Stat Tracking & Traffic Analytics

Elliot Silver
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11

It’s critical for any commercial website owner to track the site’s traffic and analytics to see how many people visit the site and how people interact with the website. There are number of stat tracking and traffic analytics companies that can help web developers, but I use just two of them for my websites, including this blog. I want to let you know what I use and why I use each.

Google Analytics is used by many websites of all sizes. One of the best things about Google Analytics is the fact that the website can coordinate with the other products in the Google business suite. It’s simple to install across a website, and it provides a ton of useful information. Website owners can see exactly how people got to a website, how the visitor navigated, length of time on a website/page, and a significant amount of other info. It’s one of the more comprehensive analytics trackers out there. The best part of course is that it’s free.

StatCounter.com allows website owners to track their stats in real time. I particularly like the fact that I can see exactly where the most recent visitors came from in chronological order. This is helpful when someone links to my website, and I can see this traffic immediately. I am able to label IP addresses so I can see who is visiting if I choose to do so, and I can also see what companies are visiting and where visitors are located. I use the upgraded option which tracks the last 10,000 visits and it only costs $49 every three months. It’s not as comprehensive as Google Analytics, but it provides accurate real time information of my website’s visitors.

On my blog where accurate stats is critical due to the advertising revenue, I use both Google Analytics and StatCounter.com. I can cross-check stats, and they are generally very close to each other, giving me a level of comfort to report accurate stats. StatCounter.com loads results very quickly and is simple to navigate. I prefer using it for my stats, and the analytics from GA supplements these numbers.

If you use different tools, which ones to you use and why?

Don’t Stop Domaining

Elliot Silver
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15

No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to stop working… whether I am out to dinner or on vacation, I always seem to find myself thinking about business. It’s not necessarily bad – unless you happen to be a person with whom I am spending my “free” time.

Nevertheless, it’s not always a bad thing (I think). We’ve been staying right on Jardin du Luxembourg, and it’s a beautiful area, as you can see from the photographs in this post. We went for a run in the gardens this morning and it was magnificent.   Been rainy for a few days, but the past two have been sunny in the high 70s.

While relaxing this evening, I went to see who owns JardinDuLuxembourg.com, and the name had expired and was not owned by anyone at the time. I pinged Bari (my rep at Moniker), and as she usually does when I send a message to her, she bought it instantly on my behalf.

I may post some photos on my new domain name when I have a chance and write a little bit about the area.There are quite a few hotels, restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, apartments…etc. It’s too bad I didn’t own it before I left… would be interesting to ask my accountant about expensing some of this trip… kidding.

Talk to you all soon… It’s time for some wine in the gardens.

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I didn’t bring my cord to upload photos, so these are courtesy of Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xlibber/2961646533
http://www.flickr.com/photos/switchhook/3388584338
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28793002@N03/3750452968
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davearquati/3808246269/

More photos on Flickr that aren’t Creative Commons.

Lead Generation on Targeted Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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35

I know there are a lot of successful domain investors who are using their targeted domain names for lead gen, and I am thinking about trying it. Instead of selling a key domain name or spending time and effort building the site fully, I could reach out to one of the main companies in the field and work out a deal for the leads my site brings. Depending on the typical CPA, this could be very beneficial to both parties, and if successful, could actually lead to the domain sale.

The general premise is that I would take one of my exact match domain names where people are looking to buy an expensive product (probably a custom product or financial product), and I would do a one page website with general information about the product for SEO purposes and have a well-placed information request form.   For those who aren’t adept at web development, Wufoo is a website that allows people to create custom forms, and I think it would work well for this type of project.

What got me thinking about this was that for the bike tour in which I participated, the Ronald McDonald House provided its riders with custom “Team Ronald” technical bike shirts. I was thinking that the RMDH organizer probably did a Google search for “custom bike shirts” or something like that in order to find a company that made the shirts. If I owned CustomBikeShirts.com and they requested more information for 25 bike shirts (cost of around $2,000), it would be a nice commission check for just sending the lead to a shirt company.

One thing that I (and you) should consider is that there may be privacy issues with sharing personal and contact information, especially if it’s health, legal, or medical-related, so be sure to have a well-placed terms and conditions notice as well as a privacy policy. These are good to have in general, but if you are sharing or selling this information, it’s essential.

Perhaps some of the experts who are doing lead generation on their domain names can share some tips with those of us who are interested in trying!

TMZ Using Meebo for Social Networking

Elliot Silver
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0

Meebo BarI noticed a new menu bar sitting above the load bar when I visited TMZ, and I learned they are using a company called Meebo to help with their social networking. The Meebo Bar allows you to share the page, Like it on Facebook, share it on Twitter, and/or chat with your friends on Facebook and AIM.

