The Lunduke Journal - 2022 "State of The Journal"
Looking back at the last year of The Lunduke Journal. It was pretty stinkin' awesome.
2021 was a huge year for The Lunduke Journal. We launched on Substack, grew the community (by a ton), added a mountain of perks, and became self-sustaining.
All without a single drop of corporate advertising or sponsorship. This is all possible entirely because of subscribers like you. That’s pretty gosh-darned amazing.
Not too shabby! Apparently there’s a lot of you out there who — like me — want to focus on the joyful parts of computing.
Here’s a quick snapshot of how the various parts of The Lunduke Journal did during 2021.
The Lunduke Journal on Substack
The Lunduke Journal launched on Substack (Lunduke.Substack.com) on August 28 of 2021.
In the four months that followed The Lunduke Journal grew to just a hair over 1,600 subscribers. And is now regularly bringing in 10 to 20 thousand readers per article.
From zero to 1,600 subscribers in just 4 short months. Want to know something really wild? The growth rate (for both subscribers and views-per-article) is accelerating. Just check out the angle of the growth in the last month of 2021.
Awesome, right? The total monthly traffic to just Lunduke.Substack.com alone is now higher than any publication I have ever written for. And I’ve written for some great publications in my time.
The Lunduke Journal Community
During 2021, The Lunduke Journal Community site (Lunduke.Locals.com) gained over 1,600 new members — growing to over 3,800 total members.
This truly has become my favorite place on the Internet to hang out. No trolls. No politics. Family friendly. And, most of all, incredibly nerdy. Not a day goes by where The Lunduke Journal Community doesn’t bring a smile to my face.
The Lunduke Journal Subscriber Perks
During the last 4 months, the total perks for subscribers to The Lunduke Journal has ballooned as well. Now consisting of:
7 eBooks, 3 video games, and a growing list of exclusive articles and podcast episodes.
Comic books, nerdy dad jokes, a book of tech satire, a historical article collection, a kids book, a paper doll book starring Tux the Penguin, and even a choose your own adventure book. That’s a lot of books.
Want to know something crazy? That list is going to grow soon. A lot. And subscribers get all of it.
Note: All of the perks are available both on Lunduke.Substack.com and Lunduke.Locals.com. Exact same perks. Just different ways to subscribe.
Fun Random Factoids Of Fun
The number one driver of traffic from any single website (not including The Lunduke Journal itself) during 2021 was Hacker News. Other sites that quoted and talked about The Lunduke Journal in 2021:
OSNews
Hackaday
BoingBoing
Adafruit
Slashdot
And a bunch others, but those jumped out at me
The three most read articles in 2021:
Related social media accounts:
Twitter - 12k followers
YouTube - 64k subscribers
LinkedIn - 3k followers