Archive for: traffic
I would like to thank all of our sponsors and partners for the May. May has been a very exciting month here at Crenk. Crenk released a new theme for the site in which we are constant working on providing the features that our readers want to see and use. Our traffic has really stepped up and we have seen some great results for this and our RSS readers. Plus Twitter is at an all time high and on the rise.
Please follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/crenk
Please subscriber to our RSS feed: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/crenk/feed
At Crenk have also hired a fulltime writers to the site who will bring in a lot more quality content faster. Welcome Luis and Augusto.
Luis is a writer who has been working on Crenk for a long time and now he has taken the plug into fulltime journalism. Luis is based in the USA and will be bringing our readers some of best and newest startups from that part of the world.
Augusto is a computer geek and fan of the latest technologies, specially those within IT. Augusto has worked as an IT consultant and operations manager for a couple of years. Microsoft Student Partner, MCTS and MCITP.
If you are interested in writing for Crenk then please get in touch and we can see if you fit the bill.
Thanks to our Sponsors and Partners
Adphilia – Adphilia is our CPM advertising partner. Adphilia has really help us develop a constant income stream which allows us to grow our team and site. The advertisers Adphilia provides are top quality and the results have been great.
RouteNote -RouteNote is a digital music distributor that is send artists from all over the world to the leading digital music stores (iTunes, eMusic, Amazon).
Popurls – Popurls is the original single page news aggregator. Popurls is the leading destination to find out what is happening in the world of technology and other topics by simply just visiting one page.
If you would like to become a sponsor or a partner with Crenk then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with any ideas you might have.
As we mentioned a few days ago Compete was releasing a new user interface on the 15th of April. The time has come and here is what the new interface looks like.
The interface has had a huge makeover, in which now combines all of Compete’s business elements in a much simplier way. All of Compete’s solutions can be now found in a simple hearder bar, which offers everything from Analytics to Keyword tools. The analytics tools has a much cleaner and easy to user interface, but Compete is still trying to push Pro accounts as much as possible.
Overall the feel of the site is much better than before, and with the cleaner finish the usability of the site increases. I just wish my traffic would increase!
There is another music streaming service that we didn’t mention in our Top 10 free music streaming services and that is Spiral Frog. Spiral Frog is an ad-supported music download service which has had a huge amount of hype since launch.
Today it has been reported that Spiral Frog might be in a bit of trouble and heading towards the deadpool. These reports come from executives within the struggling company. Why is Spiral Frog in trouble? When launching Spiral Frog was in a growing advertising market in which was still yielding good CPM (cost per 1000 ads) rates, however now in the economic downturn these rates are quickly dropping. Therefore, companies need to keep increasing pageviews and presence to stay ahead of the curve. Spiral Frog has been losing a lot of traffic of late and this combined with the big licensing fees they had to pay upfront for major label catalogues means their in a lot of trouble.
There are only a couple of options that will save Spiral Frog. Firstly, a miracle could happen and they could turn around the traffic and the revenues, but that’s not going to happen. Secondly, they could get more funding and sell part of the shares, but they are running out of shares so I don’t think this would happen either. Finally, the only real option is for someone to step in and purchase the company just before they run out of money and get a bargain basement price.
To be fair in the past Spiral Frog has had a lot of issues and they have been in trouble a couple of times. This is probably what has lead to Spiral Frog getting a lot of media attention. I think Spiral Frog will be acquired by the end of 2009, its the only decent option of the company.
I came across a really great post today over at PingPongPie that helped to explain what you need to achieve with certain social networks, and how much traffic you can expect from them. I have added the exact numbers below.
Name of Network: Digg
Number of Votes Needed to go Popular: 60 – 300+ on average
Consequence of Negative Vote: Requires more Diggs to become popular. NOTE: One Bury does not cause your story to be removed! You can have a significant amount of “buries” and the story could still go popular.
Expected Traffic: 10,000 to 100,000 UVs
Type of Network: Social News
Name of Network: Stumble
Number of Votes Needed to go Popular: 30 – 40 typically, Reviews and Tags are also important
Consequence of Negative Vote: -1 to overall points
Expected Traffic: 2,000 – 50,000 UVs and the cycle can come again weeks to months later.
