jpmblog.com » traffic http://jpmblog.com John\ Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:48:49 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Placing a value on your readers http://jpmblog.com/2011/10/05/placing-a-value-on-your-readers/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/10/05/placing-a-value-on-your-readers/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:54:44 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1872

The word ‘value’ means different things to different people and you could argue that every one of your readers is priceless, but for the purposes of this article ‘value’ will refer to a monetary amount.

For a blogger placing a value on their readers is difficult but for the purposes of setting targets and goals it can be a very useful exercise. It might not be an exact science and will involve the use of averages but if you can assign an average value to each visitor to your site then you can work out how many views you need to reach your goal.

As an example I’m going to use 2 months worth of stats from my iPhone-experience.com website.

Across August and September iPhone-Experience.com received 9129 unique visitors and through Adsense ads generated 2065 pence (£20.65)

On average each visitor for that 2 month period was worth 0.23p. If I was to set a goal to generate a £60 adsense payment every month then I need to target £2.00 per day. To do this then on average I would need to attract 870 readers to the site everyday.

Now there’s a target.

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]]> http://jpmblog.com/2011/10/05/placing-a-value-on-your-readers/feed/ 0 How Effective are Facebook Adverts http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/25/how-effective-are-facebook-adverts/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/25/how-effective-are-facebook-adverts/#comments Sun, 25 Sep 2011 21:49:36 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1852 In this previous post I looked at the the effectiveness of Microsoft Ad campaigns using a free voucher I received, and I thought that I would compare a number of pay per click advert systems (where you only pay when an advert gets clicked) to see how they compare, and I’ve been testing Facebook PPC Adverts to see how they perform.
I created a campaign based around the same test website (a small and basic health insurance advice site) using the same wording as I used in the Microsoft Advert. So how did the Facebook campaign compare?


Facebook shows relevant ads by knowing the demographic details and interests of it’s members, whereas the Microsoft system picks relevant ads based on search criteria, and from my testing the Microsoft system works much better then the Facebook system.


My Facebook ad generated 33,028 impressions but only received 8 clicks with an average cost of £0.68 per click, whereas the Microsoft ad generated 33,500 impressions and received 111 clicks with a much lower average cost per click of only £0.09.

There may be an occasion where Facebook serves a specific purpose, eg where you need to target a specific demographic, but as a pure advertising platform Facebook looks to be expensive and not as effective as other ad platforms.

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]]> http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/25/how-effective-are-facebook-adverts/feed/ 0 How Effective are Microsoft Adverts http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/21/how-good-are-microsoft-adverts/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/21/how-good-are-microsoft-adverts/#comments Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:46:21 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1842 I recently received an email from Microsoft Ad Centre inviting me to trial their service with a $50 free voucher. I had difficulty using the voucher as I’m based in the UK, but Microsoft Customer Services were excellent is finding me a voucher code for the equivalent amount for UK based Website owners.

So with my account credited I thought I would try their service to see how well it worked for bringing traffic to a website devloped specifically for the test.

Using a campaign  of 4 hours as a testbed and with a maximum limit of £0.30 (although my average CPC ended up at £0.09) 34.5K advert impressions generated 111 clicks.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft Ads compare to other Ad sources, I might use some other free vouchers to see if a comparison of services is possible. I’ll report back on my findings here.

 

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]]> http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/21/how-good-are-microsoft-adverts/feed/ 0 How to get Traffic from Twitter and why Twitter is like TV Adverts http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/14/how-to-get-traffic-from-twitter-and-why-twitter-is-like-tv-adverts/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/14/how-to-get-traffic-from-twitter-and-why-twitter-is-like-tv-adverts/#comments Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:19:15 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1821 In this previous post I discussed how I was finding that the content of the articles I was linking to was more important then how the actual tweet was written.
What I also started to notice was that when I sent a tweet the effect on traffic to my site was generally pretty instant rather then sustained.
This might be because when you catch a follower online your tweet appears at the top of their timeline but if they login sometime after the tweet is sent then can get hidden within dozens of other tweets.

With this in mind Twitter could be compared to TV advertising in that it’s at it’s most effective when people actually see the advert at time of broadcast, if it’s missed then it’s message is lost.

