Paul Helinski of GunsAmerica.com Doubles (Trebles?) Down

By | January 13, 2012

In response to me asking how, exactly, I should gain experience if he would bar me from attending, Paul Helinski says:

As I explained, NSSF should have a dual press system, where those with actual readers go to range day and have access to a press room, and others can get into the show. Everything you need is on the show floor, including experts to interview on products, and there is free wifi in the building, and plenty of seats (thanks to NSSF listening to visitors and giving them tons more space).

So, apparently there is no value in going to the media only events. If it offends him so much that bloggers get media credentials, then perhaps he should stop going to the media events. He also refers to media as “we” or “us” so clearly he thinks he’s attending SHOT in a media capacity, not in a vendor capacity.

Exactly the point. You are a wanna be internet media professional. Why don’t you go into Compete.com and compare gunsamerica.com to any other gun website, not just blogs. You’ve never heard of us, and we are the industry leader in internet readership, after 15 years of hard work and dedication. Why should I have to wait for you to finish taking a video with your phone at range day?

Ah. Now I see. You want to be more specialer than us icky bloggers. Note he says “internet readership” and he’s been saying all along he’s an internet journalist. If he were complaining as a vendor or buyer, that would be an entirely different kind of stupid.

Since he likes to harp on the fact that the commercial site GunsAmerica.com has high rankings from arbitrary sites like Compete.com (which, until today, I’d never heard of) and Alexa, let’s see how his internet journalist site–or what the rest of us would call a “blog”
–fares. My arbitrary metric?

Google Reader. Here are the subscriber numbers for this site, which has been open for about 5 months:

Here are the numbers for JayG’s site, open since March of 2007:

And here are the numbers for the GunsAmerica blog, “after 15 years of hard work and dedication”:

So please, tell me why you should be there with a media pass but me and JayG shouldn’t.

13 thoughts on “Paul Helinski of GunsAmerica.com Doubles (Trebles?) Down

  1. PT

    I think he’s conflating his visits to his retail section of his website with visits to his blog section. They are entirely different.

  2. Roadkill

    They’re just a jumped up classified listing. Sigforum, Glocktalk, arfcom, and the High Road should be seeing an increase in sales done on their listings.

  3. Pingback: Quote of the Day–Robb Allen (01/13/2012) | The Minuteman

  4. Pingback: paul helinski of gunsamerica fails at the internet | walls of the city

  5. Dave

    I had to go see this site he was talking about, as I’d never heard of it either. I’m not a gun-blogger (yet), just a guy who lurks on everyone else’s gun blog, and enjoys a fair bit of shooting from time to time.

    Holy crap that site is ugly! It’s quite possibly the worst commercial site I’ve ever seen, at least in recent memory. It looks like something a high school computer science class whipped up for a week-long final project.

    Someone’s been reading too many SEO books. There are over 1,000 clickable links, JUST OFF THE MAIN PAGE. And I like how the crap JUST KEEPS GOING.

    Image Maps? No one does image maps anymore.

    And the “Barush Hashem”? Nice touch, not sure why you’re wasting screen space for it though.

    And I don’t know what UFC has to do with selling guns – unless there some new blood-sport I’ve not heard about? It’s possible, since I’ve never heard of this site. Seems more like this guy likes celebrating violence more than selling guns. He sure has the ‘roidy ‘tude.

  6. Karl

    Glad this is getting attention of gun bloggers. I didn’t recall the site and just did a bookmark search. Sure enough, I bookmarked GunsAmerica somewhere in the past. Whoops, now it is gone.

  7. McThag

    How does one get Google Reader to spit out those statistics?

    1. wizardpc Post author

      Click on a feed.

      Go to Feed Settings.

      “View details and statistics.”

  8. McThag

    I am clearly unqualified to operate this device. What you said doesn’t help.

  9. Pingback: Who uses Guns America?? ....Might want to rethink that....

  10. Pingback: Everyone Else is Talking About GunsAmerica's Paul Helinski, So I Guess I Will Too · Vuurwaffle Blog

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