This is the traffic on my website (active users per month) since late 2010, which is as far back as the Google Analytics data goes. Traffic has been rising consistently for the last ten years, and continues to do so. The hobby is booming, and places like this are booming too.
Over 20 MILLION unique visitors! That's pretty insane. The number of actual views is in the hundreds of millions.
The whole growth of the industry is reflected in that. Lots of reasons why the industry is growing (5E, streaming, boardgames, mainstreaming of geek culture, and more) but the important thing: it's growing. A lot.
And, importantly for me and others who run websites, blogs, and written media, it's great that social media and the other outlets are not cannibalising the older ones: in fact, they're contributing to the overall rise for everyone. Which is fantastic news for everybody! It's all a big synergistic web of people who do so many different important things, and each has its own audience, because nobody can take it all in (although there's a big old Venn diagram of that!)
I'v always believed that rising tides help all ships, and I think this is proof of it. While the news coverage has expanded over the last decade, I fully believe that the growing hobby is something we all benefit from. There's a lot of facets to this hobby, and every part has it's place, whether it's a news article, a livestream, a review, a video, a podcast, a rules discussion, homebrew game material, or any of the other thousand things which make up our hobby.
Here's just the last month (April 2018). Over 500,000 separate readers (who contributed millions of page views).
The biggest single page viewed is, of course, the front page. That's far greater than any other single page (or thread) on the site, for obvious reasons. That said, it on its own contributes only about 10% of the overall site traffic; the rest is spread across many threads and articles.
Hundreds of millions of lifetime views, over a quarter of a million subscribers, and over 20 million unique readers (half a million of whom read each month) is pretty awesome. I'm so glad that this thing I put out there is still something people not only want to see, but do so in every increasing numbers, even two decades later. That's gratifying and phenomenal.
This website
started nearly 20 years ago (1999, so technically 19 years) as a D&D 3rd Edition fan site. It continued on to support d20 system products, D&D 3.5, D&D 4E, Pathfinder, D&D 5th Edition, and the upcoming Pathfinder 2nd Edition... and along the way spawned the ENnies and a small publishing company. It has grown from a D&D fan site to a news site which covers all tabletop roleplaying games (though D&D always has a special place here).
EN World isn't a big corporation. It's run by one person (me), and I use the funds I manage to generate from its various activities to commission freelance articles and other content. It's what I do every day, and I can't imagine doing anything else. However, without the help of the columnists, technical help, spam busters, those who work on the Patreons, those who help bring books to fruition with their writing, their art, or their layout skills, the hardworking folks behind the scenes at the ENnies, plus many many other wonderful friends, it would not be possible. Thank you to everybody who has helped make this community what it is.
And especially thank you to everybody who reads this little site. It's a labour of love, and it's hard going sometimes, but it's also so very rewarding and has allowed me to do wonderful things I never thought I'd be able to do. Thank you!