Type of Network: Toolbar – random
Name of Network: Propeller
Number of Votes Needed to go Popular: 35+ on average
Consequence of Negative Vote: -1 to overall points
Expected Traffic: 1,000 – 20,000 UVs – Can go to 100,000 if the story goes to news.aol.com
Type of Network: Social News
Name of Network: del.icio.us
Number of Votes Needed to go Popular: More than 120 bookmarks (as fast as you can)
Consequence of Negative Vote: -1 Vote
Expected Traffic: Up to 20,000
Type of Network: Techy, Internet based info, guides
Name of Network: Mixx
Number of Votes Needed to go Popular: 30 – 60
Consequence of Negative Vote: -1 to overall points
Expected Traffic: Less than 100 UVs
Type of Network: Social News
Name of Network: Reddit
Number of Votes Needed to go Popular: 3 – 300+
Consequence of Negative Vote: -1 total points
Expected Traffic: 3,000 – 30,000 UVs
Type of Network: Social News
Name of Network: Yahoo! Buzz
Number of Votes Needed to go Popular: N/A. Popular is Yahoo.com and that is manually selected.
Consequence of Negative Vote: Unknown
Expected Traffic: 1-3 million UVs
Type of Network: Social News
Name of Network: Fark
Number of Votes Needed to go Popular: Admin manually select for Popular
Consequence of Negative Vote: unknown
Expected Traffic: 5,000 to 15,000 UVs
Type of Network: Humor
Name of Network: Ebaumsworld
Number of Votes Needed to go Popular: 30
Expected Traffic: 500-20,000+
Type of Network: Weird, Wacky Stuff, Interesting and Funny Pictures work really well.
9Rules has just opened their submission window. I have already submitted Crenk to 9Rules, so we can see if we actually get into the fold this time. 9Rules is basically a community of some of the worlds best blogs. It helps readers find information from credible sources and not just any smuck writing a blog. Their submission window is only 24hrs and done every quarter normally. If the 9Rules guys read this post, come on how can you not have Crenk in your network!
Bittorrent traffic is currently at an all time high with 3 bittorrent sites inside the top 120 on Alexa. There popularity is unquestionable and they will be around for a long time to come, but currently this smart file sharing service is a little difficult for beginners.
That being said a new site called TorrentRelay simplifies the entire bittorrent process. TorrentRelay helps to convert downloaded urls into links in which can be downloaded from within any internet browser. This site is unique because it allows newbies to get their torrents without having to install any extra software. No installations allows this service to be run on any computer, mobile or games console.
There currently is only one problem with this service and it is that users can only downoad files up to 400mb in size, once this can be lifted then torrents with be available to even more of the internet populations without having tech issues.
Let’s face facts, bloggers write, for the most part, so their articles can be read. They want them read for any number of reasons,
- Internet fame
- Potential to make money from ads
- Obsessed with statistics
- Conceited
- Enjoying knowing someone is reading what you wrote
- Etc.
Most of us enjoy knowing that someone is reading what we as writers spent time and energy to write, the side effects of money and fame can be nice as well, but how to achieve? One simple way that I’ve found is to ask people to view your site. But how? Where? Relying on Google search results can take time and not everyone reads your MySpace bulletins or the tweets you obsessively send via Twitter, digg.com isn’t working that well and neither is Stumble Upon, and it may not be in your budget to buy ad space on a more popular site right now, so what can you do?
Email blog owners who have written similar articles and let them know about the one you wrote. Yes, it’s that simple. Don’t do this with every article you write, pick your very best and send the links to the biggest and best blogs out there. Don’t ask them to review your site or link to it, simply let them know you have written similar material that they or their readers might want to use and you like their site. Be honest and don’t make it sound cheesy.
How do you find people with similar articles? Try Google Blog Search and look for articles written in the last week or month. Does this really work? Absolutely. I used this technique last week, here’s what I did and the results from it.
They filmed part of the Transformers II movie in my town last week and some co-workers got behind the scenes photographs of the set and a video. They gave me permission to blog about it, which I promptly did. Next, I did a Google Blog Search for similar sites and found the Transformers Live Action Movie Blog, the owners email is displayed on the left sidebar. This is the email I sent him:
I saw you recently published an article & photos regarding Transformers 2… wanted to share with you one my recent articles with more photos and a video (with more videos being edited now for publication).
Thought your readers might enjoy these: http://www.randomn3ss.com/2008/06/05/exclusive-filming-of-transformers-2-photos-and-videos/
That’s it. Within a few hours, they published this article that contains a link to my site’s homepage and the direct link to the article. More than 1,000 unique visits came to that specific article over the following 12 hours from the Transformers Live Action Movie Blog. I’d call that a success.
I’ve used this technique sparingly as not to become a burden on anyone, seem pushy or ungrateful for what others have done for me. Using this method though, I have successfully had articles linking to my sites on Lifehacker.com, GetRichSlowly.org, and several other very well known high traffic blogs.
