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 Just how many people visit www.surfski.info? I have to confess that I go to pageview
counter several times a day to see how we're doing...
And the last couple of months have been enormously exciting -
we seem to be attracting more people from more places than ever before. Here are some statistics that we'd like to
share with you...
Measuring Traffic
We have four ways of measuring traffic - the on-site
counter, the ad server, Google Analytics and the amount of bandwidth used by
the site. And they all agree that our
readership is growing week by week.
This is good news for us - because it means that we must be
providing something worthwhile, otherwise you guys, our readers, wouldn't be coming
back for more.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is a simple measure of traffic - the more
bandwidth we use, the more stuff is happening on the site. In February this year we used 11 gigabytes of
bandwidth; in March, 16; in April, 20; in May (when Molokai happened), we used
24 gigabytes. Last month we used 25
gigabytes and this month so far we already used 13.5 and we're only 10 days
into the month.
We keep having to ask our Internet Service Provider for more
bandwidth! But it's a great problem to
have.
Google Analytics
Here are some more stats from the last month, courtesy of
Google Analytics.
In the last month we had around 8,500 unique individuals who
together visited the site 30,000 times and read 139,000 pages!
Oh, and on 1 July - the same day as the ARB Surf Ski World Cup - we
cracked one million pageviews since the site was launched in November
2005.
In the graph you can see where the visitor numbers peaked -
on 1 July, the day of the 2007 ARB Surf Ski World Cup, when we carried live
commentary on the race. But the really
pleasing thing about the graph is the clear upward trend in the numbers.
What's our worst day of the week? Saturday.
When everyone's out paddling... On
Sunday the numbers start climbing again and it seems that on Monday the first
thing everyone does when they get to the office is... go to surfski.info. Monday is consistently our best day of the
week.
Where do our visitors
come from?
When we started Surfski.info, not surprisingly the city with
the highest percentage of our readers was Cape Town, South
Africa. Today it's Sydney, Australia. We have visitors from
Norway to Tahiti; from Japan to Iraq (amazingly, we keep getting a few
visitors from Iraq!)
We recently had our article on remounting skis translated into Japanese for a paddling site in Japan.
Here's a graph that shows where in the world our visitors
come from:
 Reader demographics
Global Audience
We truly have a global audience! The fastest growing segment is Europe where
we're discovering new pockets of surf ski paddlers (in Sweden and Norway) and
races (Belgium, Germany) all the time.
Advertising
The bigger the site has become, the more work it is and
in order to make it sustainable Alain and I are trying to earn a few dollars - and
we've begun to offer advertising on the site.
In fact we just had our first customer (in New Zealand) renew their
contract - clearly they've found the advertising to be worthwhile. We installed a fairly sophisticated ad server
that allows our advertisers to specify:
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Where in the world the ads are seen e.g. only Australia and
New Zealand
- How many times per month the ads are flighted e.g. 10,000
times a month maximum
- And how many times an individual will see the ad e.g. never
show the ad more than 30 times to the same person.
If you're interested in advertising on the site, send us an
email on
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
and we'll
send you our rates card.
A huge thank you to
all our readers!
Without you, we wouldn't be here. We love the sport and we love writing about
it! But without the feedback we get
daily from you through the comments on the articles, the debates on the forums
and the emails we get directly from you - we just wouldn't do it.
So - a huge thank you to all of you for your support and encouragement!
The Future
We have such plans for the site - we're going to be bringing
you better and better coverage of events, more video clips, more ski reviews,
more Getting Started articles. We're
going to be regionalizing the site so that each area can have topical, local
news as well as the stories that are of global interest. We're going to be bringing you up close and
personal with the best paddlers in the world.
We're going to be bringing you DVDs with movies showcasing all the big
races.
The sport of surf ski is going to the next level - and we want to help it
get there... stay tuned, it's been a lot of fun so far, but you ain't seen nothin'
yet!
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You and Alain have done a great job and a terrific service to the surf ski community. It is exciting to go to a place where you can get the latest info about the community, as well as excellent videos/photos on the practicing the sport. Don't forget the beginner (me), and keep up the good work.
Keith