THE POWER OF THE BLOGOSPHERE: Virginia Postrel’s posts say “no, no, no” — but her habit of posting says “yes, yes, yes!”

Seriously, Virginia responds to my comments on the traffic brought in by John Leo’s column by saying that there’s a reason that they call it big media, and by reminding blogospherians that big media have a lot more readers. Well, yes. But look at the comparison: Leo’s column runs in one of the three biggest newsmagazines (and more importantly for our purposes, on its website). It also runs on two other websites. Together they produced roughly a 30,000-visit boost to my traffic. That’s about ten times what an InstaPundit link can generate in referrals.

So on the one hand, I’m (at best) only one tenth of a John Leo, as Virginia Postrel is pointing out. But Virginia’s got the wrong metric. I don’t have a magazine. InstaPundit doesn’t run on big, high-traffic sites with lots of other content to bring eyeballs. It runs here, on a site that’s all me, that I do entirely by myself. (Er, and I’m paying $12/year for hosting). So my attitude isn’t “damn, I’m only one-tenth of a John Leo.” It’s “Damn! I’m one-tenth of a John Leo!”

It’s true that blogospherians shouldn’t get swelled heads. We’re individuals with our own websites, not Movers And Shakers. But for individuals, we have a lot more clout than we’re used to having, which is quite exciting. (And while a lot more people read Anna Quindlen’s maunderings, as Postrel points out, I suspect that Newsweek wishes its readership had the demographics of the weblog world).

So while bloggers shouldn’t get swelled heads, I think we should all remember, and live by, Webb Wilder’s words of advice: “You’re never too small to hit the big time.”