How popular is your blog?

[Polycount Productions]

http://www.gameproducer.net has had about 5000 unique visitors this month (and about 10k-15k page views) according to AWSTAT statistics. I'm quite happy with this number as it was only couple of hundred unique visitors in Nov-Dec 2005. I've stated advertising the blog couple of weeks ago - so I'm happy with this. For now.

My current goal would be to reach 10 000 unique visitors per month (I'm trying to reach that in January) - and the next goal is to reach 100 000 unique visitors (haven't commited it in writing - but this year could be a good deadline for that.)

Steve Pavlina mentions:
In February 2005 this site received about 86,000 visitors, and this month [Jan 06] I’m projecting about 715,000
I don't know if these are page views, visitors - or unique visitors. It's hard to say. I presume these are just visitors - and the unique visitor number could be 2 or 3 times lower making it to be 200 000 - 300 000 unique visitors in Jan 06 for his blog.

Some Gamasutra statistics:

1.75 million page views per month
cmp 400,000 unique visitors
cmp Over 290,000 registered members
cmp 3.1 page views per session
cmp Members spend an average of 14 minutes during one user session


I think these statistics are really interesting - is it really so that Steve's blog is so popular compared to GamaSutra? I would expect a GamaSutra to beat this stats fight much easier.

---

How popular blogs you guys have? May you show some statistics?

[ManuelFLara]

I don't know why should Gamasutra have "a lot better" stats than Steve's blog, since:
a) Gamasutra audience is very specialized: proffesional game developers. I don't even read it myself (only some articles I'm pointed to from time to time), too much industry centered.
b) On the other hand, Steve's site content can be of interest to a heck of a lot more people, almost everybody, I'd say.

I'm sure Gamasutra has a very high % of its target audience covered, but Steve still has a tiny % of his, comparing its several hundred thousand visitors to "almost everyone with Internet connection". For that reason I think his site could (and will) grow to something bigger (in terms of traffic) than Gamasutra.

[Jack Norton]

I think is easy to get visitors/traffic from blogs. I myself in my blog had 4000 UNIQUE visitors in december, and I update it not so often...

[Phil Steinmeyer]

www.philsteinmeyer.com has had 4021 unique visitors (16,000 visits, 32,000 pages) so far in January. It's been drifting up a bit for the last 3 months or so, but I'd have to work on it a lot harder to get really big numbers.

[GBGames]

GBGames' Blog has gone from about 40 unique vists/day to about 400-600 unique vists/day in a year. Of course, I hadn't put a lot of focus on getting more traffic to it.

Oh, and it's worth a little more than $9,000. See? (http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/?url=gbgames.com%2Fblog)

[Ronkes]

You guys are doing a lot better than I am.

I recently switched my personal blog (http://www.williamwilling.com/blog/) to a new domain and it has had 142 unique visitors so far.

My blog on game design (http://www.casualgamedesign.com/) has about 350 unique visitors a month. Frankly, I hope to be able to get more visitors than that. I'm trying really hard to add something of value for game designers.

[Polycount Productions]

You guys are doing a lot better than I am.

I recently switched my personal blog (http://www.williamwilling.com/blog/) to a new domain and it has had 142 unique visitors so far.

My blog on game design (http://www.casualgamedesign.com/) has about 350 unique visitors a month. Frankly, I hope to be able to get more visitors than that. I'm trying really hard to add something of value for game designers.
Small hint: Throw a news item into gamedev.net - I'm sure you'll get some visitors from there...

[BinaryMoon]

So far this month I've had 66000 page views and 20000 unique visitors, but my blog isn't exclusively gaming related, and I'm part of a blog network that get's massive amounts of traffic.

[Matthew]

I just started up a blog on physics-based games (http://www.fun-motion.com/). It's been online 10 days with 82 unique visitors. I haven't done any promotion yet, but plan to as soon as the first developer interviews are posted.

How actively are you guys promoting your blogs, or are is it something to do more as a hobby or creative outlet?

[GBGames]

I just started up a blog on physics-based games (http://www.fun-motion.com/). It's been online 10 days with 82 unique visitors. I haven't done any promotion yet, but plan to as soon as the first developer interviews are posted.

How actively are you guys promoting your blogs, or are is it something to do more as a hobby or creative outlet?

