» March 12, 2008 in
You've got your online empire or you are growing one, what do you measure and how do you do it?
Excel or open office is the faithful standby. Create your charts and graphs and calculations. However I found when I use excel I don't look at the numbers as much as I should.
Even when using excel, what do you measure?
Unique visitors?
Conversions?
Subscribers?
Total Site Earnings?
Feed Subscribers?
Indexed pages in google?
Comment count?
What?
The big board
My new way of tracking is a giant poster board I put together that shows my 50 top sites.I've set an earnings goal for each site and the only the board tracks is if the sites met the goal or not.
If no, then I'll go look at the other stats and trends to determine the problem.
That's how I'm doing it this month, how are you doing it?
Things Measured Get Better
Not only do I have the goal of trying to improve my sites by tracking, there is also a practical reason, I can see problems better.
Once you get a dozen or a few sites there might be some you dont' visit for awhile. If you aren't tracking them somehow, they could be dead and you'd never know it. Recently I deleted a database that 2 sites I didn't know used the database and the sites died. Woops.
Now that I right that I'm thinking maybe once a month measuring is needed.
Your thoughts
What do you measure and how do you do it? And how often?
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knupnet says on March 13, 2008
Mark... I currently use a massive excel spreadsheet and really only track income/expenses in it on a per site and per network basis. I have all of my sites tied into Google Analytics as well for measuring traffic patterns - but I admit I don't study these much.
I really need to come up with a better way of determining which sites "need" help now and which ones are doing ok. Looking at only earnings sometimes can be deceiving. Thanks for the great post.
Mark from Bloglyne says on March 13, 2008
I usually measure by using Google Analytics for each of my sites. To be honest though, I haven't been measuring in the detail that you or knupnet mention, which may be one reason why I'm not seeing huge growth.
What I use to detect growth, Uniques + income + Alexa Rank + Subscribers via Feedburner - all of that gives me an idea of whether I'm growing or dying...
Patrick says on March 13, 2008
Hey Mark, How much are you making online now dude?? I've been making money online for nearly four months and and made about 7k so far.
Caroline Middlebrook says on March 13, 2008
I probably don't measure nearly enough stuff as I should. I don't track any kind of search engine rankings at all. I track my monthly earnings but currently thats just one lump across all my little projects. I should probably split that out more. The only blog stats I track is the RSS readership. I do collect monthly traffic stats for an end of month post but I dont record it anywhere permanently.
I guess I should do more tracking :) What little I do I do in Excel.
Royal Radande says on March 13, 2008
I use excel and measure income (separated by network) and expenses (separated by ppc search engine). I calculate my gross and net (after taxes).
i use google analytics for aggregated visitor tracking and addfreestats to track unique visitors.
Sapphire says on March 13, 2008
I just track earnings and expenses in an Excel spreadsheet.
BUT I do consistently look at my AwStats, Feedburner stats, FireStat stats (in Wordpress) and Quantcast stats. I follow AwStats and Firestats links to search terms to get an idea where I'm ranking for what.
I don't write any of it down - it's just all in my head. I probably SHOULD record more stuff, if only to save the headspace. :D
Debby Banning says on March 13, 2008
Mark,
This is an excellent post. I love the idea of posting this on a wall so that you see it all of the time. It is easy to create an Excel spreadsheet and forget about it. You will have your top sites that you constantly check the stats on and end up forgetting about the smaller ones. Having the poster will help you to see which sites need more content, marketing, etc. to meet your goal.
~Debby
thegeekboys says on March 13, 2008
I don't tend to track my stats but It is very inportant to set goals for all your sites. because when you set goals you have a better chance of reaching them then if you didn't set your goals.
Empress says on March 13, 2008
I think having your earnings/sites out there is a great idea. Keeps you accountable - and I'm looking into getting myself w a whiteboard so I can have it on my wall - and feel like I'm productive :)
Currently I keep a record of my top sites in an excel sheet - really I should keep track of them all but right now I've got my top 15 - and each month I track how much I make an what expenses I have. As long as the site pays for itself (domain/hosting) I keep it around. If not, I'll drop it and move on.
That also helps me know when I should give up a topic/niche/site when it's not making money and look for ideas that might make me more money. Since that's the main objective. Earning money :)
House says on March 13, 2008
The main Q is ..where is the profit coming from?
Advertisers, adsense, products etc etc etc
and #2...how do you solicit Advertisers to your websites?
45n5 says on March 13, 2008
wow all great answers
the crazy thing is nobody really agrees on what should be tracked ;)
I reckon the goals of each site are different, however if the goal is to make money I reckon that should be goal #1?
and how often are you all doing it? once per month? once per day/week?
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