Newbie Traffic Question

[nitevids]

Happy Fourth of July everyone!
I will be getting wasted tonite and BBQing tomorrow!
Hope you all will be having a good one too!

Anyways, I am a little confused about reading my stats from my server it says I am getting about 56 unique visitors per day averaged 3 days, then theres 70 visitors per day again 3 day avg., then there's 968 pages, oh and 8891 hits, and also 174.94MB Bandwidth.

Can someone explain to me what each is and which number is the most important?

It also seems I am getting alot of hits from googlebot and crawl?
Whats that and why do they have bots screwing up my hit counts?

Well I hope someone can shed a light on this subject for me .

Thanks and Happy Fourth of July !!!

[balls_deep]

hits don't mean a thing, pay attention to the unique ratio. That is the important number. Each unique you register will be one single visitor to your site.

[theviking]

A hit is for each usercommand the server recives (or something like that). To explain it simple... if you open up a gallery with 16 pictures, 2 banners and a couple of other graphical elements you would read appx. 20 hits. Each time that same user open that gallery it will count 20 hits. If he open the page 6 times it will count appx. 120 hits, but still it is only 1 unique.

[Hammer]

If you used up 174.94MB of bandwidth with only 8891 raw hits, you better figure out why you're burning so much bandwidth. From what you say it sounds like that bandwidth was burned by a couple hundred surfers (uniques), and that ain't good.

[Cozy Monica]

Like everyone has said, uniques is what you want to be looking at, the other numbers really aren't useful to you. Uniques is the number of individual people who have visited your site.

And you'd better listen to Hammer here and figure out what's up with the bandwidth. Are you posting absolutely massive images? Or videos?

[xtreme_ballr]

Im a newbie also so please correct me if Im wrong

Unique visitors - counts each new IP address that visits your site each day. Even if someone goes to your site 10 times in one day it only counts as one unique.

Visits - counts all visits, therefore if someone went to your site ten times today you will have 1 unique and 10 visits.

Pages - The amount of pages all of those unique visitors checked out. So 968 pages viewed by 56 visitors is roughly 17 page views each.

Hits - I believe this is just how many things they clicked on??


Well this is my understanding at least.

[nitevids]

Originally posted by Hammer
If you used up 174.94MB of bandwidth with only 8891 raw hits, you better figure out why you're burning so much bandwidth. From what you say it sounds like that bandwidth was burned by a couple hundred surfers (uniques), and that ain't good.

I do have some videos but it is actually hosted by a different site and its posted as a flash player on my site. Could this be the cause ? And what does that do ? Will it slow down the loading of my site for others?

[balls_deep]

Originally posted by nitevids
I do have some videos but it is actually hosted by a different site and its posted as a flash player on my site. Could this be the cause ? And what does that do ? Will it slow down the loading of my site for others?

if the flash movie is not on your server then it is not burning your bandwidth. I just clicked your page on a dial up connection and it won't load to save my life. Seems that your images and banners are way too big in file size.

[Hammer]

Nitevids, you have a few thumbnails at the top of the page that are huge in file size. This one http://nitevids.com/WordPress/wp-con...7/DSC00714.JPG is 318.71 KB.

First thing you need to do is to downsize the large image some and then optimize it in Photoshop so it's more like 50k to 100k instead of over 300k.

Next, you need to create thumbnail images instead of using html to reduce the large photo to a thumbnail. It slows the load time of your page WAY down and is going to kill you on bandwidth. Even though most of your visitors won't click on every one of those thumbnails, the full size images are still loading every time someone lands on the page.

You're doing the same thing with every image on the page. Like this one. http://nitevids.com/WordPress/wp-con...06/cdrench.jpg

The thumbnail for that image is 73k because you're just using html to downsize the original instead of making your own thumbnail at the size you want to use it on the page. The thumbnail for that image should be more like 10k.

[nitevids]

Originally posted by Hammer
Nitevids, you have a few thumbnails at the top of the page that are huge in file size. This one http://nitevids.com/WordPress/wp-con...7/DSC00714.JPG is 318.71 KB.

