Behind IrishCycle.com: Given that September is seen as a time for renewal or change, it might be a good time to update readers on the figures behind IrishCycle.com, including the numbers of paid subscribers who are the lifeblood of this website and how well the site is performing.
For those who are new to the website, I am its editor, and I write most articles with input from guest comment writers and some freelance news articles. You can read more about the website’s history and me on this website’s About page.
There have always been smaller printed publications, but these were funded mainly by cover price and advertising. IrishCycle.com is part of a trend of reader-funded journalism. In this case, it is also open-access because subscribers value its journalism and see the point in sharing it more widely.
Subscribers
409 paid subscribers support IrishCycle.com. Their monthly and yearly subscriptions keep this news website going — without them, this site would not exist. The number of subscribers is — thankfully — still increasing, but, with all of the costs, it is still not sustainable for the mid to long-term.
Subscribers pay for the cost of running the website, including a monthly wage and related income tax, payment fees, hosting, backend software and services such as WordPress’s Jetpack which helps the site run, domain names, freelance articles, travel when needed, and equipment such as voice recorders etc.
Readers who can and want to help support this website should please subscribe at irishcycle.com/subscribe.
Articles
To date, in 2024, IrishCycle.com has published 214.7k words across 323 articles. IrishCycle.com publishes a wide range of articles, including in-depth news articles that take weeks to put together, comment articles on details of projects or debunking misinformation, and shorter article on events etc.
For example, there are articles such as one published today (“Climate report card questioned for use of word ‘achieved’ in line about Government commitment which has yet-to-be-reached“), which can take a week or more of back and forth with questions to put together, while the other article put online today (“Garda docked pay after reportedly dangerously overtaking cyclist then threatening them“) can be written quickly, as noted in it, there’s another element to the story which will take longer.
Around 7-12+ articles are published most weeks, and articles are published on most days and across seven days regularly. It will depend on how complicated stories are, how much news there is, and — to be honest — depending on what I can work on — it’s easier outside the summer months when children are not home!
Most read articles to date in 2024:
Number of post, comments, average comments per post, WordPress likes (must be WordPress account and logged into it), total words and average words per post — all by year, including 2024 to date:
Readers (views and visitors)
With over a million views on IrishCycle.com so far this year, this website has a mix of audiences, including a very general readership, a more dedicated readership and people who only read this site when a project or news item relevant to their area or issue they are interested in is covered.
Viewer stats are noted as being affected by a cookie issue, but, despite this, IrishCycle.com’s year-to-date traffic is not far off the 2023 total view count:
This gives the total views by month (for September 2024, it’s to date) and average views per day by month (September 2024 to date):
Social media links and follower count
Articles are shared across Twitter, Bluesky, Linkedin, Mastodon, Threads, and Facebook — with the latter three automated by WordPress and the former three manually shared. The number of followers per account is listed below.
Instagram is not used much (this could be improved), and YouTube is mainly used for embeds.
While there are only 552 email subscribers, emails contain full articles, and most emails are opened by 300-400 subscribers, which is far higher than the typical follower vs click rate on social media.
| Name | Number of followers etc |
| 15.4k | |
| 4.2k | |
| Mastodon | 1.2k |
| 703 | |
| Threads | 592 |
| Bluesky | 583 |
| 552 | |
| YouTube | 350 |
| 133 |
A bit more about readers?
The vast bulk of readers are based in Ireland, while the two largest English-speaking countries are (as would be expected) next:
And, finally, 88% of readers are reading IrishCycle.com on their phones. This is relatively new data, but it is probably a factor that IrishCycle.com needs to take into account.
Updateed: A section titled ‘Where are readers coming from?’ was removed was removed after a test found discrepancy between clicks from social media and those WordPress recorded as being from such social media. The cookie issue and the inability to track may explain this but I will try to clarify posing this info again.