2011 Update on Traffic, Readers, and Sponsors

Time for my annual update on Drug Channels readership and sponsorship activity! I also want to let you know about a few improvements in site functionality.

Here are the headlines. (Details below.)

• Site traffic is up 28% vs. last year.
  
• We now have more than 3,500 subscribers (via email, twitter, or RSS). Thanks to the magic of social media and email forwarding, Drug Channels gets read by about 8,000 people every month.
• Readers come from a diverse set of organizations throughout the pharmaceutical, pharmacy, and managed care industries. See below for a list of visiting companies.
• Site improvements in the past year include a mobile-optimized version, a better commenting system, and faster load times.
• We have had many successful sponsorship campaigns.(Hint: Just ask and you can be a sponsor, too.)
  

As always, I thank you for reading Drug Channels. I enjoy hearing from readers, so please feel free to email me with comments, complaints, or kudos.

SITE TRAFFIC

The chart below shows page views and unique visits as recorded by Statcounter, our web traffic provider. Although I started writing Drug Channels in May 2006, I only have continuous data since January 2007.

As you can see, the site is drawing more and more people every year. Traffic was up 28% through August vs. the year earlier period. Drug Channels averaged about 31K page views and 19K unique visits in the first eight months of 2011. People are also spending longer on the site and reading more posts per visit.

BTW, you can view real-time traffic statistics for Drug Channels anytime by clicking on the link at the bottom of the right hand sidebar. The summary stats do NOT include domain names. Click here to take a peek.

READERS

Click here to see a list of organizations that visited Drug Channels based on publicly-revealed domain names. As you can see, it's a Who's Who of the industry, including:

• Pharmaceutical manufacturers
• Pharmacies (all types)
• Pharmacy benefit managers
• Pharmaceutical wholesalers
• Health care providers
• Government agencies
• Employers
• Law firms
• Investors

Don’t freak out—I can’t see the names of any individual readers, just the organization name assigned to your computer network.

SITE FUNCTIONALITY

I want to highlight a few technical improvements.

• Mobile version—Your smartphone’s browser should automatically load the mobile-optimized version of the site. If not, bookmark http://www.drugchannels.net/?m=1
• Comments—Drug Channels now uses the DISQUS system for comments. This system allows threaded discussions and will hopefully encourage fewer anonymous comments. You can log in to using one of your web identities (Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo, OpenID, Twitter). You can also still comment anonymously, if you must.
• Layout—We tweaked the sidebar layout over the summer based on how people appeared to be using the links. We also removed a few add-ins that slowed down the site in certain browsers and operating systems.

Just my $0.02, but you should ditch Internet Explorer if you can. Use Firefox (better) or Google Chrome (best) instead. Both are faster and more secure than IE.

SPONSORS

Thanks to the following organizations that have sponsored Drug Channels during the past 12 months, some for multiple campaigns:

• Center for Business Intelligence
• eyeforpharma
• Institute for International Research
• Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute
  
• Pharmaceutical Care Management Association
• Restat

We have a good line-up of sponsors lined up for the fall. I think you’ll find the sponsors to be highly relevant and not intrusive.

If you’re interested, sponsorship offers a unique opportunity to reach an engaged audience of professionals from around the industry. Drug Channels sponsors will get:

• Premier placement of a banner ad (fixed or animated) in the upper left corner of the blog, i.e., above the fold. This ad can link anywhere—your company’s main home page, a special campaign, whatever. The ads appear on every page and are not blockable by a browser add-in.
• A personalized “Sponsor Welcome” blog post
• Permission to reproduce blog posts (with full citation and URL) during the sponsorship period

Please email me to discuss pricing and upcoming availability.

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