One Hundred Thousand Hits

In the next few days, this blog will record its 100,000th hit since it went live 17 October 2004 -- who could have imagined? That's huge. Traffic has died off over the past year, but that's still an impressive number. It's also terribly misleading.

Most of our traffic is currently driven by the world famous Led Zeppelin Sucks post -- in which I say nothing of the kind. They've directed over 30,000 of those hits. Those users do look around the blog a bit after posting their flames, most of which I don't even release anymore.

The next largest chunk comes from that damned Crazy Frog or Coldplay posts (there are two 1 and 2). Those visitors are worthless and they also account for around 30,000 hits, but for awhile it was sending nearly 75% of our traffic until Yahoo stopped listing us first. They come, read, and leave on the provided links, so it's not quality traffic. They aren't even nice enough to click on one of my Google Adsense Ads. Laugh, but those pennies can add up, and I always appreciate anyone who helps support our site. But ultimately, this isn't about the money because I haven't made any yet :)

The rest of the traffic is mysterious. I analyze my blog traffic regularly and there's no real pattern. I always hope some of the visitors tell me why they came but I get very few comments aside from the aforementioned Led Zeppelin Sucks post, which is a magnet of sorts for comments -- not all intelligent.

I thought my random post about the nude Harry Potter pictures would garner traffic, and they did but very little. Amazingly my post on Terry Goodkind's Phantom have generated some nice traffic -- by that I mean quality traffic, the people who stay and look around. Some of these folks even go to my website.

Google Analytics and Stat Counter are very useful, though for most sites Stat Counter is better suited. The Google Analytics page is more practical for corporate sites as it's pretty complex and overly complex.

Eric Rambles About Keywords and Revenue Stream

My rather old and dated blog entry Crazy Frog or Coldplay? continues to draw thousands of visitors a week to my site. It's given me over 70,000 hits to my blog -- nearly 16% by keyword. Here are my historical most popular keywords as reported by Extreme Tracking as of today:

1817	8.03%	crazy
1788	7.90%	frog
912	4.03%	led
895	3.95%	zeppelin

But that doesn't tell the real story. If you look at referrers by actual website, it's ugly:

2544	42.67%	http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/view
851	14.27%	http://busca.uol.com.br/video/index.html
363	6.09%	http://cade.search.yahoo.com/video/view
359	6.02%	http://br.altavista.com/video/results

Yeah, 69% of my traffic is from the Crazy Frog crowd. Sadly, they're visitors I don't want. They hang around for 10 or 20 seconds and leave -- I have another tracking program that lets me see how long they stay. Even so, I suppose I should be thankful in a way because it did put my blog on the map. But Crazy Frog is not what I'd like to be known for. Sometimes I'm insightful, intelligent, funny, and sometimes I'm just a smart-ass. I'd gladly be known for any of those things, but I don't want to be known as the first place on the web to go looking for Crazy Frog.

I was surprised, too, at what didn't work in an effort to attract visitors. I made some deliberate posts to get people over by including words like Masturbation, after all the Internet is famous for porn, but those people didn't come here (pardon the pun). I also tried discussing topics related to popular searches such as the pluma-pluma (aka numa-numa guy) but those didn't help either. Even non-deliberate posts referring to my other Deliberate Posts didn't work, though I suppose self-referential posts will never help.

On the other hand, Why Led Zeppelin Sucks, brings a fair number of quality visitors (at 8% it's right behind that damnable Crazy Frog) but these folks stay and sometimes even post intelligent things. Their average visit exceeds 10 minutes, most of which, I suspect are spent reading all those comments. Too bad they all come to pick a fight, and they all react to the title without reading what I have to say. So few of the posts miss my actual point.

I'm trying to figure a way to turn those 70,000 visitors into a revenue stream of some-sort, but this Google Ad-Sense thing isn't working well. Or at least people aren't clicking through to the ads. I'd love suggestions.

Oh, and unrelated to this post, please visit my brand new photo gallery hosted on Flickr.

Bush, Bullshit, Grammar, Ads, Used Computers, Sina, and Gorillaz

First, we have Matt Deatherage's blog post about Bush's service record. Originally CBS was accused of forging the documents. Only, well, they weren't forged. I don't want to steal Matt's blogging efforts, so go here to read it. I am never above a shot at Bush either so here's a quick (old) joke before I go on:

GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY DESTROYED BY FLOOD
Crawford, Texas (AP) -- A tragic flood this morning destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. The flood began in the presidential bathroom where the books were kept. Both books have been lost. A presidential spokesman said the president was devastated, as he had almost finished coloring the second one. The White House tried to call FEMA but there was no answer. (from RHF 12-12-05 Henry Farkas)

