As I look again on 2023 and put together the Gerbil Interactive Media Group (Gerbil Information Community, Gerbil Sports activities Community, Gerbil Leisure!) for an preliminary public providing, it’s applicable that I give potential traders a candid and unsparing view of our enterprise prospects.
How’re we doing, because the late Ed Koch (1924–2013) would possibly ask?
Koch: “How do I get out of this submit?”
Un-freaking plausible!
By the numbers: Readers in seventy-three completely different international locations–and I’m not counting Freedonia! 10,472 followers throughout all platforms–a 20% enhance in a single 12 months! Examine that to The Boston Globe, which moist its pants a number of years again when its circulation elevated 8.9% in a single 12 months. I’ll proceed after I end my yawn.
The highest submit of 2023? “The best way to Inform If You’re Relationship a Porn Star.” It introduced tears to the eyes of the sick and shut-in, and a smile to the lips of the lisping babe.
Utilizing as a yardstick the two,700-seat Sydney, Australia Opera Home, a Normal Running a blog Statistical Metric, I may have stuffed that sucker 4 instances with readers who come to this website each day in search of breaking information on the rising risk of Komodo dragons, the variety of white kittens promoters are required to offer Mariah Carey at every private look, and the slow-but-steady rehabilitation of the popularity of Sonny Tufts.
Sonny Tufts, with that beaming smile of his!
I’m quietly proud to say that my homeland ranked #1 on the planet as a supply of my followers. Go forward, enable patriotic delight to swell your chest for only a second as you chant with me: “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” It ain’t jingoistic if it’s true! To the runner-up, the UK–with which we’ve had a “particular relationship” for therefore a few years–let me simply say, higher luck subsequent 12 months. And as for #3 Canada–keep on with ice hockey, or perhaps curling.
You ask about productiveness? How about that 67-day streak from September twenty eighth to December third after I didn’t miss a single day of running a blog! To place issues into perspective, the Main League document for a consecutive hitting streak remains to be Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio’s 56 video games. So the place’s my Marilyn Monroe?
“Joe, are all bloggers losers?”
However a enterprise is extra than simply chilly statistics. I prefer to suppose I could–simply presumably–have saved a reader or two from a lifetime of degradation and a white neo-soul music profession.
“La-la-la, join the dots!”
I say this as a result of the commonest search used to search out Gerbil Information Community in 2023 was “well being advantages of smoking crack in PJ’s.” That’s proper–whereas the lamestream media was trying the opposite approach, I used to be connecting the dots, Pee-wee Herman fashion, to warn America’s younger women to not observe the trail trod by Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston. You possibly can nearly see them in your thoughts’s eye in the event you attempt onerous sufficient, just like the traditional trailer park slumber get together scene in The Legend of Boggy Creek:
VENETA SUE: I believe Joe Don Riggs is cute!
NAE ANN: Me too!
TULA MARIE: Are you gonna check out for cheerleader?
VENETA SUE: I don’t know.
NAE ANN: Hey–do you guys wish to smoke some crack?
TULA MARIE: Don’t you suppose we must test the web first?
NAE ANN: Effectively, okay. (faucet faucet faucet faucet faucet) Oh . . . my . . . God!
VENETA SUE: Don’t swear, Nae Ann!
NAE ANN: It says right here on “Gerbil Information Community” that the well being advantages of smoking crack in PJ’s have been “questioned.”
TULA MARIE: That’s adequate for me–Gerbil Information Community is likely one of the most trusted blogs on the planet!
“No crack for us!”
However any good prospectus should present a full and truthful abstract of the potential dangers concerned in order that widows and orphans can’t sue as soon as they’ve sunk their cash right into a bottomless rathole of self-dealing and monetary fraud. There are some troublesome points of Gerbil Interactive Media Group’s outcomes to this point, however bear in mind: previous efficiency will not be a sign of future outcomes!
In case you have a look at the world-wide map of our readers’ places, you’ll see that we as soon as once more did not crack the Chinese language market, a crucial shortcoming for any weblog that hopes to outlive within the coming twenty first century media shakeout.
“Your spouse, she good tipper. You — not a lot.”
On this rating, I can solely plead “nolo contendere,” which is Latin for “No checks accepted.” Whereas I’ve faithfully patronized Glad Panda restaurant I decline, in contrast to my former New Yorker spouse who’s a power over-tipper, to go away a gratuity at a take-out restaurant after I pick-up my very own order! And so I undergo by comparability, and I’m sure that the Chinese language, who’re mentioned to have the ability to steal the ground plan of an automotive plant utilizing nothing greater than a Radio Shack Execu-heli II Micro Wi-fi Indoor Helicopter, have taken observe.
I imply, there’s no different believable clarification.