Everybody is writing think pieces. Ahrefs studied 14 billion web pages: 96.55% get zero traffic from Google. Your insight isn’t competing with other insights; it’s competing with oblivion. The way out is a number with your name welded to it.

1. Pick the argument, not the topic

Every market has a question people argue about with no data to settle it. In 1986, The Economist’s Pam Woodall asked whether a currency was mispriced and answered with a hamburger. The Big Mac Index now turns up in textbooks and IMF papers, and spawned a word: burgernomics.

2. Measure it identically every year

The 2024 and 2025 Dodgers repeated by running one plan twice: stars, pitching, and the biggest checkbook in baseball. The day you “improve” your formula, your time series dies and you’re a blogger again. An imperfect number measured identically for a decade beats a perfect one measured once.

3. Publish on a fixed date

The Dodgers turn up every October and the sport schedules around them. The Edelman Trust Barometer lands every January against Davos: 26 editions, 33,938 respondents, 28 countries. Case-Shiller drops the last Tuesday monthly. Once reporters build in your date, they call you.

4. Give it a name people say out loud

PNC’s Christmas Price Index is a Pittsburgh bank pricing a carol; the 42nd edition hit $51,476.12, up 4.5% against the BLS’s 3.0%. Eleven pipers piping get on morning shows; “core CPI ex-shelter” does not.

5. Show the receipts, itemized

Nobody says the Dodgers spent a lot. They say $417.3 million payroll, a record $169.4 million luxury tax, $514.7 million all in, more than the bottom six clubs combined. PNC also publishes a “core” index stripping its volatile swans, up 6.1%. Flagging your noisiest input is why anyone believes the headline.

6. Expect it to get away from you

Two economists built a repeat-sales housing index in the 1980s. By 2006 the CME listed futures on it at $250 per index point; Shiller took a Nobel in 2013. When your number gets traded or misquoted by people who’ve never heard of you, you’ve won. The failure mode is publishing on schedule with nothing to say: October with no rotation.

7. Stop being a source, become the source

Ahrefs reports 66.5% of links created in the last nine years are dead. Posts rot; indices compound. AI systems cite content 25.7% fresher than typical top-ranking pages, which is exactly what an annually refreshed figure is.

One last data point. Yoshinobu Yamamoto started Game 6, closed Game 7 on no rest, and finished 3-0 with a 1.02 ERA. Same arm, same method. Still the number everyone quotes.