First thing you need to do is to downsize the large image some and then optimize it in Photoshop so it's more like 50k to 100k instead of over 300k.

Next, you need to create thumbnail images instead of using html to reduce the large photo to a thumbnail. It slows the load time of your page WAY down and is going to kill you on bandwidth. Even though most of your visitors won't click on every one of those thumbnails, the full size images are still loading every time someone lands on the page.

You're doing the same thing with every image on the page. Like this one. http://nitevids.com/WordPress/wp-con...06/cdrench.jpg

The thumbnail for that image is 73k because you're just using html to downsize the original instead of making your own thumbnail at the size you want to use it on the page. The thumbnail for that image should be more like 10k.

Thanks Hammer I went in and optimized and changed most of my images but I kept the thumb sizes around 150 I just feel 96 is to small but I do lose some quality but I guess those are links anyways. I will start uploading thumb sizes instead of doing it in html.

Oh and Balls you should be able to pull up the pages faster on dial up also.

Few other ?'s

What is the average amount of unique clicks to get to start feeling that I am getting good traffic?

What is a good Ads to content ratio?

I know my blog is just a random blog of different adult entertainment venues and it's not that good. But thus I have tried to post some originality to it everyday.

Should I be creating a blog for each different category?
eg. Asian Blogs, softcore blog, amateur blog and then funnel them into one site?

And if so is there any good software to post multiple blogs at once?

Thanks for everyones help !

[nitevids]

My question is simple:

I am getting an avereage of about 70 unique hits per day and to be honest my site seems very BLah!

Is it time for me to get some professional help ?

As far as look of the site and marketing?

If so I would like to ask Hammer what do you charge or do you even do this sort of thing for others?

I don't have alot of money to spend I would just like a better looking site because I think I can post content myself.

[theviking]

Originally posted by nitevids
My question is simple:
Is it time for me to get some professional help ?

- Move those links to Twans diectories higher at the page. He have toplists at many of his dir. (catch 22).

- I have not recived a pm from you weither regarding the linkdumpsubmitter nor the list of social bookmarking sites. (Both are 100% free traffic).

- A blog gets mainly SE traffic, BUT .... don't expect that traffic to turn op over night. I would say 3-6 months is a normal time before you see any significant from that hold.

- You can submit to linkdumps and soc. bm sites _every day_ from the same blog. You just submit every new post.

- How many surfer forums are you member at? Do you have the link to you're blog in you're sig?

- How many yahoo groups are you posting to?

- How many toplists have you signed up to?

Allso... build and submit a few galleries and freesites on the same domain, and you will get some freeloaders there that might push a few links at you're blog.

--- Just send the money to red cross or something ---

[balls_deep]

Originally posted by nitevids
Few other ?'s

1. What is the average amount of unique clicks to get to start feeling that I am getting good traffic?

2. What is a good Ads to content ratio?

3. Should I be creating a blog for each different category?
eg. Asian Blogs, softcore blog, amateur blog and then funnel them into one site?

4. And if so is there any good software to post multiple blogs at once?

1. 100000 hits per day is some decent traffic. This is going to vary depending on your site niche. Some blogs get massive traffic while others get only 100-200 uniques per day. It is all about the conversion number not necessarily the traffic.

2. personal preference. Don't make a banner farm.

3. I have seen a lot of people swear by feeder blogs and the likes but I would personally spend that time optimizing my real blog.

4. Just write a post then RSS it into your other blogs.

[Hammer]

Nitevids - I'm not sure what you meant by do I do that sort of thing.

Yes, we do offer custom blog designs, but that doesn't seem to be your problem. It sounds to me like you are complaining about a lack of traffic and that's not going to be improved by putting up a kick-ass design. A good design can increase conversions and obviously appeal to your visitors, but it's not going to increase your traffic.

If you meant do I help people market their blogs, the answer is not really. I do however offer paid consulting.

