Year 2008 Metrics
I worked a lot on my site(s) in 2008. I started a couple of new open source projects, and started experimenting with advertising to counter my hosting and domain costs. Oh, and I switched jobs.
Software
I made a new release of M2Crypto. I also updated my Caltrain schedule applications, both the Python and online version.
I created a Caltrain schedule application for the Google Android platform. I also created a simple office resource finder.
I also created a Pylons project, although it isn’t Open Source: horsetrailratings.com.
Check the list of my software projects.
Traffic
I started blogging pretty regularly around January. It wasn’t until I asked to be included in the two Python planets that my blog traffic skyrocketed. Someone seems to be submitting almost all entries to those planets to Reddit, which brings additional readers.
I also wrote a number of articles on how to run Linux on various laptops and submitted them to Linux on Laptops site, which seems to bring in a fair amount of traffic. Linux on Laptops has been a great resource for me over the years, so I am glad I am finally contributing to the effort as well.
My most popular blog posts include SSL in Python 2.6, Pythonic application deployment and how to use decorators to add arguments.
Below are the raw statistics for my main site:
month #reqs #pages Jan 4303 2647 ++ Feb 9524 5846 ++++ Mar 7626 5542 ++++ Apr 9281 6677 +++++ May 9469 7363 +++++ Jun 8549 6787 +++++ Jul 12690 9282 +++++++ Aug 25567 18250 +++++++++++++ Sep 38036 27645 +++++++++++++++++++ Oct 96574 56477 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Nov 54221 38583 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dec 58537 41648 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Advertisements
Google AdSense statistics show over 15,000 impressions (I started in the summer), which have resulted in about $10 of advertising revenue. At this rate it will take about five years to get the first check from Google. Quite disappointing, but in retrospect understandable: the topics I write about tend to interest people like me who are pretty unlikely to even notice the ads.
Dreamhost referral links have been clicked something like 500 times, but nobody has signed up. Again, a bit of a disappointment, but after doing some searches again understandable, since there are pretty good promotion codes out there.
Amazon has been the most disappointing. Just a handful of clicks and no purchases. I will probably be phasing that out in 2009.
I also briefly experimented with an AdSense competitor, but realized quickly that splitting the small ad revenue between several ad providers would mean even longer wait for the first check.
All in all, the results are so insignificant that unless something drastic happens in 2009 I might as well get rid of the ads since managing them does add a little bit of work (not to mention the addiction of checking the statistics to see how much you made at any given time period).
