We’re back, baby!

In December 2013, Canadian Atheist suffered a catastrophic hack that completely obliterated the site and destroyed all our old archives. We may never be able to recover them. We were hacked again and again in August 2014, December 2014, and so on.

These repeated hacks, and the corresponding downtime and loss of data, did enormous damage to Canadian Atheist’s readership. Our readership dwindled to a fraction of what it was in our heyday, as we hemorrhaged readers month after month for almost three years. We hit our all-time low in July 2016 (readership usually dips during the summer months, which only added to our downward slide).

When I took over as managing editor in September last year, my primary goal was simply to stop the downward spin. I started making changes in January with only a very modest goal: Within three months, I wanted a month with more readers than the previous month. My pie-in-the-sky target was that within six months, we’d have a month with more readers than the same month in 2016. That target seemed almost ridiculous in January, because at the time, we were doing roughly half of what we had been doing the same time a year before. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was a serious downward slide.

It turns out my goals were too modest.

As soon as I started making changes in January, we stopped losing readers every month, and started gaining them. And by as early as March we were scratching at the first goal – in March we were just 509 short of March 2016. In April, we did it; we were 337 more than April 2016. That’s just barely squeaking past the goal, but remember we were starting from a consistent deficit of around half the previous year’s numbers every month going back as far as March 2016.

So I had to make new goals.

I decided that the new goal would be to maintain the previous pie-in-the-sky target – that each month would have more readers than the year before – for at least six months. And the new pie-in-the-sky target would be to have a month where we had double the readership of the year before.

And right away, wouldn’t you know it, we hit a little setback. In May we were 303 short of May 2016’s numbers. So close! Close enough that if we’d published even just one additional article, we’d have done it easily. That was frustrating. And I knew we were just about to get into the summer slump. I started wondering if I’d been blinded by hubris after those early achievements, and set the bar too high.

You all proved me wrong yet again.

As of yesterday, we have achieved the new goal: to have a higher readership every month than the same time a year before for six months in a row. June, July, August, September, October, and now November have all had more readers than the same month a year before. That’s something we haven’t managed in at least three years.

So at this point, I think it’s pretty fair to say: We’ve stopped the slide.

But wait a minute. Here I am saying that we’ve already beat November 2016’s numbers… but… we’re not even yet at the halfway point for November 2017!

The (revised) goal was six straight months better than the year before. But the pie-in-the-sky target was not just to beat the previous year’s score… it was to double it.

We did that last month (October). And given where we are at the half-way point this month, we’re probably going to do it again. It’s also worth mentioning that we were offline for the better part of a week in September (for the hosting changeover), and we still came within spitting distance of doubling September 2016’s numbers.

But what’s the point of me bragging over these numbers?

Well, to put it in simple terms: For almost three years, Canadian Atheist had been on an almost consistent downward slide in readership. Each month we were getting less readers than the month before, and only getting around half of the readership we’d gotten the same month the year before – and this was going on for years. It got to the point that CA was written off as dead by many people. I got handed the managing editor job because no one else wanted it.

I took on the job because I believed there was still a need for Canadian Atheist. I thought that all it needed was a little love, and a lot of technical work to bring it up to date to live in 2017’s web. I had several people tell me that I was wrong, that there was no way to save CA. One person even told me I’d just turn it into a “cesspool”.

But in defiance of their predictions, we’re now doing numbers we haven’t done consistently in over two years… and still climbing. And I’m not even halfway done adding new features.

At this point, I hope I’m not succumbing to hubris when I say: We’re back, baby. We’re not yet back to where we were at our peak five years ago or so, but that target is no longer a pipe dream. We really have a shot at doing it.

Thank you to all our readers – you are the standard that Canadian Atheist judges itself by. If we’re good, it’s because of you, your support, your feedback, and the quality, intelligence, and thoughtfulness of your discussions and suggestions.

Let’s see how far we can take this Canadian Atheist thing together, eh?