The first month of the Cape Independent

Stats and plans

Based on the first month of visitor's statistics, I decided to model the Cape Independent’s growth potential within the Western Cape. I started with 5- and 10-day smoothing, then fitted that to a growth rate that matched the baseline (i.e., minus the peaks of viral content)

Then I used the numbers from the top seven sites from 2022, divided it by the overall % of internet users from the WC, and used that as a growth ceiling for a Verhulst model. At the current rate it should take about 1.5 years to reach our peak, but the maximum differs.

So, if we're as good as the professionals and we can attract the right staff, we should hit 100k somewhere between Aug-Oct 2024, 200k by Dec. All this is very optimistic, but I want to be optimistic. Of course, if we branch out to video and podcasts, that changes things.

I do intend to do this eventually, but first I have to find staff to do this, and before then, need to attract the ad revenue. But it's pretty grueling pumping out the content while I have other work. Much of it is basic rewrites, 5-6/day, with 5-10 more researched pieces /wk.

We got lucky with a couple of the original pieces, by catching a story from the Jewish Board on threats from the EFF (for some reason it was treated as two pieces by Analytics), and by being the first to print a couple of stories on the Referendum Party while they were still on news blackout.

The Lamola story was ours mainly because nobody else took the time to plough through a 3-hour UN committee hearing.

The ultimate goal is to be a viable right-of-centre alternative when the election rolls around (if the IEC can ever fix a date), and to keep the independence movement in the public conversation. Perhaps ambitious, but it is achievable if we don't cock it up. As a friend of mine said, we all cock up our first business, but I hope that's not true.

Again, this is all wild speculation, but Verhulst is a pretty reliable little model, and I like the sigmoid curve - it looks nice.

Anyway, read our stuff! I pretty much write all of it, with some occasional guest posts, and if you want to contribute, I am happy to publish what you’ve got to share, (provided you aren’t a commie, or severely brain damaged).

The site can be found here (The Cape Independent), and the contact form is here (editor@capeindependent.com), and you can stick an ad up here (sales@capeindependent.com).

For those of you who follow my blog regularly, I will start doing little weekly newsletters, though it will all be from the CI for the foreseeable future, unless I am possessed by a particularly philosophical streak and want to write something a bit more abstract than the stuff I usually write for the paper.

Wish us luck.