BestSellingCarsBlog celebrates its 4th anniversary!

Today marks the 4th anniversary of BestSellingCarsBlog!

On October 30th 2010, I wrote the very first article in this blog, and at the time I had absolutely no idea whether this venture would interest a dozen or a million people around the world. It was more a way for me to avoid physically writing all the monthly updates I had been painstakingly recording for the previous 20 years and a support to do it quicker and in a more thorough way. Never in my wildest dreams would I have hoped for such a success, and it’s all thanks to you readers: since creation, you have been 2.8 million unique visitors to check out the blog including just under 1 million in the past 12 months alone, overall you visited the site nearly 5 million times, viewing over 13 million pages in the process!

For the first time, I can now say that BSCB has been accessed from every single country in the world since its creation! The missing link was North Korea, but on January 12 BSCB had one visit from there, making the world map complete. On a typical day, BSCB gets accessed from around 140 countries and territories on the planet – today for example this figure is 139.

BSCB has received visitors from every country in the world since its creation.

This blog would never be what it is today without you my dear readers, so I want to thank you all very, very much for your readership, your feedback and support day after day, month after month, year after year. The list of people to thank is very long, so please be certain that whether this is your very first visit on this website or you come here every morning while drinking your coffee in the bus (I know a lot of you do), I thank you.

Google Analytics 1 May 2011-30 October 2014

Exploring the stats a little further, we find that the country delivering the most visits to BSCB over the period is the USA with almost 520,000 visits, followed by France (313,000), Italy (243,000), the UK (222,000) and India (just under 200,000). City-wise, the winner is Paris with 61,000 visits, ahead of London, Kuala Lumpur, Milan and Sydney.

This is the very first article I wrote on BSCB

In these 4 years I have published 5,231 articles – that’s an average of 3.6 a day (up from 3.5 last year). And if you are a regular reader, you will know that rare are the days when I don’t publish any new articles. In fact, the longest period without activity on BSCB over these 4 years was 5 days – in October 2013 – but I had a good excuse: I was exploring the Gobi desert in Mongolia. I can honestly say that running this blog has strengthened even further my passion for car sales statistics, as it enabled me to get in touch with so many of you helping make the site more thorough every day.

Kashgar animal market, Western China – May 2014

Over the past year, we have added a range of new monthly updates like Belgium, Cyprus, Germany private sales, missing parts of Eastern Europe (Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Moldova and the Republic of Macedonia) and we have welcomed China LCV, Latvia and Slovakia back into the monthly reports. All-in-all, roughly 100 countries and territories are updated each month on BSCB, with multiple updates for some – China, USA, Europe, Italy and France for example. I have also put in place a Membership program, and I want to particularly thank all of you new Premium Members of the site for supporting this venture. Without your support, updating this site every day would potentially not be possible anymore.

I have endeavoured to write more and more professional content on BSCB, and this has translated into the following:

• The launch of a new STRATEGY category with notably a thorough analysis of the Indian market, an interrogation on the future of French manufacturers as well as an ongoing study on how Chinese carmakers could unlock their home market. I hope you have enjoyed these in-depth reports as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing them. Expect many more to come shortly.
• The relentless addition of ever more historical data, now covering an unprecedented 77 markets and going as far as 1894 for France for example. Expect a lot more historical data to be added on the site over the coming year.
• More Annual country reports, covering 105 markets for the Full Year 2013, a record on BSCB. There will be more for 2014.
• A coverage of each major Motor Show featuring more detailed interviews with manufacturers: over the past year I covered the Geneva, Beijing and Paris Auto Shows.
• More ‘outside the box’ thinking, including a new category entitled The Car Buyer of the Future aimed at understanding the mindsets of car fanatic kids today to better predict tomorrow’s car market.
• Finally, potentially the new addition that has received the most positive feedback from you and encouraged me to do more: Long Term Photo Reports exploring the car landscape in specific parts of the world. Following on from my Trans-Siberian Railway series crossing Russia, Mongolia and China and described by one of you as ‘Car and Driver meets National Geographic’ (loved that), I explored Western China in the Xingjiang Uyghur province all the way to the Karakoram Highway at the Pakistani border, in the process learning a tremendous amount about the dynamics of the Chinese market, and of course crossing the USA Coast to Coast, an adventure I am still in the process of reporting to you.

There is more, much more to come. More strategy, more in-depth interviews, and a relentless endeavour to better understand each car market market in the world. I cannot wait for the next year to start, and welcome any feedback you have to make this site better, more useful and enjoyable for you. Once again, thank you. And happy birthday BSCB!

Full size squeegee required for full size pickup – with Albert on Route 66.