Do you need my services? Probably not, especially if you have a limited budget. People that pay me for consulting are typically running their own pay sites or are doing something more complicated than starting a simple blog.

The site still loads very slowly for me, even though it appears that you have now optimized your images, so I'd think about getting a better host.

I'm not a big fan of red, and most designers will tell you the same thing.

I think you've gone overboard with the banners.

[nitevids]

Originally posted by Hammer

Yes, we do offer custom blog designs, but that doesn't seem to be your problem. It sounds to me like you are complaining about a lack of traffic and that's not going to be improved by putting up a kick-ass design. A good design can increase conversions and obviously appeal to your visitors, but it's not going to increase your traffic.

Do you need my services? Probably not, especially if you have a limited budget. People that pay me for consulting are typically running their own pay sites or are doing something more complicated than starting a simple blog.

The site still loads very slowly for me, even though it appears that you have now optimized your images, so I'd think about getting a better host.

I'm not a big fan of red, and most designers will tell you the same thing.

I think you've gone overboard with the banners.

That's what I meant actually if you build custom blog templates I took this off the net so it's kind of blah !
Im not really complaining about the amount of traffic because I know it will take time, but as you said alot of people don't care for red but unfortunately I don't know how to build my own template. How much do you charge typically for a custom blog template? I am not very artsy so I wouldn't be able to do any sort of graphic design.

Do you really think it's my host? I am currently using startlogic.com

As far as the banners go do you mean the banners on my side bar or having them in my posts?

Again Thanks for your help.

[nitevids]

Originally posted by theviking
- Move those links to Twans diectories higher at the page. He have toplists at many of his dir. (catch 22).

- I have not recived a pm from you weither regarding the linkdumpsubmitter nor the list of social bookmarking sites. (Both are 100% free traffic).

- A blog gets mainly SE traffic, BUT .... don't expect that traffic to turn op over night. I would say 3-6 months is a normal time before you see any significant from that hold.

- You can submit to linkdumps and soc. bm sites _every day_ from the same blog. You just submit every new post.

- How many surfer forums are you member at? Do you have the link to you're blog in you're sig?

- How many yahoo groups are you posting to?

- How many toplists have you signed up to?

Allso... build and submit a few galleries and freesites on the same domain, and you will get some freeloaders there that might push a few links at you're blog.

--- Just send the money to red cross or something ---

-Don't know what you mean about Twan

-tried to submit following your sig link got Site Returned HTTP Code:302 error

-thanks nice to have a time to watch for

-Not many surfer forums but will start joining

-Yahoo groups you mean like in chats?

-toplists? again huh?

-thanks I will start working on some galleries

-Red Cross Katrina huuricane relief sounds good.

Thanks alot for your response Vike really appreciate all your help.

[Hammer]

Feel free to hit me up on ICQ at 167909760 or shoot me an email. The price for a blog template depends on what you need. The cost for the template alone is $350 to $500 depending on how complicated a design the client wants.. But if clients want special scripting or would like us to provide them with a complete, ready-to-go blog including sidebar widgets and advertising in place, the price would more.

There are blog template designers out there that charge less, but very few if any of them would be able to do anything more than provide a template and I've not seen any producing blog designs like this:

http://www.otakukun.com/

p.s. I meant the banners in your sidebar. I don't know anyting about Startlogic but the site loads very slow for me. Unless you have a long term contract with them, I recommend switching hosts. I host many sites with ATCI Hosting and I've been very happy with them.

Once your blog gets popular, you will outgrow a virtual account and you'll eventually need a dedicated account, so make sure that whoever you decide to host with has good prices on dedicated hosting. I had to switch to dedicated for Hammer Uncut as soon as I got a post on Digg one day and got slammed with over 65,000 hits in about 12 hours.

[nitevids]

Thanks Hammer will do .

I paid for 1 yr. in advance so I gotta stick with them for about 9 more mos.

I'll take some banners off maybe that'll help.

I got your ICQ so I'll go ahead and send you a message.

Again thanks for your help.