I am not a social butterfly. I do not enjoy going to house warming parties and commenting on the beautiful red rug. I do not care that my friend’s Facebook status is “Gone to store for apples.”

I had a Facebook account, but after a few months stopped using it. Too much information about things I do not care about. Why do people spend so much time exchanging the minutia of everyday events. Should I care that my friend went to British Columbia for a vacation and that he saw a moose. Should I look at his 22 pictures of the moose eating grass and be entertained? I do not understand it.

Now there is Twitter. Exchange even smaller bits of information. It is so easy to do that you will get details like, “feeling hungry, thinking of eating a carrot”. All day you can watch these little bits of unfiltered information scrolling across your screen. When I first heard about it, I thought that it was a ridiculous idea. Nobody will use it.

Not only are people reading these little packets of non-info. They also enjoy writing them. Lots of them. “I found a dime under the bed today”. Before I started this website all these social networks did not concern me. They are a success – great – but does not concern me.

But now it looks like I need to use them. On every blog about increasing traffic you read about how vital the social networks are to traffic. Sign up to as many social sites as you can and start building your network.

That scares me a little. I do not want to turn into a micro information junky. Spending hours exchanging small talk with 200 network friends. Small talking to 5 people at a cocktail party scares me. “How’s the weather?”, “Good” “Hows work?”, “Good”. Repeat 5 times. And now with Twitter I would have to do that 200 times a day.

Social Networks are Great For Traffic

Social Networks are good because you can send information through them very quickly. It is a very simple principle:

You know something (1 person knows)
You tell two of your friends (3 people know)
Each of them tells two of their friends (10 people know)
Each of them tell two of their friends (18 people know)

As this continues through the network more and more people know at a faster and faster rate. Simply by telling two of your friends you can get the information to hundreds of people in very little time. It just depends how big the network is and how willing your friends are to tell their friends. You tell them that you won the lottery and in no time all your friends will know.

The other advantage is that your friends do not have the same friends as you do. So your friends might tell somebody that you do not even know. Now suddenly it is in a network that you did not even know existed. People you do not know are receiving your information.

Networking sounds great. A great way to get traffic. It is. But I am not going to do it.

The First Step Is The Most Important

The most important step in the social network is the first one. Tell two of your friends. That gets the ball rolling. After that they tell their friends and on it goes.

The question is: why should I spend my time doing that first step? Other people will do it for me. If the website is interesting, if people want to pass it on to their friends then they will. I would have to start my social network from scratch. I would have to login everyday and chat with my network. Reading all the banter, and writing banter. Day in and day out. Lots of time wasted.

Let Other People Do the Social Networking

Instead of me doing it, there are people out there already with huge social networks. They enjoy exchanging information. If one of the people visit the website and finds it interesting then they will pass it on.

Currently I have 50 visitors a day. I am guessing that lots of them use Facebook and Twitter. At least some of them will find the website interesting and pass it on. Start the network process. Why should I spend my time starting the process when there are so many others that enjoy doing it and have much larger networks then I could ever have.

My small contribution to the increase in traffic via social network would be small compared to the abilities of my visitors. I would just be one out of many. My contribution small compared to the whole. Not worth the effort. I will focus on the website. Adding and improving content. Let the social butterflies with their establish networks do the marketing. They want to do it.

Of course, if my traffic does not increase, then I will register onto Twitter and tell my friends that “I just got back from the store. I am so happy. The apples where on sale.”

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, So You Want To Be A Webmaster...Get in my Head, What YOU Expect vs Reality, What YOU Should Do

When you first start a website.  Do not monetize.  Do not put up any ads.  First get a steady traffic base and then put up ads.

That is the recommendation that you will hear often.  I heard it too.  But I did not do it that way.  From day one there have been ads on the website. 

Like B.F. Skinner’s piano playing pigeons, I need to be constantly rewarded to perform a task.  The pigeons learned to play a toy piano by being given a treat when they hit the correct key.  I make updates to the website when an ad is clicked.

For me to create the website, post on forums, answer emails, for months without gain would be very difficult.  Make an update to website, get a treat.  Make a another update, get another treat.  This is the way I operate.  Like a pigeon.

So I put three ad zones on the website on day one.  Graphic banner on the left, unit ad on the top, and text ad on the right.  The website has been up for 26 days with 517 visitors.  Here are the earnings results for the different ad zones:

• Left Banner Ad: $5.38
• Top Unit Ad: $2.50
• Right Text Ad: $15.83

You can see the text ad on the right is the clear winner.  The unit ad on  the top is far behind.  Time to get rid of it.

Too Many Ads Increases Bounce

Not only does it not make any money, it also makes the site look cluttered.  The home page looks messy  – smothered by ads.  This is a major turn off for a lot of visitors.  They think to themselves, “This guy is only concerned with making money.”  I am.  But the visitors should not know that.

The clutter of ads on the website might explain the high bounce rate.  Currently 50% of the visitors land on my homepage and without looking at any other pages they leave.  They come in, look at the mess, and leave.

So, I will remove the unit ad.  This will:

• Make the site look cleaner
• Decrease the bounce rate
• Increase revenue

How will removing an ad increase revenue?  By removing the ad, the page will be less cluttered.  The visitor will be more willing to look at the other pages instead of leaving.

More Page Views By Reducing Bounce

Lets guess that had the unit ad not been there from the beginning, the bounce rate would be 10% lower as a result.  10% of all my visitors would not have bounced off the site, instead they looked at more pages. 

