Counting Stars celebrates 18 years with more than 17,500 posts and not a euro in subsidies

@ElentirENG ESGL 7·15·2022 · 6:57 0

This website has finally come of age. On a day like today, on July 15, 2004, the first post of Counting Stars was published.

Attack from Russia on Counting Stars
An important announcement given the increase in harassment and threats to Counting Stars

Counting Stars has gone further than I ever imagined it could go, despite being written and managed by one person. In total, more than 17,500 entries have been published in Spanish, Galician, English, Polish, Portuguese, French, Italian and German, and more than 100,000 comments from readers in various languages.

My attempt to direct this website to the outside world has also borne some fruit. Although Spanish-speaking readers continue to be the vast majority, so far this year it has received 14.5% English-speaking readers (more than 190,000), in addition to more than 6,500 Portuguese-speaking, 6,300 German-speaking, more than 4,500 French-speaking, more than 4,200 Polish-speaking and even more than 3,200 Finnish-speaking, to name a few examples.

In these first seven months of 2022, the main group of readers of Counting Stars were from Spain (more than one million, 55.31%), followed by Argentina (7.78%), the United States (7.45%) , Mexico (4.77%), Chile (3.02%), Colombia (2.87%), Peru (1.94%), Cuba (1.42%), Venezuela (0.96%) and Uruguay (0.94%). I am especially happy to see the following that Counting Stars has in Spanish-speaking countries, and also in countries like the United Kingdom (almost 15,000 readers so far this year), Germany (more than 13,000), Canada (more than 10,000), Sweden (over 8,600), France and Poland (both over 6,600). Counting Stars is also read in very remote places: in 2022 there have been almost 4,900 visits from Australia, more than 1,800 from Japan and more than 900 from New Zealand.

In the first years of the blog I did not have access to statistics. Since September 19, 2007, when I activated your Google Analytics account, Counting Stars has received 49.8 million visits, 65.6 million page views and 33 million unique users in almost 15 years.

And how is this financed? Well, with my money, with the fruit of my work. It is an expensive hobby, but I take it as my particular contribution to the ideas that I defend. It is not even a business, since as you can see, there is no advertising. I write because I like it and, what is better, I write with total freedom, without bosses or anyone dictating what I have to say. What satisfies me most is that this website has not received a single euro in subsidies or public aid of any kind (not even through institutional advertising) in these 18 years of existence. I do not receive these aids and I do not ask for them either. It is the best guarantee of not owing any type of favor to those who grant them and being able to speak freely about all of them, regardless of the party they belong to.

Of course, this website is not possible only thanks to me. If so, it would not have lasted even a year. If it exists, it is, above all, for the constant support of my family, for the excellent technical assistance of Isaac, and also for the support and attention of the people who read this blog, who are subscribed to it and who follow it for the different social networks. And above all, for the help of God and the intercession of Saint John Paul II, who so often put a bit of good sende in me (without them this would be a disaster). I hope and wish that we continue reading each other (and counting stars together) for many more years.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

(J.R.R. Tolkien)