How to stay abreast of anniversary events

It's the day after WND's 9th anniversary and that can mean only one thing – it's the beginning of WorldNetDaily's 10th year of publishing.

For the next 365 days, WND is going to be introducing new features, new columns, highlighting special events and recalling the triumphs of the past leading up to the big day – the 10th anniversary celebration.

How are you going to keep abreast?

No one can do it just by checking in to WND every day. As easy as that might sound, it's virtually impossible. Everyone takes vacations. Everyone has computer down time and Internet outages.

But there's one surefire way never to miss another big story or the important announcements that are coming in the next 12 months.

It also happens to be the best way you can support WND without spending a dime.

It's signing up for WND's free news alerts.

"I cannot overemphasize how meaningful this is to our business," explains Joseph Farah, founder and editor of WND. "News alerts are a great source of advertising revenue for us. And it's the best way for us to pro-actively keep in touch with our readers."

Farah says it's the first step to becoming a true WND partner.

"At first we like people to come and read WND," he says. "Then we hope they will like it enough to sign up for news alerts. At that point we hope they subscribe to either Whistleblower magazine or G2 Bulletin or both. And, of course, we love it when WND readers buy our products and support our advertisers."

It all starts, though, with the free signup for news alerts. Unfortunately, only a tiny percentage of WND readers ever take even that initial step into partnership with WND.

"I really hope more people sign up in the coming year – leading up to our 10th anniversary celebration," Farah says. "I can assure you those who do will get some special treats, be part of some amazing announcements and learn first about history-making news stories."

"We basically started WorldNetDaily in semi-secret," said Farah on the 9th anniversary, May 5. "It began as something of a cottage industry – a total experiment, without grand ambitions or lofty business plans."

What WND did have from the beginning, says Farah, were lofty ideals.

"We've never deviated from the original mission – to serve as a watchdog on government, to recapture the original vision of the American free press, to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable," he said.

Some misinterpreted what WND was about because it was so starkly different from other news organizations in its presentation and its perspective, he says.

"To this day, WND is the No. 1 'conservative website' in the world, according to Alexa.com," he points out. "There's just one problem with that. There's nothing 'conservative' about WND. In fact, it's quite a radical idea. It doesn't promote a political agenda. It seeks the truth.

It doesn't adhere to a party line. It reports the news with uncompromising tenacity and fierce independence. In fact, it's radical about independence. Anyone who has ever read WND for more than a week can see that."

But Farah doesn't mind WND being No. 1 in any category – even one that, he thinks, trivializes his news service.

While there is no "independent news" category, there is Alexa's "News and Media" ranking, where WND gets another No. 1 classification.

WND has also jockeyed for win, place and show position in the political coverage category with Salon and Slate. Throughout the 2004 presidential election year, WND was No. 1. Farah predicts his site will return to that position in 2008, when Americans are refocused on politics.

WorldNetDaily has earned many No. 1 honors in its nine-year history.
But Farah says he won't be satisfied until it is the undisputed No. 1 news source on the Internet.

Overall, in the category of breaking news, WND comes in ninth, following MSNBC, FoxNews.com, DrudgeReport, ABCNews.com, CNBC, Bloomberg, the Financial Times of London and PR Newswire. For what it's worth, Farah points out that PR Newswire is not a news service at all, but a paid press release service.

"Our rankings, relative to other sites, rise and fall over time," said Farah. "But our traffic continues to grow – at a pace even faster than the explosive Internet itself."

During WND's nine years on the Internet, it has also been honored as "the most popular website in the world" by the now-defunct European-based Global 100 ranking service, a website that allowed users to rank their favorite destinations on the Net, music groups, TV shows, movies, etc. In fact, WND remained No. 1 for more than 100 weeks in a row – an indication it has "the most loyal and passionate readers," said Farah.

WND has also been consistently ranked by several major Internet ratings agencies as the "stickiest" newssite on the Internet – meaning readers average more time on it than any other.

By WND's own traffic counts, the site attracts about 8 million "unique visitors" (meaning different people) every month. It attracts between 50 million and 70 million pageviews per month.

WND was also the first content site on the Internet to begin a book-publishing imprint, WND Books, that has revolutionized the publishing industry in many ways. WND was the first Internet content site to launch a daily, nationally syndicated radio show based on that content.

And WND was the first content site on the Net to launch columnists into weekly syndication, including David Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Farah.

See related commentary by Joseph Farah

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