jon
CibbuanoMaking the most out of image traffic
January 8th 2008 03:44
Those of you that have been with Orble for more than a year have probably noticed that your traffic has grown consistently over the year. As the network grows larger, if you write often enough, you'll find that search engine traffic comes your way.
When reading your stats, it's important to remember that Page Views and Visitors are a different metric. We're interested in the number of actual people coming to our sites, which is a tough number to pin down, as there are a lot of robots surfing the web these days.
The truth is, people looking for images are, generally speaking, rarely going to click on Google Ads. And they're unlikely to read anything you've written, too, which means this is not the ideal type of traffic that we'd like.
Still, beggars can't be choosers, and some traffic is better than no traffic.
To show you what we're looking at, I've posted some details from my traffic to provide some insight.
First, let's take a look at types of people that might visit your Orble page through Google Image Search:
1) People looking for dirty pictures
Look, there's no way to avoid this. It's an integral part of the Internet. Most people are looking to slate their lust on digital images, and they vary from people looking for soft bikini photos, to people looking for hardcore pornography.
What's interesting about this, I suppose, is that you'd probably think that people you meet in real life are fairly normal. The sheer volume of traffic looking for dirty photos suggest something else - the people you meet in real life have a seedy personal life that you've never imagined.
2) People looking to copy images for their websites
Since I write about movies and use movie images in my posts, I imagine that quite a few of my visitors are looking for this. They just want to copy an image from the internet, to post on their site, or store on their computer.
3) People that found your website by an incorrect search result
Sometimes, Google Image Search returns the wrong results, but people may still click on your site, out of curiousity.
4) People looking for an image, then looking for further information about that image
This is the best category of traffic... these people found your site by searching for a particular image, then they've gone deeper into your post to read what you've written. Hopefully, they'll leave a comment, stick around, read other posts.
***************************** ***************************** ************************
I'll open up the vat of secrecy and show you results from my page, 20/20 Filmsight:
Traffic (Jan. 8, 2008):
The Hit Count, I ignore, except to feel good about myself. The important metrics are the Individual Readers and the Link Readers. We guess that the number of humans visiting the site is between 3666 and 4080, which I'm pretty happy about.
Great... people subscribing to the site is always good for business.
My Top 10 most popular pages, as of today:
The first result is 445 people looking at a picture of Betty Page in a bikini that I posted when the Chauvel Cinema was doing a burlesque night.
The second? Over 300 people looking for Femtroopers, girls dressed as sexy Stormtroopers.
The fourth post is a review of a Chinese movie, "The Banquet", which is a terrible, terrible movie, but is famous for having a body double for Zhang Ziyi do a nude scene. Guess what people are looking for?
Right there, that's almost 1000 people looking for dirty photos. It makes the site look good, but these visitors are hardly the type to sit around and read. They're too frisky to stick around.
Posts number #3, #5, #7 and #8 are people looking for images of certain movies, I suspect. Some of them are looking for the review, a few might read my post, but most of them, I guess, just want to see the picture, and probably save it.
The last two items are my RSS readers and the people that visit the main page. Ideally, the number of people coming to the main page should be high. This is the detail you want to improve... you want people coming to your site everyday, to read what you've written.
In terms of percentages, let's look at my top 4 referrers:
Straight up, half of my traffic is from Google Image Search. Sure, it's nice to get 600 people coming in from Google.com, and 352 from Orble (thanks everyone!), but the stat that's of most importance here is the 394 from moviecritic.com.au
These are people that have come to the main page and clicked on another link, I guess. These are the readers I want to keep, though it's the Google traffic that typically leads to better ad revenue.
From these stats, we can see that image traffic makes up a huge percentage of the total traffic on Orble sites... this isn't ideal, but the idea is to turn some of those Image Seekers into readers, which will, hopefully, turn into better ad revenue.
Next week, I'll post an article on how we can get Image Seekers to stick around.
Comments or questions? Post 'em in the comments below!
When reading your stats, it's important to remember that Page Views and Visitors are a different metric. We're interested in the number of actual people coming to our sites, which is a tough number to pin down, as there are a lot of robots surfing the web these days.
The truth is, people looking for images are, generally speaking, rarely going to click on Google Ads. And they're unlikely to read anything you've written, too, which means this is not the ideal type of traffic that we'd like.
Still, beggars can't be choosers, and some traffic is better than no traffic.
To show you what we're looking at, I've posted some details from my traffic to provide some insight.
First, let's take a look at types of people that might visit your Orble page through Google Image Search:
1) People looking for dirty pictures
Look, there's no way to avoid this. It's an integral part of the Internet. Most people are looking to slate their lust on digital images, and they vary from people looking for soft bikini photos, to people looking for hardcore pornography.
What's interesting about this, I suppose, is that you'd probably think that people you meet in real life are fairly normal. The sheer volume of traffic looking for dirty photos suggest something else - the people you meet in real life have a seedy personal life that you've never imagined.
