Over the past month or so, I’ve been comparing Statcounter with Google Analytics to see which one seems more accurate and which one offers the most features.

One report that I always enjoy viewing is my visitor map. This feature is available with both services. It will show you where your visitors IP addresses originate from on a global map. I’ve included an example from SiteFever below:

This first report is from Statcounter. Each mark on the map represents a popular location that my site visitors originate from. I like this report because it shows you an actual satellite image of the world.

This second report is Google’s version. The difference here is that with Google, the circle grows with more visits. For example, you can see larger circles over the eastern United States as well as the UK. These spots are more popular than Chile, where the circle appears much smaller.

Even though Google’s report seems to track more visitors, I was surprised at the similarity between the two. Seems like SiteFever.com is 88 countries strong and growing more by the day…

If you’re not already using one of these services to track your stats, I would strongly recommend giving one of them a try. With such detailed information that they both provide, you learn a lot about your visitors and your site, which will put you in a much better position to recognize any changes that may be beneficial for you to make.

Add your comment!

Isn’t it beautiful? This is what I was talking about when I said I stared in disbelief the first time I saw it. It’s Western Digital’s 1TB external hard drive! That’s 1,024GB for those of you who don’t know what a terabyte is. For computer geeks such as myself, it’s the centerfold in our favorite magazine.

I am giving away this 1TB MyBook to somebody on October 13th. Do you want it? Here’s what to do:

All you’ve got to do is make a post on your blog linking to this contest and tell everyone what you would do with a free 1TB hard drive!

I’ll sift through all the pingbacks for the most interesting post and choose one winner to ship the MyBook to-that’s it!

It can’t get any easier than that, can it? This contest should be a little better than the last because everyone has a fair chance at the same prize. So, what are you waiting for? Let me know what you would do with a free 1TB hard drive! And remember- only pingbacks count!

Add your comment!

This post is part 5 in a group writing project about driving traffic to your blog, organized by Steven Snell of VandelayDesign.com. Be sure to check out the first four parts:

Part 1: Driving Search Engine Traffic to a New Blog
Part 2: Be Selfish and Help Someone
Part 3: What’s Your Best Source of Web Traffic?
Part 4: Be Community Involved to Get More Traffic
Part 5: You’re looking at it!

Is it really true that you can drive decent traffic to your blog by being the first to comment on others? If so, how much traffic could you expect to receive? In this post, I analyze and share my personal statistics with you.

You may have heard that if you’re the first to comment on a blog’s post, you can expect to receive more clickthroughs to your site than if you commented somewhere down the line. I was not quite sure if this was true until I was given the perfect opportunity to test this hypothesis out.

On September 1st, John Chow posted his monthly income report. I knew that this would be a very popular post as it would be the first income report since he had started using his new theme. Guess who happened to be the first to comment on that post? None others than yours truly.

To date, there are 340 comments on that one post. It also currently appears in the first spot in the “Popular Articles” section of his blog. Did that one humble comment generate any traffic for me? See for yourself:

You’ll notice that Google Analytics showed no traffic at all the day the comment was made. This is because when I made that comment, I was in the middle of a theme redesign of my own and I had not installed the Analytics code, so it was not yet recording any of my traffic. I think we can safely assume that I received at least as many visitors on September 1st as I did the next day, which would bring the total number of unique visitors to my blog from clicking on my link from this comment to just under 200 in less than 2 weeks!

Another interesting statistic is the fact that over 76% of people who clicked through to my site were new visits. In other words, there’s a good chance they had never seen or heard of SiteFever.com before.

Oddly enough, this small comment drove three times as much traffic to my blog in one-third the time than a post John Chow made on August 25 where he specifically talked about SiteFever.com, quoted parts of a post I made and linked to my site twice. So far, that post has sent only 79 unique visitors over a three week period. (Not complaining)

I’m sold. I now know that commenting on other blogs- specifically being the first comment- will in fact drive traffic to your blog. I wonder who will be the first to comment on this post?

Add your comment!

As you can see, the sitewide 468×60 banner that is displayed at the top right of each page on SiteFever.com has become available. FeedGhost’s one month came to an end on September 12 after receiving just over 36,000 impressions.