I’d love to hear about some success stories from people who give this a try. Not every email you send will have great results, but it does work. Keep an open mind too when a fellow blogger approaches you with an idea or to share content.
It has been reported by the guys over at Techcrunch that Alexa has changed the algorithm for their ratings. Alexa announced that they are pulling in more sources than just the Alexa toolbar and that they have also improved their methodology.
This has all come as a pleasant change. For a long time Alexa has been criticized because of their ratings and the fact that they are just completely made up and not really relevant. There has been a lot of sites that have take a huge hit, main example is DailyBlogTips.
In the race for providing the most accurate stats of websites for free, I still think Compete and Quantcast are a long way ahead of Alexa, but these changes might make a huge change in how relevant the popularity numbers actually are.
Display Advertising Opportunity
Currently, Yahoo is a long way behind in several market, but they seem to have a great opportunity improve in this area. In the first slide attached to the previous article it states that the top 2 players control more than 90% of the search market, whereas in the display advertising market, the top 10 players only control less than 25% of the market. Hmmm. This being said there is a great opportunity for Yahoo to control this market as there are no real dominant players.
Additionally, I can see Yahoo taking a keen focus on the markets with very high CPM rates, such as classifieds, search and online video. The online video acquisition not too long ago of the Maven networks has now been justified.
Currently, Yahoo also has a strong presence in classified sections, in terms of jobs and autos, but there are more targets they could approach in this area. Craigslist comes to mind. The site is still currently owned by Craig Newmark with a 25% stake owned by eBay. This could be a potential target for Yahoo to quickly expand their growth in this area.
The second area which currently has a strong CPM is search. Yahoo is currently second in the search race, but are really a long way behind in search marketshare itself and more importantly being able to provide unique search sales services. This was supposed to come from the Panama service, but it has never really been upto standard. With the Panama system Yahoo estimate they can reduce the gap between the industry leading RPS and their own by 30% in the US in the first 9 months of 2007. I simply just cant see this happening.
CapEx and Investing:
Yahoo plan on investing aggressively and spending $2.6 billion cumulatively from 2008-2010. The are focused on Display Advertising, Grid expansion, relevance and experimentation. Hence, you will see Yahoo purchase some strong display advertising network in 2008-2010, my bet is a ValueClick purchase. Valueclick is one of the larger ad networks still left independent and they have a strong focus on display advertising.
Innovation inside Yahoo:
Im very interested to see how Yahoo Buzz progresses. It has been reported about a lot in the last few days about how much traffic the site is pushing and im keep to see this expanded, but not expanded too much. Quality rather than quantity.
Revenue Increase: Are They Realistic?
Yahoo is projecting revenues after traffic acquisition costs (TAC)—i.e., what it shares with other Websites that run Yahoo ads—to grow from $5.1 billion in 2007 to $8.8 billion in 2010. Yahoo also argued to its board that it could exceed Wall Street expectations and accelerate revenue-growth to 25 percent in 2009 and 2010 and increase its operating cash flow from $1.9 billion this year to $3.7 billion in 2010.
Are these figures realistic?? We can only wait and see!
Today, Yahoo filed a presentation which was detailed just before the Microsoft unsolicited bid. This three year financial plan was shown given by management to its board of directors back in December 2007. As you can see from the projections, Yahoo has project their revenue after traffic acquisition costs, which is what it shares with other Websites that run Yahoo ads—to grow from $5.1 billion in 2007 to $8.8 billion in 2010.
These slides come curtosy of Techcrunch. We will have our own analysis of these slides coming in the next few days, so stay tuned.
As most of you have noticed i added BlogRush to our sidebar. Yesterday BlogRush finally got their stats section online and it has show some very good results so far. Crenk’s amount of traffic has doubled in the last 2 days and from what i can see this is from BlogRush. It works quite simply, when the BlogRush widget is viewed on your website your link will be show on the widget on someone elses website. Thus providing links on other sites we would not normally receive and thus giving the opportunity for visitors to clicks and visit our site. Brilliant idea!
I love people that come up with ideas like this and instead of trying to complicate it they just provide the basics. Feedjit provides real-time traffic data on your blog. It is so simple im sure my little sister could even use it. Just cut and paste in the code into your site and it is ready to go. There is no registration and it’s completely free. They also track popular links across blogs, so if your site is the first to link to a popular site, your blog may appear on their home page, which im sure is not going to boost your traffic, but it is just a nice touch.