• Total visitors is 517
• 10% of 517 is 51 visitors
• Average page views per visitor is 2.83

Therefore instead of these 51 visitor just seeing 1 page and bouncing off, they would see   2.83 pages.  51 * 2.83 =  147 pages.  Now all we have to do is subtract the 51 pages that the bouncers already saw and we have 96 additional page views.  96 more page views by reducing the bounce rate by 10%.

How Does That Translate Into Earnings?

• Total Page Views: 1445
• Total Revenue Ads (minus Unit Ad): $21.20
• Revenue/Page View: $0.0146

So we multiply 96 additional pages by $0.0146 and we have $1.40.  Because of that unit ad I lost $1.40 of revenue.  Does not sound like much until you consider that it represents a 6.6% of my total revenue.  Reduce the number of ads and increase revenue by 6.6%.

Today I removed the unit ad.  In a future post we will see whether the bounce rate has decreased and revenue/pageview increased.   It will.

About Revenue, Earnings, Money, What YOU Expect vs Reality, What YOU Should Do

The Vision

You decide that you want to be a Web Master.  All you have to do if figure out what your website will be about.  For days you think of ideas.  Every time an idea pops in your head you think it might work.  Then after a few minutes of contemplation you decide that it is not a good idea.  Back to the drawing board.

Then one day while walking the dog, just as his leg lifts, you have a great idea.  You do not know where it came from but you really like it.  The more you think about it the better it gets.  From a little pea the idea grows into a melon.  The website begins to form in your head.  By the time the dog is back digging in the yard the idea has become golden.  You imagine millions of people visiting your site – why wouldn’t they?

My story is similar (except for the dog part).  Once I got the basic idea of the website, all the other things fell into place.  The money counter on the home page, the data page, the ‘did you know…’ section..  Millions of people visiting the website.  Returning again and again to see the number rise  Why wouldn’t they?  If I found a website like mine I would visit it all the time.  I had dollar bills flying in front of my eyeballs.

The Reality

The site has been up for 3 weeks.  And what a crash down to earth these 3 weeks have been. 

For the first week it was only one or two people visiting.  Then I joined forums and the traffic increased.  A little.  Week two and three have averaged about 25 visitors.  Far from millions.  How can it be only 25?  When I envisioned a typical visitor to the website I saw them reading the content while slowly putting a hand over their mouth to cover a wide WOW!  Then, all excited,  forwarding the address to all 200 of their Facebook friends.

The plan was for the few initial visitors to begin the traffic tsunami.  I thought I would need just a couple visitors and they would do the rest.  That is not happening.  To my surprise they are not forwarding the website to their friends.

Not only are they not forwarding it, the average page views per visitor is two.  TWO!  They land on the website, quickly look around the home page, click to another page and then leave.  How can they leave?  If I were to find a website like mine I would spend all morning reading everything – just absorbing all the great content.

And what I do not understand at all.  What has no explanation except that there must be some mistake with my statistics is that 63% of the visitors stay on the site for less then 30 seconds.  What can they possibly read in less then 30 seconds?  Nothing.  They are not even giving it a chance.  Just a quick look around, “I don’t like the background color”, and then they leave.  Only 5% of the visitors are do what they should do – stay for at least 30min.

After all these kicks in the balls.  When I think that the indecency is finally over.  And I am completely covered with tomatoes and eggs.  They go for the final blow.  So far, 0 RSS subscriptions.

The Lesson

At the beginning, when you have your vision.  Hold on to it..  Take it with you everywhere.  Imagin yourself explaining to Opera  how you came up with the idea.   Imagine yourself accepting a honorary writing degree from Yale.  Your family and friends envious of your success.  Cherish the vision because it will be a happy time.  Do it as long as you can because after you build your website all you will be doing is crying into your pillow.

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, Bitter and Pessimistic When I Wrote this, What YOU Expect vs Reality

I just checked – WordPress 2.7 (a blog creation tool) has been downloaded 1,175,343 times.

This does not necessarily mean that there are 1,175,343 WordPress 2.7 blogs out there.  Lets try to figure out how many people have downloaded it and have a blog.  Some assumptions: 

1. Half of all the people that downloaded it had to download it twice.  Who knows, maybe the first time they downloaded to a folder which later they could not find.  Actual blogs: 881,507
2. Half of those people download it but never bothered to go further.  They had a dream of creating a blog and 1000’s of people reading it everyday.  That dream, like most, will never be realized because they do nothing after downloading.  Actual blogs: 440,753
3. Half of those people create a blog but do not do any proper advertising.  So there is no way to find them.  Only their family and friends know about it.  In Google search it is on page 16.  Actual Blogs: 220,376

Ok, so after all this assuming is done we are left with 220,376 actual blogs that can be found on the internet.

How many successful blogs are there.  This is hard to determine, because the definition of a successful blog is quite relative.  So lets say a blog that makes enough money to suport the webmaster and his family confortably is considered successful.  So:

1. Of all the blogs in my niche (making money online) I can think about 5 of them that have enough traffic to be considered a success. But since I have probably not found all of them lets say there are 10.
2. There are hundreds of niches with blogs that are popular enough to be considered a success. Lets say 500.

Therefore of all the blogs created (220,376) only 500*10=5000 can be considered a successful.  That is 2%.  The above can be summurized for Wordpress downloads:

• Of all the WordPresses downloaded only 0.42% will become successful.
• Of all the WordPresses downloaded and blog created only 2% will become successful.

Of course all these are just rough numbers full of wild assumptions, but I would not be too suprised if the real figures are much different.  Actually my gut feeling is that the percent of successful blogs is even less.  Expecially since these are only WordPress blogs.  A lots more other types of blogs are competing to be the 10 best of every niche.

The point.  Do not be suprised if this blog is not around next year.

Bitter and Pessimistic When I Wrote this, What YOU Expect vs Reality