Now, on to my next topic. I subscribe to a great weekly e-newsletter called This Is True, and you should too. Randy who runs it is a good guy. He doesn't sell your information or even rent it out. Those of you who may remember and/or have been graced with those cool "Get Out Of Hell" cards I gave out; well I got 'em from Randy. So why do I mention This Is True? Because of this article, one of many in this week's mailing:

TYPE OH: Moon God Drinking Products Co., a skin care company in China, has offered a bounty of 1,000 yuan (US$120) for every typographical or literary error found in a day's editions of four Chinese publications in an attempt to embarrass journalists into better writing. Hao Mingjian, who came up with the idea for the bounty, said that "China's press has lost its polish in the past decade or two," which "reflects a chaotic cultural environment and shows people lack a sense of responsibility." (Reuters) ... Nice try, but journalists can't be embarrassed.

I hate bad grammar, and this really amused the hell out of me. I used to write our local paper about their occasional atrocities, but once they actually argued with me. The Miami Herald, aka the Daily Fishwrapper, isn't populated by the sharpest tools in the shed. It was, after all a headline with a terrible error with an apostrophe. Instead of apologizing, ignoring me, or otherwise moving on, I got a typed(!) letter from the editor in question arguing with me. Yes, it's true. "The Shark's Were Out" indeed. Not. After five years, this made the event pop back in my head.

And, a brief word about Google's AdSense. Yeah, I've put ads up on my blog. This is recent and has been here for a few weeks -- I doubt you've noticed, and judging by the click-throughs nobody else has either. You're not supposed to draw anyone's attention to them either (nor encourage people to click on them). But I want you to look at them for a minute. I find it fascinating, because sometimes some really weird ads come up. I understand why it was running roofing ads (my Wilma post) and sponsorship ads (my Panthers tirade) and even charity ads (my Katrina/Wilma posts), but sometimes I get some really messed-up ads. I think you'll find them amusing sometimes.

Besides posting Google's AdSense ads in the hopes of defraying some of this site's expenses, I have also posted a link where you can just donate right to my webhosting bill. Donations go right to my webhosting account and not to me so no worries about me absconding with whatever pennies you may throw my way. Also, if you sign up for hosting a Dreamhost and give my address out, I will get a small credit towards my bill (or if you e-mail me, I can request the credit.) There were other far more lucrative options available to me for ads, but I didn't want to be intrusive, and I thought this was the best way. Help the sites and blog continue in any way you feel fit.

Speaking of ads, the banner at the bottom is not an ad, but a link to a site I rather enjoy. Yes, I actually own a rap album now. And I really like it. So there. Deal. You might want to go there and listen to some of the songs. Gorillaz' Demon Days is a truly rocking album. I bet nobody I know ever pegged me to deliberately buy a rap album. I'm thinking of buying their first album now. Scary, eh?

Oh, and someone I haven't spoken to since 1984 sent me a holiday card today. I guess he Googled me. I used to work with him at the Used Computer Store when I was attending Berkeley. I can't believe they still have the same logo, but they do. Anyway, his name's Sina Balour and this is a little shout out because he was cool then. I bet he's still cool now. Like I'm an authority on cool. Hah. As if.

Masturbation

(DISCLAIMER: This post has absolutely nothing to do with Masturbation)

So, I go to my friend Rob's blog as I do every few days and I run across this post entitled masturbation-mania! Well, it's got nothing to do with masturbation at all. However, he observes that by simply using it in a previous post, his traffic has doubled. He ponders what this says about the Internet.

I must say that one wonders if you used words such as sex, intercourse, anal, and oral in the same post if it would also have the same effect. It also begs the question what type of person it would bring. Or would you get deviants looking for paedophilia, bestiality, or worse?

I mean, take my Led Zeppelin Sucks topic*. I don't even say that they suck. I was merely expressing an opinion that they were overrated, but I literally got thousands of hits, and a number of comments. I've had to delete a lot of the comments due to rather profane remarks, but there are over fifty intelligent and opposing opinions which remain.

I am interested in finding out exactly what keywords drive people to a site? I could be like Rob and just put the word "Penis" or "Vagina" in every post and see what comes in**. Or I could experiment with other words. The whole thing is mightily intriguing.

"Oral Stimulation Teens Masturbation Penis Vagina Bestiality Tits" <-- just to make it exciting. I am making no judgements on any visitor's proclivities. I am monitoring traffic. Let's see what happens. Intelligent replies greatfully accepted. * Replies to THIS topic involving Led Zeppelin will be deleted. If you must comment on the Rockers, please use the original link above to reply.

** Pun intended.

For the record, no discernible change in traffic was reported as a result of this post (9-5-05 addendum)