Six years ago today (Dec. 11, 2007 to be exact), on a dining room table in a modest home near Three Tree Point, The B-Town Blog first came unto this planet, chock full of hopes and dreams of informing and entertaining the City of Burien, and initially only as a part-time hobby.

On that first day, we posted just two stories, linked here for your flashbackian pleasure:

Since then – and some 8,116 posts(!) later – we’re stronger than ever, averaging over 71,000 Unique Visits and 134,000 Pageviews per month (as per Google Analytics so far for 2013), up +17 and +20% over 2012.

In addition to our ever-increasing traffic, we are building a fast-growing social media network as well. As of Dec. 11, 2013, our Facebook Page has 5,453 “Likes” (please Like us here: https://www.facebook.com/btownblog), and our Twitter Feed goes out to 3,371 Followers.

And we couldn’t have done any of this without YOU – your community spirit, your involvement in the blog, and especially, your continued support of our Advertisers!

We’d like to also thank the dozens of local businesses who count on us to market their messages! And if you’re interested in receiving our Media Kit/Rate Card, please email Sales Manager Theresa Schaefer here.

Oh sure, we’ve been copied, unethically (and illegally) cybersquatted, hacked and even angrily mocked by city employees and councilmembers, but we’re still here serving up true local journalism, and we’re not going anywhere. But we’re still evolving and improving – most recently, we revamped our Commenting system to allow for Readers to help monitor the trolls and negative naysayers who have tried to hijack the site.

A couple of other notes for our Readers, as well as any businesses considering Advertising:

We are (far as we know) the only local website in the entire country that is absolutely transparent in its website traffic statistics – something you will NOT see on any other competing “local” websites, both new and old. Click on the Sitemeter or Quantcast graphics below to see our LIVE stats (keep in mind that statistics vary with each independent measuring company, something that’s not in our control, and part of the risk of being transparent):
“Transparent” of course means that, at any time, YOU the Reader can click on one of these statistics links in the footer of the website (at the bottom of any page), and see what kind of traffic we’re getting right then and there from totally independent, external sources. Ever see any other website do that? Neither have we…
We strongly believe there is no more room in the media world for self-produced, fabricated circulation numbers. We’d also like to remind any potential Advertisers out there to shop around and ask for actual, independent proof of website traffic statistics (ie: Google Analytics) from other sites before buying, because you deserve honesty, transparency and professionalism.

Be sure to show your support of your original hometown blog by supporting our Advertisers (HINT: do business with these Advertisers when you can!).