2) People looking to copy images for their websites
Since I write about movies and use movie images in my posts, I imagine that quite a few of my visitors are looking for this. They just want to copy an image from the internet, to post on their site, or store on their computer.
3) People that found your website by an incorrect search result
Sometimes, Google Image Search returns the wrong results, but people may still click on your site, out of curiousity.
4) People looking for an image, then looking for further information about that image
This is the best category of traffic... these people found your site by searching for a particular image, then they've gone deeper into your post to read what you've written. Hopefully, they'll leave a comment, stick around, read other posts.
***************************** ***************************** ************************
I'll open up the vat of secrecy and show you results from my page, 20/20 Filmsight:
Traffic (Jan. 8, 2008):
Hit Count: 7946
Individual Readers: 4080
Link Readers: 3666
Individual Readers: 4080
Link Readers: 3666
The Hit Count, I ignore, except to feel good about myself. The important metrics are the Individual Readers and the Link Readers. We guess that the number of humans visiting the site is between 3666 and 4080, which I'm pretty happy about.
Email Subscribers: 52
Great... people subscribing to the site is always good for business.
My Top 10 most popular pages, as of today:
726 (445) www.moviecritic.com.au /2007-07/
540 (343) www.moviecritic.com.au /femtroopers/
274 (178) www.moviecritic.com.au /day-of-the-dead-remake -movie-trailer/
254 (181) www.moviecritic.com.au /the-banquet-ye-yan-film -movie-review/
223 (190) www.moviecritic.com.au /the-300-spartan-fitness-rout ine- from-gym-jones/
212 (140) www.moviecritic.com.au /star-wars-tattoos/
194 (111) www.moviecritic.com.au /ews-50-best-high-school-movi es/
191 (129) www.moviecritic.com.au /dragon-war-trailer-preview/
186 (42) www.moviecritic.com.au/ rss/summary.xml
184 (96) www.moviecritic.com.au/
540 (343) www.moviecritic.com.au /femtroopers/
274 (178) www.moviecritic.com.au /day-of-the-dead-remake -movie-trailer/
254 (181) www.moviecritic.com.au /the-banquet-ye-yan-film -movie-review/
223 (190) www.moviecritic.com.au /the-300-spartan-fitness-rout ine- from-gym-jones/
212 (140) www.moviecritic.com.au /star-wars-tattoos/
194 (111) www.moviecritic.com.au /ews-50-best-high-school-movi es/
191 (129) www.moviecritic.com.au /dragon-war-trailer-preview/
186 (42) www.moviecritic.com.au/ rss/summary.xml
184 (96) www.moviecritic.com.au/
The first result is 445 people looking at a picture of Betty Page in a bikini that I posted when the Chauvel Cinema was doing a burlesque night.
The second? Over 300 people looking for Femtroopers, girls dressed as sexy Stormtroopers.
The fourth post is a review of a Chinese movie, "The Banquet", which is a terrible, terrible movie, but is famous for having a body double for Zhang Ziyi do a nude scene. Guess what people are looking for?
Right there, that's almost 1000 people looking for dirty photos. It makes the site look good, but these visitors are hardly the type to sit around and read. They're too frisky to stick around.
Posts number #3, #5, #7 and #8 are people looking for images of certain movies, I suspect. Some of them are looking for the review, a few might read my post, but most of them, I guess, just want to see the picture, and probably save it.
The last two items are my RSS readers and the people that visit the main page. Ideally, the number of people coming to the main page should be high. This is the detail you want to improve... you want people coming to your site everyday, to read what you've written.
In terms of percentages, let's look at my top 4 referrers:
2162 images.google.com
596 www.google.com
394 www.moviecritic.com.au
352 www.orble.com
596 www.google.com
394 www.moviecritic.com.au
352 www.orble.com
Straight up, half of my traffic is from Google Image Search. Sure, it's nice to get 600 people coming in from Google.com, and 352 from Orble (thanks everyone!), but the stat that's of most importance here is the 394 from moviecritic.com.au
These are people that have come to the main page and clicked on another link, I guess. These are the readers I want to keep, though it's the Google traffic that typically leads to better ad revenue.
From these stats, we can see that image traffic makes up a huge percentage of the total traffic on Orble sites... this isn't ideal, but the idea is to turn some of those Image Seekers into readers, which will, hopefully, turn into better ad revenue.
Next week, I'll post an article on how we can get Image Seekers to stick around.
Comments or questions? Post 'em in the comments below!
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Comment by jon
Orble News
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Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
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Fat Cult
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Comment by The Rusty Can
The Rusty Can
A very informative post - thanks~
Comment by Michaelie
Flick Wit
You'd think I'd get more perverts with so many of my posts about Sex! Dammit.
Cibb, so great of you to put all your own stuff up. Gives me hope and some perspective of where people are and where I can try to get to.
My stats have hit a plateau, but we are told to expect this in the early days (yes?) so am trying not to take it personally! They are a very small percentage of yours, at any rate.
