Today, I spent some time trying to figure out how many members of my extended virtual community live… in or near my physical community.

From time to time, an event organizer or store owner will ask me to help them get a handle on how many gamers live in their area. I don’t have a perfect way of determining that number, but since I do manage ads on some of the best gaming websites, I do have the ability to speak to how many people in a location visit the sites I represent.

Today, I thought I’d use this ability to see how many of the people that live near me also visit these websites. Since I live on the border of two counties in Washington State, I decided to poll both.

Thurston County
During 2012, I will serve ads to 15,768 people in Thurston County, WA.

Pierce County
During 2012, I will serve ads to 16,869 people in Pierce County, WA.

In total, that’s 32,637 people that live within 30 minutes (or so) of my house. I wonder how many of these people I could make contact with this year, and how I could go about that task…

Oh, and just for fun, I also took a look at my home town: DuPont, WA. 278 people. Cool.