What’s an article about your air travel site in the New York Times worth?
If you’re AirlineMeals.net then I’ve got an answer for you. AirlineMeals is an online community about nothing but airline food (members post photos, write reviews, and discuss changes in the field). The NY Times wrote an enjoyable piece about them, which ran in Sunday’s paper. I subscripe to their travel newsletter, and I found out and read about the story on Saturday.
Then I went to the AirlineMeals site. I noted their hitcounter on their home page — 2.7 million views. I also noted the stats on their online bulletin board. I wrote down how many members were registered, how many topics posted, and how many posts there were — it would be cool to see how the Times’ publicity helps the site’s member rolls, I thought.
In the 36 or so hours since the article was published, their site meter shows 20,000 more views. They have 15 more members in their forum, four more topics posted, and 32 additional messages.
I don’t have anything to compare those numbers to except my own experience with Flight Club. Flight Club has been on TV, radio, in newspapers and in magazines. After each mention in these media channels there was an underwhelming amount of new attention on the site.
The interesting thing is it was the online-only features that spark the most interest in Flight Club. We still get regular traffic from the CNN article that ran more than a year ago, and continue to get bunches of new members from our mention on the ItchyEurope chain of sites. Sure, the New York Times article is online. But in two weeks it will be archived on the site. And that buzz on AirlineMeals will subside.
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