My blog was a way for me to write without polluting a forum with my words, especially when I was commenting on something I had little experience with. For some reason I used to feel compelled to participate no matter what, but I now concentrate on writing what I either know about or want to know about. I also find that my own words don't get lost in the day to day postings of a regular forum.

As for promotion, I have my sig which references the blog when I post here, on the IGDA forums, gamedev.net, and on the ASP newsgroups. Also, when you write about things that other people then comment on, they usually provide trackbacks to your site. So when I comment on another person's blog post, they usually get a link to my site added to their post. One recent example was Thomas Warfield's post on Pyrogon's postmortem: http://www.asharewarelife.com/2006/01/why_pyrogon_fai.html You can see my blog post listed under the trackbacks section in the comments.

Recently I wrote about the power of language and its impact on the FOSS discussions that take place. I submitted it to lxer.com as a news item and it was listed on the main page for a bit. When I start writing more insightful comments on game development, I will probably submit a news item to gamedev.net or gamasutra (thanks for that hint!).

To summarize:
1) Make use of trackbacks. See this post about the importance of trackbacks: http://ripples.typepad.com/ripples/2005/12/why_trackbacks_.html
2) Tell people about your blog. Use your sig to advertise its existence. Post comments on other blogs.
3) Write good content. Real blogs are supposed to be links to other interesting articles or sites, such as Joystiq.com. Still, I like to provide some commentary on the article or link in question. "This is a cool site" is really basic, but if you can say why you think it is cool or how you might benefit from it, you do your readers a great service.

[Ronkes]

Small hint: Throw a news item into gamedev.net - I'm sure you'll get some visitors from there...

Thanks for the hint, I'll do that.

I'm also wondering if the word 'casual' in the name is scaring people off. I don't want to give the impression that all I talk about is creating Bejeweled-type games.

[GBGames]

Thanks for the hint, I'll do that.

I'm also wondering if the word 'casual' in the name is scaring people off. I don't want to give the impression that all I talk about is creating Bejeweled-type games.

I think you've done a good job of talking about different games. You seem to be in the middle of a decision between keeping the name or changing it.

My advice would be to keep it. More people need to stand for the idea that ( casual != Bejeweled/puzzle clones ). You write good stuff, and I think that changing the name would allow people to keep the misconception without even thinking about it. As you write and as people link to your work, as people read it more, the majority way of thinking about "casual" should change.

[Sharpfish]

As you write and as people link to your work, as people read it more, the majority way of thinking about "casual" should change.

yup. Which is a far more productive, subtle and clever way of broadening the market for new types of casual games (instead of attacking them all the time as some do). :)

[Ronkes]

That's an interesting angle. I've thought about writing an article about something like why casual game design matters to every game designer. Maybe that's a better route to go than a name change.

[GBGames]

In case you haven't seen it: How to Build a High-Traffic Web site (or Blog) (http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/01/how-to-build-a-high-traffic-web-site-or-blog/) by Steve Pavlina.

Maybe it is not totally applicable as I don't think game development blogs will be the same as personal growth blogs in terms of audience size, but it does talk about writing valuable content.

Kotaku and Joystiq may get the awards for best game-related blogs, but they are definitely not the first sites I think to go to for game development. Joe Indie, Cliffski, Casual Game Design, Tales of the Rampant Coyote, GameProducer.net, A Shareware Life, Lost Garden...these are some of the game development blogs I frequent most often. They generally have really good posts and I remember the URLs in general. With most of my other feeds I couldn't tell you the address of the blog, let alone the name of it.

...and I just noticed that the Game Development links on my site aren't up-to-date. A lot of those aren't up anymore or haven't updated in forever. *cough* Digital Sailor *cough* B-)

[TimS]

How popular blogs you guys have? May you show some statistics?

How popular... hm... not very?

