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This Blog Has Annual Economic Impact Of $11,128,026
I've always been suspicious of "economic impact" claims made by governments and institutions. They invariably appear to be outrageously high with little supporting evidence to back them up.
Of course, the governments and institutions never directly make those assertions. They always outsource the research to third-party companies to give the claims a sense of independent validity that we of the rank and file are supposed to take as the gospel.
One of these recent "economic impact" claims was released last Thursday regarding the 2009 Tour of Missouri bicycle race. The report by German-based consulting firm IFM Sports concluded that people attending the 2009 Tour of Missouri bicycling race spent over $38 million.
I immediately wondered if they had a decimal out of place. $3.8 million sounded more like it to me. But then the article noted that spending was up over $8 million from the 2008 Tour of Missouri race.
Could the "economic impact" experts who did this analysis for the state of Missouri have gotten the decimal point wrong TWO years in a row? It sounded incredulous, but no more so than this cycling event having actually generated $38 million of "economic impact" for our state.
This extraordinary claim got me thinking.
What exactly is the economic impact of this blog?
After extensive analysis, I have calculated that the annual economic impact of The Irony Of It All essays is about $11,128,026.
Now, if you think I just pulled that number out of thin air, you are wrong. In fact, after conducting a thorough survey of several of my co-workers, I took those results along with other research and extrapolated them through a highly complex economic algorithm that I personally designed which I call Brad's Unequaled Levelheadedly-Legitimate Strategically-Honest Economically-Ethical Theorem or BULLSHEET, for short.
Before delving into the intricacies of BULLSHEET, I thought I might share some of the responses from my co-workers that are not really relevant to the economic impact analysis of my blog, but I felt were still interesting.
Two of my co-workers read my blog "occasionally." One reads it "when it looks like it might be funny." Another never reads my blog and never will because we mutually think the other is an idiot. Three did not realize I wrote a blog for our website. One did not realize we had a website.
OK, so surveying my co-workers may not be the most highly scientific method in the world, but I believe it's a start and has about as much validity as anything done by firms who specialize in calculating "economic impacts."
Now, I can't divulge all the inner workings of BULLSHEET -- it's highly proprietary and that makes it very valuable -- but I can share some information explaining how I determined that this blog has a $11,128,026 economic impact on our economy.
For starters, it is viewed an average of 6500 times a month. Now according to the BULLSHEET formula, I estimate that more than one person -- 2.29 people to be exact -- is viewing these pages at a time. This helps take into account the 1.3 people who are looking over your shoulder while you are reading -- Trust me, they are there -- which works out to 14,885 persons perusing this blog each month.
Since I tend to be a bit wordy, I figure that each of these essays takes the average person an average of 15 minutes to read.
Now, based on our website log data, most of this reading -- 89% to be exact -- takes place from workplaces. Therefore, if the average hourly rate plus benefits of the typical workplace reader is a conservative $40, collectively these readers are frittering away $132,476.50 of their employers' compensation goofing off each month reading my compositions.
OK, while that doesn't sound very positive, it is still impacting the economy, just not in a way that most people would define as "good." But the way I look at it, impact is impact, good or bad.
And you should also know that sometimes a multiplier might be used in "economic impact" research that takes into account the fact that every dollar spent turns over several times generating even more economic impact.
Even though I've shown you that this blog is responsible for over $132,000 in lost employee productivity each month, I don't see why this multiplier can't be used.
After all, every time a reader goofs off at work and reads one of my meaningless rants, isn't it likely that either they have to work overtime or that someone else has to pick up the slack? And then someone else has to do that person's work and so on and so forth. It makes perfect sense to me.
That's why the multiplier in my formula is seven, which means that this blog generates $927,335.50 in economic impact each month or $11,128,026 a year.
I think it's pretty irrefutable. After all, you can't dispute BULLSHEET.
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