Your Site Logs Can Help You Make A Ton Of Money by Matt DeAngelis
I'm a busy guy. I own several traditional brick and mortar businesses, and I
spend a lot of time online. Since last month I've been spending a lot of time
working on this blog and re-orienting myself on the Net.
So every morning I let my four dogs out, grab a cup of coffee and toast a
bagel, then run upstairs and get on my computer. Some days I need to be out of
the house at 9:00 AM to get somewhere, and some days I have nothing but time.
Either way there are three things I do every morning after looking over my
emails. First I go and post an article to five different article sites. This
ensures that a steady stream of new one-way links to this website is being
produced.
Then I go to my RSS reader and poke around for a while on the forums and blogs
to see what is going on. I keep a notebook next to my computer and write down
anything that I think I can use later. Then I get to the most interesting and
important part of the morning -- I go to my awstats page.
Awstats is a basic site log analysis program that comes with most host
accounts. I've always wondered how accurate the hit counts and other numbers
really are, but that doesn't matter because I'm not looking for counts...I'm
looking for trends.
Reviewing and understanding your site traffic logs can help you make more money
by tailoring your site to meet the needs of your visitors.
The first place I stop is my average page counts by day of week. I've noticed
on AffiliateBlog that the traffic starts off strong on Monday, builds through
Wednesday, then starts to trail off. There's a small spike Saturday morning,
but it's a classic bell curve otherwise. What does this mean? It means that if
I have something that I think is going to be well received I try to publish it
on Sunday and get my pinging done for Monday. I've also noticed that my RSS
Feed subscribership follows the same pattern. This all makes sense, because
people start off the week strong and end it tired -- including me.
I breeze by the countries and note the flags because I think it's cool. Next I
stop at the section that shows the robots visiting the site. I make sure all of
them have been there recently (especially Google), and I make a note if it
looks like something is not right. I recently realized that one of the minor
robots had never visited, so I went to the site and submitted a listing. If
you're curious about all the robots out there, go to Robotstxt.com and take a
look. Make sure the major robots on the list have visited your site in the last
month. If not, you need to get them there. I've noticed that MSN, Yahoo and
Google (in that order) visit my site the most. You need regular robot visits to
ensure your latest content is indexed and available to prospective visitors.
Now we get to the fun part -- the list of the most-viewed pages. This tells you
which content people are most interested in, and which content isn't really
making the grade. The most popular post on AffiliateBlog has been The Ten Top
Paying Programs at Commission Junction This Week. Oddly enough, a similar post
about Shareasale is much farther down the list, meaning that people want to
hear about top paying programs, but they want to hear about Commission Junction
as well. I always watch for posts that climb up the line fast, and I always
take note of them to brainstorm another entry that my visitors might like.
I get some search engine traffic but not much, so I glance at the keywords.
Judging by some of the keywords that appear there, this section isn't very
accurate.
Still there? Okay...listen up. Here's where you can really multiply your
traffic, find some compatriots to work with and get some terrific insights into
the minds of your visitors. Move down to the section that shows the external
web sites that people are coming from. Understand...this is where your visitors
saw something about you and clicked on it.
Go through this entire list. I look for blog sites, web sites, social
bookmarking sites (like del.icio.us) and forums that have not appeared before
or have moved up fast. I click on the link and see where it leads. Then I see
the context in which my website appears.
Just as I do for people who trackback my blog (refer to it in their blog), I
follow each link, get an email address and send off a quick email to the person
thanking them for taking the time to mention my site. Nothing fancy -- just a
quick thanks is fine.
The responses I get back are terrific. I would say that a large majority of
them (80% probably) are responded to with amazement that I would take the time
to acknowledge their actions. But why wouldn't I? If someone takes the time to
recommend you the least you can do is acknowledge that recommendation and be
grateful for it.
I love the site list because I find out some really interesting things. For
example, my trackback to Google's blog when they bought Writely was actually
listed on the Google blog page and brought me some traffic. And I was on the
front page of del.icio.us for a little while...long enough to get some hits
that way too. It's really interesting, and it's really fun to go through.
Sigh...I am a dork.
One last observation...I noticed that the people bookmarking my page hovers
between 7 - 10%, which isn't bad. My RSS feed list at Feedburner hovers at
about the same range throughout the month, meaning that more people bookmark
the site than sign up for RSS feeds. I've pondered this all month, and I've
decided that a large majority of my visitors don't use RSS regularly. That's
why the new crimson box at the top of my blog pages has appeared today. I put
together an email version of my RSS feed in digest form that I'm going to make
available weekly.
So there's a ton of information out there in that log file -- you just need to
go over it carefully and think.
About the Author
Matt DeAngelis runs AffiliateBlog.com.
Matt is the former CTO of Modem Media, a pioneer in the Internet ad space. As a
foot soldier in the Internet revolution, Matt devised the technology behind
many of the most successful ad campaigns of the time.
|
