Counter-Currents/North American New Right Newsletter: April 2011

I learned an important lesson in April: The amount of visitors to this website is directly proportional to the amount of time I put into it. In April, we published a total of 46 substantial items (we also published 22 other items that I count as insubstantial, such announcements and translations of our articles that I am archiving on the site but that do not appear on the front page). In March, we published 64 substantial items, which means that we are down about 28% from March. Our traffic statistics reflect that.

Although we are down only 6.5% in total visits, we are down 32.5% in terms of unique visitors to the website. This means that although significantly fewer people came to the site last month, we still had almost the same number of visits. Throughout the site’s history, the ratio of unique visitors to visits has been 1 to 2: Every unique visitor averages 2 visits. Now the ratio is close to 1 to 3: Every unique visitor averages close to 3 visits. Moreover, the amounts of pages viewed, hits, and bandwidth usage all went up, meaning that our visitors are spending more time on the site reading.

What does this all mean? A significant percentage of our unique visitors are drawn by adding new material to the site, material that draws them in through Google and other search engines. A very high percentage of these people quickly determine that Counter-Currents is not offering what they are looking for, and they leave the site. In previous months, about 50% of our readers come directly to Counter-Currents from a bookmark on their computers. Last month, that number was 65%. This explains why we had a significant drop in unique visitors yet increases in the utilization of the site content. In short, although the quantity of visitors and visits were down, the quality was probably up.

3. “You’ll Be Ruined”

OK, but you might be wondering: Why did I put less time into Counter-Currents in April? The answer is simple: I needed to make money. I started working on Counter-Currents full time on April 23, 2010. The site went online on June 11, 2010. Since then, I have been burning through my savings, selling off possessions, and running up debts, putting all of my time and energy into Counter-Currents, hoping that it would generate enough money to sustain me before my capital was used up. In March, I crunched the numbers with a friend and he said, flatly: “You’re using up capital faster than you are generating new income. If you don’t stop this now, you’ll be ruined.” So starting late in March, Counter-Currents has gone from a full-time to a part-time job. And the numbers reflect it.

I had hoped that this change would be invisible to our readers, that Counter-Currents would not lose momentum. I had hoped to get other individuals to take up some of the slack for me by committing to write regular articles. So far, only Andrew Hamilton and Jeff Costello have come through.

If you were thinking about writing for Counter-Currents or donating, now is a very good time to do so. We need to recapture our momentum and keep our truth marching on.

4. Speaking of Donors

There are now 29 individuals making monthly donations to Counter-Currents, up from 27 last month, and eight additional donors have sent non-recurring donations. That is 37 people. Thank you for helping us to survive and grow.

The 37 individuals who have made donations to Counter-Currents are just over 10% of the people who are on this mailing list, and the mailing list is a small fraction of our regular readers. We call the group of people who have made, or pledged to make, donations of $120 or more in a year “the Vanguard”: they went first. They did not wait to follow others. There are 33 so far, which is less than 10% of the 341 people on this list.

If you have been thinking about supporting our efforts, now is the time to begin. Consider beginning at just $10/month (the price of 2 visits to Starbucks — and you should not be patronizing the Zionist Schultz anyway).

You can make two different types of donations:

• A single donation of any size.
• A recurring donation of any size.

To make a donation, click https://counter-currents.com/donate/ ^[2]

One incentive to join the Vanguard is that we have decided to limit the deluxe hardcover edition of our annual journal North American New Right to 200 numbered copies, which will be available only to Vanguard members, i.e., donors who give $120 or more in a given year, either in lump sums or by monthly donations.

The donation page also explains other incentives available to monthly donors: https://counter-currents.com/donate/ ^[2]

5. The Amazon.com Affiliate Program

I also want to thank those of you who have been using Counter-Currents affiliate links to make your purchases at Amazon.com. If you follow one of these links and make a purchase, Amazon.com gives Counter-Currents a referral commission at no additional cost to you.

In April, 141 items were ordered this way, and Counter-Currents received just over $376 in commissions, 7% of the purchase price. This is particularly impressive, given that only a small percentage of our readers are actually using these links—only around 10% of the people on this newsletter list. (This is an estimate. Amazon.com protects your privacy even when you buy through an affiliate link.) If everyone reading this were to take part in this program, our support would grow considerably.

If you have Amazon.com bookmarked on your computer, click the following link and then replace your bookmark with the page that appears. This will allow you to go directly to Amazon.com, and Counter-Currents will receive the same commission.

http://www.amazon.com/b?_encoding=UTF8&site-redirect=&node=53&tag=thesavdevarc-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325 ^[3]

This link takes you to the Non-Fiction Books page. For some reason, Amazon.com will not allow us to construct a link to their home page. Also, we cannot build links to Amazon.com stores outside the US. If there is a particular Amazon.com page to which you usually go first, email me ^[4] and let me know, and I will happily construct a custom affiliate link for you. It is that important that we make it easy for you to participate.

Note: The affiliate link gives Counter-Currents a commission on anything you buy on Amazon.com, on any page, so long as you enter Amazon through one of the links.

^[5]6. Our Newest Title

Our new edition of Ward Kendall’s dystopian science-fiction novel Hold Back This Day is now at the printers. The volume now has a splendid new cover designed by Kevin Slaughter. The release date is May 20th, 2011, and you can pre-order it by clicking here ^[6].

7. Our Next Titles

Now that Hold Back this Day is in press, I am readying the first volume of North American New Right for the press. After that, finally, will be Kerry Bolton’s long-awaited Artists of the Right.

Other books in the works include titles by Julius Evola, Alain de Benoist, Collin Cleary, Edmund Connelly, and Trevor Lynch, plus new titles from Michael O’Meara and Greg Johnson.

8. I Continue to Write

In addition to my editorial work, I personally wrote 11 new posts, six of them quite substantial (for a total of 80), and I did 2 new translations (for a total of 39).

In April, I decided that I needed to focus more working through the shelf of books I have been planning to review. After all, this blog cannot really spark a North American New Right unless it faithfully reviews all the New Right material that is appearing in English.