Stats:

390 Hits from bookmark
118 Hits from forums.indiegamer.com
24 Hits from www.timscheiman.com
3 Hits from search.msn.com
1 Hits from www.indiegamer.com
1 Hits from indiegamer.com
6 Hits from timscheiman.com
3 Hits from gbgames.com

That's total hits... as in ever. Thanks GB for the crossthrough traffic! Huzzah my blog is huge. Maybe if it wasn't so boring and not-updated.... :(

-Tim

[Matthew]

Some early stats for Fun-Motion (http://www.fun-motion.com/):

Unique visitors/day:

Date Range Visitors
Thu 1/12 0
Fri 1/13 0
Sat 1/14 4
Sun 1/15 8
Mon 1/16 18
Tue 1/17 8
Wed 1/18 16
Thu 1/19 20
Fri 1/20 21
Sat 1/21 37
Sun 1/22 133
Mon 1/23 1463
Tue 1/24 696


Where they all came from:


Source [Medium] Visits P/Visit
neowin.net[referral] 1070 1.87
(direct)[(none)] 418 1.94
gamershell.com[referral] 348 2.26
fz.se[referral] 206 1.82
fragzone.se[referral] 144 1.86
forums.indiegamer.com[referral] 139 2.4
google[organic] 124 7.16
digg.com[referral] 112 1.52
gamesetwatch.com[referral] 98 2.16
stumbleupon.com[referral] 45 1.71

[GBGames]

Some early stats for Fun-Motion (http://www.fun-motion.com/):

Unique visitors/day:

Date Range Visitors
Sat 1/21 37
Sun 1/22 133
Mon 1/23 1463
Tue 1/24 696



Whoa! What happened after the 20th that caused the huge jump in traffic?

[zoombapup]

How do you track hits?

I often wondered if I ever even got any hits from my blog, not that I write in it often, far to sodding busy. But if we ever get to the "I'm building a personal profile so I look like a leedah" stage, I'm gonna need the know-how :)

Personally, my blogging appals me. I once tried to do it "profesisonally" with all the links and whatnot. But it always seems to degenerate into a ramble, or a rant.

I guess I'd rather do a podcast, at least I'm semi-coherent when I speak, usually.

[Danc]

June 2006 stats for Lost Garden

From Google analytics:
Visits per month: 23,225
Page views per visit: 1.63
Repeat visitors: 34%
Daily visitors: ~600 to 700 per day


The problem with stats is that they seem a bit wishy washy. Webalizer, for example reports 58,000 visits and 600,000 hits in the month of June. Now potentially I have that many feeds coming to the site, but I suspect not. I generally use the more conservative numbers from Analytics when tracking how things are going.

The thing is I'm not exactly sure what to do with the site. Mostly it is just a spot for me to put random thoughts and keep in touch with others. Maybe that is all it needs to be. :-)

take care
Danc.

[RinkuHero]

My LiveJournal doesn't allow me to track hits ^^

[cliffski]

I use blogger, which I don't think has stats on it, not that I've noticed. It is popular with employees at take 2 though.

[ZuluBoy]

My blog is not that popular, but I am not surprised because I am too lazy to update it :p .

[Nexic]

I never really started my blog with the aim of making any kind of profit out of it. I just wanted an outlet for my mind. Not totally certain on stats since I haven't attempted to add and stat tracking to it, but I'm guessing its about 3000 per month.

Never want to become a rich blogger, too much effort! Honestly can't find enough to write about that would be of any interest. It would get crappy very quickly.

[soniCron]

*mocks* I have no idea how popular my blog is, but this thread looked so fun, I just couldn't stay away! :p

[wibble]

Crikey - I need to post a bit more regularly on my blog! Nothing like most of the traffic you guys are reporting...

[Karja]

The original post mentioned 5000 unique visitors according to awstat, and webalizer is mentioned as well in the thread. Just how reliable are these; and do you people have some clever filtering when you count unique visitors?

I mean, I looked at the webalizer and awstats stats for my blog now, and according to them I've had ~5000 and ~4000 unique hits respectively for March. But given the amount of spam that I've seen, I just feel like most of it has to be useless traffic from bots or something like that...

// Karja, who wonders why this thread was resurrected, but doesn't complain

[NathanR]

Nobody comments on my blog, and blogspot sucks as far as telling you stats, so I have no idea.

Probably the reason I havent updated in so long.

I would like to ask though, do you think blogs are a good marketing tool for your games/work? Why?

Just wondering, and Im being vague on purpose. :)

[Polycount Productions]

I would like to ask though, do you think blogs are a good marketing tool for your games/work? Why?

Just wondering, and Im being vague on purpose. :)

Absolutely yes. I started my blog over a year ago (well - I'm the guy who posted in this thread in the first place), and since I enjoy writing it has not been burden to me to update it daily. Since I started the blog I've received lots of different opportunities... and basically I'm glad I started the blog. People enjoy the sales stats (http://www.gameproducer.net/category/sales-statistics/) and interviews (http://www.gameproducer.net/category/interviews/) - and since I update the site daily, something else might catch their attention as well.

