It was another robust college football regular season for Outkick the Coverage -- as over two million unique visitors visited the site from the day the season kicked off until the regular season ended.
I like to share all our data publicly with you guys, Outkick's readers, because you're the ones sharing and reading the site.
So thanks to y'all.
2.5 years ago when I launched Outkick there was a real question about whether an independent sports site could survive. I'll be honest, I was nervous as hell about the decision to go it alone.
But now we know the answer is yes -- Outkick's not just surviving, it's thriving.
The big decisions we have now are twofold:
1. How do we continue to grow smartly?
2. When will we fire that bastard Clay Travis?
We've now got three regular seasons of college football data in the books at Outkick and, not surprisingly, 2013 was Outkick's best year yet.
Here are our unique visitor numbers for this year's college football season per Google analytics (note these numbers don't include readers on FoxSports.com):
2011: 727,000 uniques
2012: 1.45 million uniques
2013: 2.05 million uniques
(Our page view data's growing at higher rates than our unique visitors are, but I'm more interested in how many unique vistiors we're reaching since that number is harder to manipulate. Hello, slide shows! Our unique visitor numbers are also easier to compare year over year since the number of articles we've had up has stayed pretty consistent. Basically, more of you are reading what we do put up on the site.)
Our readers are an advertiser's dream, 61% of you are between 18-34 years old and 77% of you are under 44 years old. Craziest stat for a "sports" site? 43% of you are women.
I'm going to get more advanced demographics going forward, but I'm willing to bet that Outkick readers have higher education levels than any sports site on the Internet with the possible exception of Grantland.
In addition to these seasonal college football numbers, we hit one million unique visitors in October, November, and it looks like, December as well.
That's extraordinary.
Thanks to y'all, truly. (Over 60% of Outkick's traffic is shared via either Twitter or Facebook).
Two other bits of OKTC news:
1. Going forward I'm excited to now be paying writers for contributions to our Bullpen.
If you'd like to sign up and write for Outkick, go here and submit your articles.
I've been impressed with the growing quality of the submissions. We pick several to feature each week and if we run your article we pay you for it. There aren't very many sites paying writers for content. I'm proud that we're one of them.
FYI, I'm not reading and making editorial decisions so don't get mad at me. Lori Kelly is. She'll contact you if your story is running.
Thanks for all who have submitted articles.
And if you're wondering what kind of articles we're looking for -- don't write something that could ever be in a newspaper. Be smart, be funny, be original.
Write about anything.
Just be entertaining.
2. It's Christmas.
Outkickgear.com is off and rolling this year.
Be honest, you have no idea what you're giving to your husband or boyfriend.
Plus, you're kind of nervous about what he'll wear to games.
End the insanity.
Guys, did you outkick your coverage?
Prove it by giving her the shirt. Or wearing one yourself.
Use the code "Thanks25" and you get 25% off everything, plus free shipping.
If you submit a photo wearing your Outkick gear, we're giving $200 to the winner.
And posting you on Outkick.
How much better can life get?
Not much.
...
So where are our biggest markets?
I've broken them up by desktop and mobile.
This football season we had more mobile readers than we did desktop readers.
So OKTC's mobile data comes first this year: (FYI, Google seems to be getting better at specifying specific locations on mobile devices. So, for instance, suburbs are now not appearing in the overall metro market, but under the actual suburb's name in both mobile and desktop. That is, a place like Nashville or Birmingham now has a separate visitor number for Franklin or Homewood as opposed to just showing up in Nashville or Birmingham. That makes it harder to attribute traffic to markets, but my guess is that advertisers want to specify exact locations for mobile traffic and Google is trying to meet their desire.)
Here we go:
1. Atlanta
2. Nashville
3. San Antonio
4. Charlotte
5. Birmingham
6. Houston
7. Dallas
8. Chicago
9. St. Louis
10. Knoxville
11. New York City
12. Austin
13. Louisville
14. New Orleans
15. Memphis
16. Los Angeles
17. Kansas City
18. Raleigh
19. Tampa
20. San Francisco
...
Desktop
1. Nashville
2. Houston
3. Birmingham
4. Knoxville
5. Atlanta
6. New York City
7. Dallas
8. Austin
9. Memphis
10. Chicago
11. Washington, D.C.
12. Louisville
13. San Antonio
14. Kansas City
15. Los Angeles
16. Baton Rouge
17. St. Louis
18. Montgomery
19. Chattanooga
20. Charlotte
Outkick's overall top ten markets:
1. Nashville
2. Atlanta
3. Houston
4. Birmingham
5. New York City
6. Dallas
7. Chicago
8. Knoxville
9. Austin
10. Charlotte
...
Thanks to all of you for making the third season of Outkick a continued success.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting scheduled to fire Clay Travis.
That guy's a total asshole.