One clever feature that isn’t as obvious can be seen when you mouse over one of the images or videos. A message appears telling you to “drag to share,” and when you drag this image/video, another full menu appears allowing you to “drop” the image in the place you’d like to share the story – Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Yahoo, or email. It seems to be a very cool way to easily share articles.

The one downside I noticed off the bat is that the site seems to load much more slowly than before the Meebo tools were added, and it’s a bit annoying to have the page loading for a few seconds after arriving.

For those of you who are developing your domain names, it’s a good idea to look at the features offered on popular websites like TMZ.com to see what types of plugins, widgets, and add-ons you can put on your sites. I don’t think the Meebo social networking tools would be worth adding on my blog, but I could potentially find a use for it on one or more of my sites.

The Events Calendar Plugin for WordPress

Elliot Silver
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6

My developer installed The Events Calendar plugin for WordPress on Lowell.com, and it’s the best calendar I’ve used. On the home page, I have the upcoming events listed on the upper right, and I have upcoming and past event pages within the site. Each event listing has its own page, allowing easy Google indexing, which is beneficial and sticky. The calendar I previously used did not do this, and that was a setback.

In terms of search engine optimization, the calendar integrates nicely with the All in One SEO plugin I have installed on the site, so each event has good SEO practices built in to it. Additionally, events are easy to add simply by using the post functionality built into the WordPress platform.

My developer was able to make some customizations to the plugin both in terms of appearance and performance. For instance, the website field on each event is now “no follow,” so the site doesn’t leak the “link juice” that may have hurt the site’s rankings. In addition, people can add photos and images within the event listing, making it more appealing. Here’s a sample listing for a Cinco de Mayo Fundraiser.

One of the best things about the plugin has to be the support of the plugin creators. I ran into a minor issue with the appearance of events in the calendar, and when I contacted Shane and Peter, they put me in touch with two of the key developers Justin and Kelsey, and Kelsey was able to troubleshoot and solve the problem quickly.

You don’t always see great support with WordPress plugins, but these guys were great.   If you need an Event Calendar plugin on your WordPress website, I highly recommend The Events Calendar plugin.

Pricing the Advertising on Your Website

Elliot Silver
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13

Coming up with a price structure for advertising on your website is more of an art than a science. If you price your ad spots too high, nobody will want to advertise (or they won’t renew), and if you price it too low, you could leave a lot of money on the table. So the question becomes, “how much do I charge for advertising on my website?”

Here are the things I think you need to consider when coming up with your website’s pricing:

Prices other sites are charging

  • Media buyers and advertisers want to determine how much a customer acquisition will cost them on your site vs. other websites. If your site gets 1,000 visits a month and charges $200/banner and another site gets 10,000 visits a month and charges $350 for the same banner and placement, you can probably guess where they will spend their money. Perhaps they will run a test with you if you’re lucky, but your pricing should be realistic.

Audience interaction with your website

  • The more comments people post, the more engaged your readers tend to be with your website. If they are interacting with your site, you have a captive audience. Other examples of interaction are Twitter re-tweets and will soon be Facebook Likes once that rolls out further. If people recommend your site to others, advertisers will probably want to be there.

Traffic to your website and rankings (Compete/Alexa/Quantcast).

  • Everyone uses different analytics sources it seems, but the metrics companies generally don’t lie. If you say your website gets 2,000 unique visits a day and you’re Alexa ranking is 85,000 and Compete is at 100,000, you are probably looking at funky traffic #s or perhaps your stat counter is counting bots. Advertisers don’t want to server advertisements (and pay for them) to bots. Bots don’t buy products 🙂

Comparable cost for a PPC campaign

  • If advertisers are paying $2.00 a click on Adsense or other PPC campaign, and they can get more clicks (that are targeted) from your site with the same sales rate, they will probably want to advertise. Determine the going rate for an Adsense campaign on a site like yours and test how many clicks each banner spot typically gets (using internal banners or affiliate banners that track clicks) and price accordingly.

How targeted your site is

  • You can charge a lot more for your website if you get considerable targeted traffic. If lots of people are coming to your site to learn something specific or to read about something specific, they all become potential targets for advertisers. If you have a very broad website, many advertisements won’t be relevant to the visitors, so advertisers will expect to pay less

Your time commitment

  • From an advertiser’s perspective, this isn’t really important, but from a publisher’s perspective, it’s critical. Unless you are independently wealthy, you need to consider the amount of time you put into your website and be paid accordingly. As my business has grown, I couldn’t afford to spend the time and effort writing articles if I wasn’t making enough revenue. I love blogging and sharing, but it just wouldn’t make sense for this to be a detriment to my business growth. Time investment and revenue potential are two things that need to balance for your site to be a financial success.
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