2010 Column Planning

It’s that time of year once again where I go through my column lineup to see how individual columns are performing and then use that data, along with various other inputs (like what topics I think are emerging and want to get ahead of, etc.) to determine next year’s column lineup.  I want to extend my process to you and get your feedback on which columns are working well and which ones aren’t.  Additionally, just to give you a bit of additional insight, here is some of the data that I’m looking at as I go through the process.  Obviously, this is just one dimension of performance, but it’s also one that has a pretty large sample size so I generally trust it more than I do other measures, such as the “5-star” ratings.

So give me your thoughts.  If it were up to you, which columns would you run more frequently?  Which ones would you cancel?  Or more generally, is there anything on this chart that surprised you?

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 09, 2009
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  August 10, 2009
  It is possible that there is some skewing due to the fact that the measure used does not take into account print readers.  However, based on the relative sample sizes (80k print readers vs. 700k Web readers), I'm not convinced that the skewing is statistically significant.  I do appreciate the feedback though.  I think that those columns you mentioned differentiate us from most other technical magazines out there, and it would be short sighted to ignore that just because of online traffic numbers.