Across all distribution platforms last year the blog had approaching 30 million views and Guido would like to thank you readers who make this blog possible.

Where do you all come from? Overwhelmingly direct from browser bookmarked favourites, secondly via referrals from Google and the lesser search engines, thirdly via RSS feed readers. The next biggest source of traffic is from Guido’s own mailing list which was ahead of even Iain Dale in terms of click-throughs. He’ll be missed though, nearly 1 in 20 visitors to this blog last year came via Dale’s Diary…

(If you are not on the mailing list, subscribe for free here).

In descending order of magnitude the Spectator, ConservativeHome, PoliticalBetting.com and the Telegraph’s blogs provide a lot of traffic and we thank them. Twitter and Facebook in comparison were relative laggards – Twitter for all the hype sends barely one tenth the traffic to Guido that his own email list generates. Social media gurus might reflect that Guido has largely withdrawn from Facebook, which sucked up his content and gave little back – traffic for their advertisers rather than Guido’s advertisers. The economics of blogging means that without reader traffic there would be no advertisers and without them there could be no content.

Content is the key to blogging success, original content. Every day this blog aims to amuse, amaze, anger, entertain and inform. If any time you read the blog we manage to make you laugh or angry, or hopefully tell you something you didn’t know before, we have succeeded. Sure, we sometimes campaign on serious political issues we think are important, but we never forget we’re in the infotainment business. We know it and we love it.

In 2010 we had high praise and low jeering, at times it has been emotional. Hang on, because 2011 is going to be Guido’s biggest year yet…