2013 to November 2015
What’s All This Stuff?
To the untrained eye, everything above can look like nonsense. Yet, to those attuned to tracking any sort of trending, this is rock solid evidence (as reported by Google’s data tracker, Google Analytics) of an unprecedented growth curve for such an intimate industry. With 40- to 100-percent annual growth in respective segments, The Watercraft Journal has broken several records, including surpassing 200,000 annual individual readers in 2015 (and nearing a quarter million before the end of the year) equaling a monthly average of 18,200 individuals a month, and comparing that to last year’s monthly average of 9,451 shows a near perfect 100-percent increase in readership.
November 2013 – November 2014
Total unique readers: 113,419*
Total articles read: 339,115
Percentage of new readers: 60.7%
November 2014 – November 2015
Total unique readers: 218,410*
Total articles read: 576,303
Percentage of new readers: 63.6%
November 2013 – November 2015
All-time unique readers: 328,507*
All-time articles read: 925,056
All-time percentage of new readers: 62.6%
All-time percentage of mobile device users: 59%
*This number is considered equal to an individual sale of a single copy of a magazine.
Get More Here Than Anywhere Else
As the last print PWC magazine thin out and eventually evaporate, and competing websites fail to keep up with the rigors of working Monday-through-Friday, The Watercraft Journal continues to push forward, blazing new trails in media for the industry. Publishing professionally-written magazine content each and every day adds up in more ways than just expense; The Watercraft Journal’s consistent publishing schedule has averaged an impressive 118-plus page count if we were foolhardy enough to waste our money on printing. And that’s just counting our feature content – adding in our massive production of daily news and thousands of pictures filling over a hundred photo galleries, then you’ve got a 200-plus page magazine every month.
Total feature articles published: 309
Total news articles published: 648
All-Time Highest Read Article: 35,330 views
Reaching More People in More Places
Contrary to what many millennials might advocate, social media is not the end-all cure for today’s business ailments. Rather, it only puts your brand under a microscope. So if you’re producing new and entertaining content, a robust social media campaign with get the word out. But if there’s not much going on, it only amplifies how bad things really are (there’s quite a few examples to be sure). The Watercraft Journal only uses its social media to directly drive readership to the magazine itself. Doing otherwise is not only wasteful but disingenuous to your followers. Our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and weekly newsletters are purpose-driven, to bring all the magazine’s articles directly to you.
Total Facebook Followers: 14,596
Total Twitter Followers: 534
Total YouTube Subscribers: 132
Total Instagram Followers: 4,378
Total Weekly Newsletter Subscribers: 1,237
There’s Only One Way, And That’s Up
So, to all of our advertisers we wish to express our deepest gratitude for supporting The Watercraft Journal, and we, in turn, strive to present your products and services to the largest audience of bright, energetic, intelligent and active readers in our industry by producing the utmost in professional content day in and day out. And as we’ve promised before, we’ll never dilute our standards for superior and family-friendly content. Again, please don’t mistake this for braggadocio, but a promise to you. The Watercraft Journal has earned your trust because of our dedication to hard work, reliability and integrity; we publish fun, informative and insightful daily news, weekly product and vehicle reviews, interviews, technical “how-to’s”, shop tours and event coverage for you, every day, for free. And that is a promise.