Of course, SiteFever is growing at a very rapid rate, so I expect the next month to receive well over 40,000 impressions. Unfortunately, there’s nobody advertising there right now to take advantage of that publicity. I have a sneaky suspicion that we’ll see a new advertiser there next Friday, September 21. Why?

Because I’m auctioning off the one and only sitewide 468×60 banner spot on this site, and the highest bidder as of midnight EST on Thursday, September 20 (one week from today) will receive that spot for 30 days!

Bidding starts at $1 and each subsequent bid should be made in at least $1 increments. As always, payments can only be made through PayPal.

If you want the spot but don’t have a banner designed for your site- don’t worry. I can help create one for you free of charge or put you in contact with some other people who wouldn’t mind creating it either.

Who will win the very first auctioned ad space on SiteFever.com? Will it be you? Let the bidding begin!

Add your comment!

In my process of building income for this blog, I get many comments and emails from people who say that they are inspired by what I’m doing on this blog and they can’t wait to generate a good Google PageRank so that they can do the same. My question is, what did people do before Google started issuing PageRank? What would you do if they never did it again?

There are more ways to measure the success of a website than PageRank. Just off the top of my head, you’ve got the amount of daily visitors, how many times they visit, Technorati, Alexa, and many more! Then, you’ve got the value of the site based on the most important aspect there is- the content- which is not measured on any graph or toolbar. Why would you let Google govern your money making abilities on your blog?

Webspace, no matter how “unpopular” is still worth something. If it wasn’t, people wouldn’t pay for web hosting. Even if you generate only 10 unique visitors to your blog per day, that’s still 300 people per month reading your blog. How much is that space worth?

You can price your space at just $1/mo. and I guarantee that if you look hard enough, you will find buyers. And if you have 20 total ad spaces on your blog, that’s $20/mo. that you weren’t getting before! (Which is much more than AdSense gives you, I’m sure)

PageRank will inevitably come soon enough, and when it does, it’s just another statistic amongst many which will help advertisers see a value in your blog. It doesn’t work like a light switch- where yesterday your new but popular and content rich blog is a PR0 and worth nothing, then the today the PageRank is updated to a PR4 and now you can make $1,000/mo. from your blog. It’s worth the same yesterday as it is today.

I feel your discouragement when you insinuate that your blog can not be successful without a good PageRank. I’m here to tell you that it absolutely can make money and nothing should hold you back from selling ad space on your blog from the very first day it goes online. Stop worshiping Google and start managing your site- the way you want to!

Add your comment!

Today we have reached two new milestones on SiteFever.com!

First, we broke the 300 RSS subscriber mark! It took 67 long, grueling days which averages out to approximately 4.5 new readers every single day since the first post went online. In those 67 days, we’ve seen 96 posts and 687 comments. Not bad, considering that I was writing posts from a hospital and multiple hotel rooms for two weeks while my grandmother was undergoing brain surgery.

The second milestone to celebrate is that we’ve passed the 1,000 download mark for the 22 page PDF Blog Traffic Made Easy in only 21 days! Of course, I can only count the downloads directly from my site. I have also seen my article up for download on a few other sites, blogs and even RapidShare, so we can safely assume there have been more downloads than I can track.

All of the success that this blog has seen so far is a direct result from all of my loyal readers. Thank you for helping to make SiteFever.com one of the fastest growing blogs on the net!

Add your comment!

Well, it’s already been one month since I initiated the contest where I contribute $1 for every blog linking back to SiteFever.com, and one person is picked at random to receive the winnings.

I was prepared to set aside up to $500 for the winner, but unfortunately, hardly anyone participated in the contest.

I only counted 15 people who said that they linked to SiteFever for this contest, and I couldn’t even find my link on half of them. However, since so few people participated, I will still put up $15 for the winner.

The winner that was picked is ArahMan7 from Web-Directory.blogspot.com. Congratulations!

In hindsight, I would like to create a contest where the prize is not directly affected by the amount of people who participate. This way, all who choose to participate in the contest have an equal share in a predetermined prize.

Keep your eyes open because I’ve got a GREAT prize to give away for the next contest. This time, it’s a tangible product that made me stare in disbelief when I saw it in person for the first time a few months back! What is it? You’ll find out in just a few days!

Add your comment!