Out of interest - though this is definitely not my main reason for blogging, and you don't have to answer if you don't want to - what do you usually earn through adsense? Just wondering how it translates into cash...
Great post. Thank you!
Michaelie
Comment by Mr Nice Guy
Pop Culturist
It's blokes like you (who are willing to share info and knowledge) that keep us all coming back.
Education and insight - a dynamic duo.
Thanks mate.
MNG
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
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Fat Cult
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Michaelie, yes, plateaus are totally normal. You'll hit them every so often. The best way to deal with this is just to keep writing.
I post 5 times a week, if you haven't noticed. This means that there's usually at least one post a month that gets popular...
I'm not on Adsense - I'm an Orble employee, so I'm not sure what the ad revenue is.
Rusty, ah, bless the perverts.
Comment by katyzzz
Photography Tips
Health Focus
Poetry Lighthouse
MS Paint Art
Good knowledge shared graciously, thank you Cib.
Comment by Michaelie
Flick Wit
Comment by jon
Orble News
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Jon's Bookmarks
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On Orble image traffic makes about $2 US per thousand page views, whereas blog traffic in general makes around $5.50. Obviously this includes the image traffic so the actual figure is for non-image google traffic is around $10.
However image traffic would probably be about 5 times easier to get so it's much the same. If you upload original images (not on the web anywhere else) it's even easier.
I'm actually thinking of starting up a blog which people can contribute photos to of random things they see everyday, like flowers, speakers, fans, bookshelves, tables, chairs, wheels, lamps etc. I bet it would get a tonne of traffic. Would anyone be interested in contributing?
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Yes, it could be very popular...
Comment by Anonymous
As a newcomer to any kind of blogging, I found this explaination very concise and easy to understand.
It's all become clear now..what a shame about the hit count though.
Comment by jon
Orble News
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PicMad.com
Anyone can post their images and if you have submitted your AdSense ID you will be credited for any traffic. It's a new domain so it may take a little while to build up.
We are after original images of just about anything that people may search for. No nudie pics please
By original they should not be anywhere else on the web. I'll hopefully get around to putting up a few images this afternoon to give people an idea of what we are looking for.
Jon.
Comment by Chris Collings
KB Dollars
Thankyou for an excellent, very informative post. Your' actual stats and explanation were very encouraging. Incidentally, now that you have built a successful readership, would you prefer to get adsense commission instead of being employed?
I just came across these figures in a discussion, which just shows how Orble has grown. It proves that visitors can grow over time, this was from just over 1 year ago:
TRAFFIC STATISTICS 20061120 GMT
http://www.orble.com/ (You Gotta See This)
Hit Count: 15
Individual Readers: 4
Click Readers: 3
Repeat Readers:
Recent Repeat Readers:
All Blogs AveragesHit Count: 57
Individual Readers: 25
Want to attract more readers? Read Really Long Link
Want to increase your Search Engine traffic? Read Really Long Link
For an explanation of this traffic report see Really Long Link
Top Blogs by Individual Readers
1) 1010 http://www.musictimes.com.au/
2) 782 http://www.dancing.net.au/
3) 747 http://www.hiphop.org.au/
4) 601 http://www.funnyphotos.net.au/
5) 478 http://www.moviecritic.com.au/
6) 453 http://www.fashion.org.au/
7) 398 http://www.punk.org.au/
8) 358 http://www.soccer.org.au/
9) 339 http://www.tvbabble.com/
10) 331 http://www.recipe.org.au/
11) 329 Really Long Link
12) 326 http://www.jokes.org.au/
13) 309 http://www.photos.org.au/
14) 309 http://www.aflinsider.net/
15) 289 http://www.zcars.com.au/
16) 288 http://www.onlinegames.org.au/
17) 279 http://www.nbaloud.com/
18) 275 Really Long Link
19) 251 http://www.worldart.com.au/
20) 245 http://www.celebrity.org.au/
Rank for http://www.orble.com/ (You Gotta See This): 451 out of 897
Referral Stats for http://www.orble.com/ (You Gotta See This)(Hits)(Readers)(Referral URL)
6 (1) none (robots, type-ins, bookmarks, reloads)2
(1) Really Long Link
(1) http://www.orble.com/1
(1) Really Long Link
(1) Really Long Link
(1) Really Long Link
(1) Really Long Link
(1) Really Long Link
URL Stats for http://www.orble.com/ (You Gotta See This)(Hits)(Readers)(URL)
9 (3) Really Long Link (2) Really Long Link
Domain Referral Stats for http://www.orble.com/ (You Gotta See This)(Referrals)(Domain)
5 http://www.orble.com/4 my.orble.com
HAVE A NICE DAY
Inspiring or what?
Chris
Comment by Michaelie
Flick Wit
Comment by Anonymous
I don't want anyone coming to my blog and being exposed to porn. So please tell me if there is anyway the sidebar can be removed.
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
chris, thanks for that old post. Yeah, things have changed rapidly, haven't they?