In which The Gay Recluse reports to the Board of Directors.

Summary
Results for January 2008 surpassed budgeted forecasts and represented significant growth for The Gay Recluse. It is expected that as editorial and production capacity of the site continues to expand, traffic will continue to trend upward, justifying additional capital investment into the operation.

Traffic Metrix
Technorati: As of January 31, 2008, we had achieved a rank of 263,682 with an “authority” of 31 and had been named a “favorite” of four other users. Unfortunately we didn’t make a note of where we stood at the beginning of the month, but our first Technorati ranking in October 2007 was over 4 million.

WordPress: The total number of views at the end of January 31, 2008 was reported to be 13,258, which on a per-month basis breaks down accordingly:
September: 68
October: 1959
November: 3528
December: 3112
January: 4591

SiteMeter: This account was not activated until the end of December 2007, but the numbers roughly mirror the WordPress stats, with “visits” for January calculated to be 3112 and “page views” 5512. Performance charts are reproduced below:

Feeds
Feedburner: RSS and e-mail subscriptions increased from 14 on January 1, 2008 to 33 on January 31, 2008.

Links
Sweet linkage: Sweet linkage to The Gay Recluse has been a major source of traffic to the site, and any growth strategy going forward will have to account for continued support from external operations. In this regard we note the following links for special appreciation:

NYT Columnist Just Pasting In The Same Crap Every Week [Cut And Paste] (Wonkette/Gawker)
What Made Washington Heights More Tolerable in ’07 (Curbed)
Monday PM Linkage/Entertaining church vs. SUVs war on West 161st Street in WaHI (Curbed)
Old Trees of New York, Reborn (NYT City Room)
Our love for ESPN isn’t universal. In fact, some people hate their pottery ad campaign (Jossip/Queerty)

Forecast
January was marked by the introduction of several “features” — or recurring posts — that resulted in more consistent traffic patterns to the site and increased exposure to “literary” and “philosophical” posts. In February we will continue this strategy and introduce several new features, most notably one written with reporting from a London correspondent who has recently been added to the staff. We have also just completed a capital upgrade to our photography equipment that will improve the visual and graphic quality of the site.