Internet Marketing and Web Site Design News for Small Business

Internet Marketing and Web Design News - Florida & Beyond

Thursday, November 17, 2005 4:26 PM

How much traffic is going to your blog?

Statistics programs can be difficult to manage exact areas of visibility on a website...especially if they're in a secondary-page area. Bloggers are notorious, due to their unique abilities, to mismanage how well your blog is doing within your website. I've found a great method on fixing this. Here's how it works:

Step 1: Make your weblog within your site. For example, take a look at my EyeMagination website and it's web blog. If you hover over my navigation at the top (look at the EyeMagination home page for example), I have a link to the news section.

Step 2: Find a good statistics program through Javascript. One great example is SiteMeter statistics. Signup for one of their free accounts and follow the prompts. You'll get an email to access your stats or follow the prompts & to manage your account.

Step 3: Manage your stats program: Sitemeter, for example...you'll want to "Add the HTML for your counter to your web pages." Then click on "meter style". Make sure your meter is the same color as your background & it's just showing the counter/numbers. This makes you meter invisible to 99% of the users out there. Then, get the code through the HTML Editors (I use dreamweaver, so I access Dreamweaver MX 2004 (or newer)). Also note that you can add code through their blogger system code area, but I prefer the javascript. After you find the javascript, copy the "Site Meter JavaScript HTML" and place it into your blogger program.

Step 4: Add the code into your blog template. Log into your blogger/weblog account. Then, go to the template and add the code to the bottom of your website or anywhere that isn't easily noticed. Make sure to have enough space between your counter & the rest of the document so it doesn't get noticed. In the blogger.com system, it's easy to do - just preview your post & make sure it all looks good before you republish your entire site.

Step 5: Publish your site and check your info. After you republish your template, go ahead and hover your mouse over where the counter is. Notice that it can be clicked on? Now you can see your stats anytime you wish. And, you'll also get your stats (visitors & such) via email. They also have more complex stats if you wish...you just need to pay for that.

Now you know how many visitors are coming to your blog. Plus, you can see the type of referrers, page views, and a whole assortment of statistical information. This will also help you design your articles around what people are actually searching for. Soon enough, you too will be getting more traffic to your site...all built around the type of articles you've created.

4:26 PM - Add your comment here!

Gamers finally making money

Can you make money selling imaginary items? During the "dot-bomb" age, people sold vapor-wear. Some even say that web design is selling nothing but pushed-pixels. But now, you can sell (through ecommerce) imaginary items and get this kind of money:

"Though Paul declines to pin down his annual income -- it's more than $150,000 and less than $1 million, he says -- his Porsche 911 Carrera and wife's Lincoln Navigator suggest that he is comfy."

How does this happen? Through massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMO for short). Now that video games have become a multi-billion dollar industry and are increasingly online, it was only a matter of time before gamers could make a little dough. "Estimates of the size of the new market in virtual property range widely -- from about $200 million to $1 billion worldwide -- but most industry observers agree that it is increasing at a breakneck pace, possibly 100 percent year over year." And, MMOs allow players to find items that have real value in these video games. So, if someone wants to play a game quicker or have advantages without time delay, they can now go to various e-commerce places (i.e. Ebay, CraigsList, and real-money trade virtual worlds - a.k.a. RMT) and buy these items.

However, the real money lies in the character's profiles called Avatars. A gamer can create an avatar and sell their entire profile to an e-commerce merchant. This e-commerce merchant (also known as the middle-man in business terms) then upsells the Avatars for real cash. Transactions through the RMT have proven and will continue to be lucrative. It's only a matter of time (and bandwidth) before gamers can start making their pixels pay off.

3:24 PM - Add your comment here!

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