Big Brother is watching you LOL!!!

I would like to thank the owners of the forum for the new software we have acquired. It is fascinating to see that since it was installed less than 24 hours ago our little forum has had over 500 hits from REAL people not bots. Looking closer we can see who is doing what and for how long. The majority are spending between 20 mins to over an hour so obviously we are interesting. IP addresses are checked and identified so we know whether we are appealing to those in Brighton, Preston, Granadilla or far flung places and how many times they visit from a specific IP address.

The only drawback as far as I am concerned is I will be spending hours looking at what is happening, as I love numbers. Thanks again guys great tool for us going onward and upward.

Blimey, i better come clean, I'm Sparticus,

You mean Howard has lurked 500 times in less than 24 hours

Gypsy wrote:I would like to thank the owners of the forum for the new software we have acquired. It is fascinating to see that since it was installed less than 24 hours ago our little forum has had over 500 hits from REAL people not bots. Looking closer we can see who is doing what and for how long. The majority are spending between 20 mins to over an hour so obviously we are interesting. IP addresses are checked and identified so we know whether we are appealing to those in Brighton, Preston, Granadilla or far flung places and how many times they visit from a specific IP address.

The only drawback as far as I am concerned is I will be spending hours looking at what is happening, as I love numbers. Thanks again guys great tool for us going onward and upward.

Just what we needed by the sounds of things.

So, are 90% of our visitors / viewers still lurkers from Tenerife then ?

And if they're REAL people, not bots, why aren't they posting ?


:puzzled:

Almost 1/3 of the IP addresses are from Spain, all except 2 which are mainland are from Tenerife.

A couple of ‘foreign ones like the person from Scranton Pennsylvania who looked in both yesterday and today and 1 which says it is Anonymous but I can narrow the user down to within 3 minutes so that is interesting!

The rest are all from the UK

Fabulous, we have such good stats as well. The fact is that 99% of forums have many readers but not many posts. We are fortunate that we have loads of posts and plenty of viewers.

None from Ireland?

Sorry, yes but I included that in the UK along with Wales and Scotland.

CaribeCelt wrote:None from Ireland?

Click map
hover over countries in green to get amount of hits...

Can you post the whole analytics report lol, helps others understand how well the forum is doing, especially similar forums.
I would do it for my sites but I don't like the idea of my stats being made public because my niche is highly competitive and I need all the ammunition I can muster to stay ahead.

A very honest gesture indeed.

In the words of the prophet Isaiah .... On your LOL But we now have a couple of bits of software that are showing good stats and the one LR posted covers a different timescale to the one I am looking at.

Let it be enough for us to say we are doing extremely well and we can now spot those that up until now thought they were invisible

You have just been designated a new title:

"Forum Analyst"

Glad you have something to get your teeth into. :)

Time to invite advertisers.

Why all the secrecy. I wonder ?

If the forum is doing well, then prove it and shout about it.

There might just be some potential advertisers looking in.

Jimandsi wrote:Why all the secrecy. I wonder ?

If the forum is doing well, then prove it and shout about it.

There might just be some potential advertisers looking in.

we have shouted Jim, just some bits need to be kept in the backburner.

Those looking at the stats will have to figure out whether they're daily, weekly or monthly :)

My guess is one of the 3 but I'm not disclosing my thoughts.

It is doing well Jim, honestly but as a businessman you know that you don´t give anything worth having away it is always better to know more about the competitiion than they know about you.

Be it enough to say it is starting to get to a time when we could think about advertisers. I have seen some prices for other fora and they are IMO expensive, we could reduce by 50% and still make a lot of money because our intention was to give to charity not line someones pockets. That in itself has got to be a plus over others.

You'll also need to look at it from the potential advertisers angle though Gypsy and Topdog.

I've spent a fair bit on advertising in my time, but don't profess to be an expert.

However, if I were to consider on-line advertising via forums again I would want to know various in-depth statistics regarding the audience, their locations, impressions, click throughs, click through rates etc. etc.

Any provider not willing to disclose those details wouldn't get a look in I'm afraid.

Good luck anyway - you're going to need it.

Then as you know Jim, if approached by a genuine potential advertiser, we would disclose more info.
I don't think your accounts and monies paid in and out etc were on the wall for all to see when you had your wally scooter business

Jimandsi wrote:
You'll also need to look at it from the potential advertisers angle though Gypsy and Topdog.

I've spent a fair bit on advertising in my time, but don't profess to be an expert.

However, if I were to consider on-line advertising via forums again I would want to know various in-depth statistics regarding the audience, their locations, impressions, click throughs, click through rates etc. etc.

Any provider not willing to disclose those details wouldn't get a look in I'm afraid.

Good luck anyway - you're going to need it.

Ask any forum to give you a report of their site stats and I'll tell you ahead of time which of the fingers they give you.
You either have to believe what they tell you or walk away.

The difference with forums is that without stats, you can pretty much figure out if it's busy or not. :)

That Google Analytics site is massive. It is a very powerful tool which allows SEO operators and webmasters a huge range of statistics which I don't even pretend to understand. It is a password protected Google site which I'm afraid is not open to public view as it is also interactive and has to be controlled.

NEMESI5 wrote:

Ask any forum to give you a report of their site stats and I'll tell you ahead of time which of the fingers they give you.
You either have to believe what they tell you or walk away.

The difference with forums is that without stats, you can pretty much figure out if it's busy or not. :)

Don't agree !

Your word "busy" doesn't really count I'm afraid Juba NEMISIS.

A forum can have just ten members and as long as one of them clicks on my banner, then I have a result.

Or the same forum can have 1,000 members, all posting complete bullshit and totally unaware of or even ignoring the adverts.

Which one would you spend your money with ?

Some helpful info here for you:- [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Yes you sent me the password but I was stopped as I had signed in somewhere different from your usual google account so needed more info :sulk2:

Still I am happy with what I can see on the other site so if Google Analytics is bigger I would never have time for housework

Jimandsi wrote:
Don't agree !

Your word "busy" doesn't really count I'm afraid Juba NEMISIS.

A forum can have just ten members and as long as one of them clicks on my banner, then I have a result.

Or the same forum can have 1,000 members, all posting complete bullshit and totally unaware of or even ignoring the adverts.

Which one would you spend your money with ?
Some helpful info here for you:- [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

At this stage in the game Jim, we are only throwing around ideas as to how to go forward.

If we were planning on taking lots of money from you and it was going into our pockets I would agree that you should have something definitive to measure against, but as we are considering donations to charities I would suspect the majority of our advertisers would see that as a great way to donate to a worthwhile cause and still get their message out there.

I also think it is a sign of the openness of this forum that we discuss what we have in mind with our members as in this case to bounce around and get their input rather than presenting them with something they may hate / never use.