In my update a year ago, I promised something big by my fifth blogging anniversary. I'm happy to report on not just one, but two notable milestones!
The first, and probably most significant, is moving from online to paper. My translations have been published before, but this year saw the release of my first completely original work being printed. In addition to that, I started writing articles for the Russian military history website Warspot, which many of you will recognize as the source of many translations on this blog. So far I'm writing at a rate of about one article per month, but that might increase in the future. Articles about British and American evaluations of German armour seem to be most popular so far, with an analysis of the King Tiger sitting at nearly 20,000 views, the Panther at over 12,000 views, and the Tiger at nearly 10,000. Articles on Sherman tanks are proving to be quite popular as well, with the Sherman V and M4A1(76)W sitting at over 7,000 each, despite being significantly more recent. Canadian subject matter is proving to be less popular, with the Valentine VII falling short of 7,000 views and the Ram at under 5,000.
Unfortunately for my English speaking readers, all of these articles are in Russian. Currently, The Armor Journal has first dibs on the English versions, but the articles will be posted here some time after they are published.
Another new feature (or so old it's new again) is my Twitter, which is slowly but surely gaining followers at an average rate of one per day (give or take).
Now, for the stats you're used to. I'm up to 1687 published articles (up from 1381), and 3,039,948 views (up from 2,161,945). Google Analytics congratulated me on a record high number of unique users for the month of January. It's great to see how my readership is growing!
The demographics haven't changed much. The US preserves its lead, but the UK broke away from Germany, setting second and third place pretty steadily. Russia, Canada, Poland, and France keep their positions. Finland has a fair lead on Austria for eighth place, and the tenth place now belongs to Spain instead of South Korea.
Aside from that, a few more book citations, a handful of new archive sources, and an upcoming appearance in a podcast, so if you just can't get enough of Tank Archives, there's plenty of content to look forward to. Thank you for five wonderful years!