|
Although I've owned this domain name for several years, I never really put an appropriate level of effort into this blog to generate any kind of readership until last March. At that time, I moved the site to a new hosting service, migrated what little content I had into the Mambo Open Source content management system, and set about making sure to put new content up at least every couple of days. Now that the site has been up for about a year, this seems like a good time to take a look at my progress and see where things stand.
As you can see in the graphs below, traffic to the site didn't really pick up until August 2005. It peaked in September, which is not coincidentally the month I worked the hardest at adding new content and promoting the site. I promoted the site in a number of ways, including writing forum posts that linked back to more detailed articles on the site, letting vendors know about products I'd reviewed, and making sure the search engines were picking up my content. I've gone from 48 unique visitors in March 2005 to a maximum of 3,167 in September 2005. Since September I've been averaging something in the 2500-3000 range per month. Not bad. Below are the detailed stats on the number of hits and unique visitors:
 2005 Monthly Stats
 2006 Monthly Stats
Visitors to this site are primarily Microsoft Internet Explorer users, though it's close to a 50/50 split between IE and the other browsers. Netscape and Firefox are the next most popular. Apple's Safari, Mozilla, and Opera account for about 10% of the hits.
 Browser Stats
The most popular browser versions (based on the User Agent information sent by the browsers, which can be adjusted or faked), Internet Explorer 6.0 is the most common browser version used to access this site. Search engine bots account for a big chunk of the hits, too.
 UserAgents Stats
Three-quarters of the visitors to this site remain here for 30 seconds or less. About 13% stay here for up to 15 minutes. About 8% stay here for 15 minutes or longer. Those are pretty decent stats, I think, though I would naturally like to see more of you hanging around longer.
Platform-wise, over three quarters of you are Windows users. Mac users represent about 7.5% of my visitors. Linux users represent about 5%. The rest are pretty much "unknown" platforms.
 Operating System Stats
The search terms that brought the most people to this site were:
- VBScript Sleep: I have an article about a VBScript Sleep function I wrote that can pause the script for some specified number of seconds before continuing. That can be useful in a number of different scenarios.
- Internetopiniongroup: I managed to get a free PSP from Internetopiniongroup.com after a bit of wrangling. I suspect others are checking them out before trying to get one themselves.
- Magnavox 51mp6100d: This appears to be a big-screen television model number. I don't have that television and as far as I know there's nothing on this site that talks about it, so I have no idea why people are finding their way here while looking for this.
- Total Recorder 5.2: I have a review of this excellent product on the site. I suspect people are finding my review of the software here.
- Java.Downloader.OpenStream.A: This was referenced in a review of the ClamWin antivirus software on the site, so I am not surprised that it drew people here. I did a bit of Google searching on this and couldn't find much information about it, so I wrote a short article about it here so that those who are looking for the information can find it and know what to do about it.
- ClamWin Review: I wrote a review of ClamWin 0.87 a while ago, and it's one of the more popular articles on the site.
- Michael Salsbury: I'm not sure why people are searching for me specifically, but it's interesting to note that they are. Thank you, whoever you are.
- My Big Fat Greek Cuisina: This is one of my favorite Columbus restaurants, and I reviewed it a while back. Looks like people are trying to find information about the restaurant and are coming to my site to see what I have to say.
- Cigar Blog: I have a few cigar reviews up on the site, so I'm not surprised that this search term brings people here.
- Cigarbid: I've bought many of my cigars (most, actually) from this cigar auction site, so again I'm not surprised to see people coming here because of that search term. I probably mention it in most of my reviews.
- Woot.com: I have an article on the site about Woot. It's one of my favorite web sites to visit. Each day they sell one item, usually at a great price.
- CAO Black: This is one of my favorite cigars, and is reviewed here.
- AOpen Pandora Review: I wrote a small news item about this small computer that is similar to Apple's Mac Mini but runs Windows. It's not a review, though, because I don't own one.
- iPad Mad TV: I wrote an article about this and linked to a video of the skit. It was pretty funny.
- Joey Chang's: This is a local Chinese/Thai restaurant near my home that is excellent. I have a review on the site, which is what people are probably visiting when they search for this here.
- Pinar 1958 Series B: There's a review of this rather unpleasant cigar on this site. Cigarbid sells quite a few of them, so I figure people have come here wondering if it's any good. I can't say that I enjoyed it.
- Bloodhound Gang Hefty Fine Lyrics: I have a review of the album here, and lyrics to one of their songs.
- radfile.rcf: This file is mentioned in my review of Real's Rhapsody Music Service.
- Profesor Sila Cigar Review: This is another of the cigar reviews on the site. I have a box of these and I can't say that I like them. Fortunately, they were cheap.
There really weren't any surprises in my list of search terms used to get to the site, and I had a page that talked about the vast majority of them, so people were finding content on my site pretty legitimately.
The most popular articles on the site, based on the number of hits they individually received, are:
I wouldn't have guessed that these would be the most popular articles on the site, but there you go.
Overall, I've been pleased with the traffic the site is getting. I have never intended for the site to be a money-maker, but rather a forum for me to share information and items of interest to me. In that respect, it's been successful. I have joined both the Amazon Associates program and the Google Adsense program to generate some revenue to use to offset the hosting costs for the site. As of this moment, I've generated a whopping $2.80 toward the costs of the site (money I haven't collected yet) in 2006. The site costs me about $5/month to operate, so I'm in the hole quite a bit at this point. But I'm not complaining. I enjoy writing the site and seeing that folks like you are reading it. (But if you want to help out, just click on some of the Google Ad links for me. That helps a lot.)
In the year to come, I hope to add lots more content to the site. I also hope to offer more interactive stuff, like the Grey's Anatomy Personality Test I created last month. That little bit of content has generated almost 1,000 hits in under a month, which is better than most of my other content has done.
Related Blogs:
Related Links:
|