So how then can Twitter be used to it’s most effective to share your links and drive traffic to your site? Following the TV advertising example I tried sending multiple tweets linking to my iPhone site across my Twitter networks.
My Twitter network is shared across 4 Twitter accounts each focused on a technical theme so tweets about the iPhone should be of interest to some of my followers.

Rather the retweeting the same link several times in 1 day, I decided to pick a number of popular articles and schedule a Tweet linking to each at regular intervals throughout the day. Each time the tweet was published it was sent out across all 4 accounts, this allowed frequent visibility of links to my site without boring my followers with repeated identical links.

As seen in the graph below Using this method really boosted the amount of traffic to my site, nearly doubling the amount of site views.

By going deeper into the hourly stats following this method the individual traffic spikes (the blue line) matching the scheduled tweets can clearly be seen.


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]]> http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/14/how-to-get-traffic-from-twitter-and-why-twitter-is-like-tv-adverts/feed/ 0 Does how a Tweet is written effect the number of clicks http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/05/does-how-a-tweet-is-written-effect-the-number-of-clicks/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/05/does-how-a-tweet-is-written-effect-the-number-of-clicks/#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 22:02:21 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1757 In this post I explained how I had Tweeted a link to my Twitter Network and wanted to see if there was a difference in the amount of traffic sent to the article, if the post was written in a different manner.

A link to the exact same article was sent out at the exact same same ‘optimum times’, on the 31st of August the Tweet was basic and too the point, on the 1st of September the Tweet was more descriptive and tried to sell the article more.

The results can be seen in the Graph below which shows traffic to the Article. Little if any difference was noticed.

Compare the results to the following graph which shows what happened when a tweet was sent out to all my Twitter networks at the same time and ignoring optimum tweeting times.
The Tweet was describing a way to find out how to find cheap iPhone games, so there was a natural incentive for my followers to click on the link.
Even though optimum posting times were ignored, the article attracted more readers.
Perhaps content is king over style.

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]]> http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/05/does-how-a-tweet-is-written-effect-the-number-of-clicks/feed/ 0 How Tweeting Links can Improve Traffic http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/01/how-tweeting-links-can-improve-traffic/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/01/how-tweeting-links-can-improve-traffic/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:45:54 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1785 In this article I wrote about an experiment I was running with Twitter about scheduling Tweets to tie in with when the majority of your Followers are online, and here are the results.

Twitter sent 21 visitors to the article, which from a potential pool of about 4.5k followers is a little disappointing as that it equates to not even 1% of my followers clicked through to read the article

However whilst the results weren’t as good as I was hoping the traffic to the article did double, but is there anyway that I can improve the traffic further using Twitter. This is a copy of the Tweet I sent: How to view iPhone Photos on your PC http://t.co/3e7zxLg

In all honesty the Tweet I sent wasn’t particually exciting or catchy, and could have probably have used a couple of Buzz words.

So with a bit of re-wording and polishing the tweet becomes:  The iPhone can take great photo’s & heres a Great Article on several methods for viewing your iPhone Photos on your PC.  http://t.co/3e7zxLg

I’ve scheduled the Tweet to be published to my Twitter Network at the same times as the previous Tweet.

I’ll report back here on the results

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]]> http://jpmblog.com/2011/09/01/how-tweeting-links-can-improve-traffic/feed/ 0 How to See when your Twitter Followers are Online http://jpmblog.com/2011/08/31/how-to-see-when-your-twitter-followers-are-online/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/08/31/how-to-see-when-your-twitter-followers-are-online/#comments Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:30:42 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1775 Twitter is a great tool for sharing a message with many followers at the same time, however how do you know when the best time to Tweet is.

Given that most Twitter Users have busy timelines where older tweets can be missed, to reach a maximum number of followers it’s best to post when most users are currently online and looking at Twitter, so that they see your Tweet Arrive – but how can you tell when the optimum time is to reach your Followers.

Tweriod is a free service which will analyse your Twitter Followers Twitter usage over the previous  month and generate a report of the optimum time frames when most are online. It’s free reports cover Sundays, Mondays, Weekend Averages, and Weekday averages. I tend to use just the average results.

Using one of my accounts from this twitter experiment it’s clear to see that the optimum time frame is around 4pm. You could then either manually Tweet or schedule a Tweet for that time frame knowing that as many of your Followers as possible will see the message

Tweriod is easy to use, all you do is log in to the site using your Twitter account details and they do the rest, you can get an updated report for free once every month, and whilst there are some premium facilities that you can pay for the free service will be fine for most Tweeters.

To put the results generated by Tweriod to the test:

  • I’ve used Google Analytics to pick a popular article from my site.
  • Write a Tweet about the Article.
  • Schedule a Tweet to each of the 4 accounts and also my iphonehints twitter account for their optimum time.

I’ll post the results here.

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]]> http://jpmblog.com/2011/08/31/how-to-see-when-your-twitter-followers-are-online/feed/ 0 Quick Twitter Followers Update (29/07/11) (end of first month) http://jpmblog.com/2011/08/03/quick-twitter-followers-update-290711-end-of-first-month/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/08/03/quick-twitter-followers-update-290711-end-of-first-month/#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:12:35 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1700 In this post I discussed how I was testing TweetAttacks on Twitter Accounts that I created to see how quickly you could build up a large relatively targeted Twitter Audience.

Each time I make a post on iphone-experience.com I re-tweet on these other accounts to increase the number of people who are aware of my articles.

I have 4 accounts currently being increased by TweetAttacks, and I currently have a combined following of  1426 twitter users, and increase of 403 over last weeks total.  During this week I was without a computer for a couple of days and manually followed other users using this process.

 


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]]> http://jpmblog.com/2011/08/03/quick-twitter-followers-update-290711-end-of-first-month/feed/ 0 If your Twitter Followers were a Country, which Country would they be http://jpmblog.com/2011/08/01/if-your-twitter-followers-were-a-country-which-country-would-they-be/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/08/01/if-your-twitter-followers-were-a-country-which-country-would-they-be/#comments Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:30:06 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1704 Twitter is a fantastic tool for very quickly reaching out to many people and sharing a brief message, but when looking at how many Twitter followers someone has can you really put that number in to context. To most people it will just be a figure, but to try and visualise numbers of users you could compare the populations of countries.

For example every time Stephen Fry writes a Tweet it appears on the the time line of ~ 2.8 million Twitter users, which equates to the population of Mongolia. Imagine any other situation where an entire population of a country can hear something you say, and what’s more a country who has chosen to listen to you by following your Tweets.

Here are some further examples of comparing Twitter followers to the populations of countries:

Interesting 2 pop stars (one of which is a young lad) has significantly more followers then the official Twitter account of the President of the United States and most powerful man in the world.

With popularity and an audience comes responsibility, as a small example Stephen Fry has accidentally taken a few websites down simply by providing a link to their site and the amount of traffic has taken down the server. Imagine if Lady Gaga linked to a site, the amount of traffic could be about 4 times larger.

We have recently seen how when Twitter collectively gets behind a cause the effect can be incredible, just ask the former staff at the News of the World news paper, and with millions of followers you could start to direct Twitter causes. This could (and I ‘m sure does) causes some cause of concern.

Even my little iPhonehints twitter feed reaches the same number of people as in a country called Niue, (which is a small island country of New Zealand citizens).

Hello Niue I feel I have a connection with you now.

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]]> http://jpmblog.com/2011/08/01/if-your-twitter-followers-were-a-country-which-country-would-they-be/feed/ 0 Quick Twitter Followers Update (22/07/11) (over 1000 followers in 3 weeks) http://jpmblog.com/2011/07/22/quick-twitter-followers-update-220711-over-1000-followers-in-3-weeks/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://jpmblog.com/2011/07/22/quick-twitter-followers-update-220711-over-1000-followers-in-3-weeks/#comments Fri, 22 Jul 2011 20:02:58 +0000 JPM http://jpmblog.com/?p=1688 In this post I discussed how I was testing TweetAttacks on Twitter Accounts that I created to see how quickly you could build up a large relatively targeted Twitter Audience.

Each time I make a post on iphone-experience.com I re-tweet on these other accounts to increase the number of people who are aware of my articles.

I have 4 accounts currently being increased by TweetAttacks, and I currently have a combined following of  1023 twitter users, and increase of 308 over last weeks total.

On average I’m picking up an additional 48 followers per day, which means that if I did this process everyday for a year I could increase my followers by 17500.

Over the next week I’m going to increase the numbers of people I follow using TweetAttacks to see if I can accelerate the process with out upsetting twitter and getting banned


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