It's been a really good marketing tool, although it requires patience. :cool:

[GBGames]

GBGames' Blog has gone from about 40 unique vists/day to about 400-600 unique vists/day in a year. Of course, I hadn't put a lot of focus on getting more traffic to it.

Oh, and it's worth a little more than $9,000. See? (http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/?url=gbgames.com%2Fblog)


Heh, since I originally posted those stats, I realized that they were amazingly wrong. I found that using w3counter.com and Google AdSense is a lot more accurate and meaningful than using my web host's tools. I get between 125 to 190 unique visitors per day.

Oh, and now it is worth $16,371.66. B-)

[Nexic]

Mine is worth $2,822.70.

Considering that took me probably 5 hours to setup and write all the articles that's not bad...

Any buyers? :)

[BinaryMoon]

I win (http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/worth.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.binarymoon.co.uk) :)

(to save the click my blog is valued at $5.1 million)

[Polycount Productions]

I win (http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/worth.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.binarymoon.co.uk) :)

(to save the click my blog is valued at $5.1 million)

Hah, I noticed your link is in the footer of a template of many blogs... no wonder it has links ;)

Btw, http://www.dnscoop.com/ provides additional way for estimating website value.

[bignobody]

I like the DNScoop one better - it said mine was worth $636 as opposed to the business-opportunities one that said it's worth $0.00 :D

That said, I'm lucky if I update it once a month, and usually only talk about NotSoft :)

[LilGames]

meh. I just tried DNSCOOP and frankly it way under-values the ad revenue, among other things. The main reason for this is they have no way of knowing actual traffic.

By the way, under the section "indexed pages" what does that mean? It listed Google: 0 , but all the others show numbers around 150. At first assumption one would think it means the site won't show up in Google, but this is not the case here.

[Nexic]

That tool is used for valuing text links and is pretty arbitary. I have a small info site with only 50 uniques per day making almost as much ad revenue as my 2000/day site did.

[Cartman]

Whoot! $896

I'm rich! I can retire now. :)

I really need to release a game. :)

[Coyote]

Hmmm.... I get between 600 and 800 visitors per day, but my blog is only worth a little over $1k.

Bummer.

[GolfHacker]

My site stats shows my blog had 1377 hits last month. I update it once a week or so. Unlike other developer blogs I've read, mine is oriented primarily toward fans/customers not other developers. I post sneak peeks of games I'm working on, fan mail and pics that I get from customers, and other personal and company-related news items that my readers may find interesting.

My blog is apparently worth $0.00 according to that web site. Oh well. I usually get several e-mails from readers when I post a new blog entry, so I know I have an audience even if it is small. The goal of my blog isn't so much to make money as it is to establish a rapport with fans/customers and give them some insight into what's happening at My Game Company. For example, my two recent blog entries (regarding Fashion Cents Deluxe development) have generated a number of e-mails from readers commenting on what they like about the changes and/or offering suggestions for the game. Many of my Dirk Dashing posts last year generated similar responses, especially when I shared screenshots of new levels or characters.

My blog gets some of my customers involved in the development process, which is fun for both them and us. It also gives them a sense of ownership in the final release, when they realize we listen to them and they see some of their suggestions and ideas being incorporated into a game. And it helps us build a better game, which will hopefully increase sales in the long run.

In case anyone is interested, my blog is at http://www.mygamecompany.com/blog/index.htm. If you're not interested, that's ok. You're not my primary audience anyway. :)

[Escapee]

My little personal health blog has about 50 - 80 unique visit/day. It worth 0 buck according to the site :D

Any buyer ?

[GrahamGoring]

Not a blog, but my podcast only gets about 250-300 downloads per episode, which is fairly paltry really (assuming it's not getting mirrored somewhere I don't know about).

Still, if it was a couple of thousand I'd be getting screwed over by the bandwidth usage.

[rockford]

Hi :)

For my french blog http://www.casualgames.fr (unique visitors per day), from google analytics :

Jeu 01/03 45
Ven 02/03 59
Sam 03/03 46
Dim 04/03 47
Lun 05/03 47
Mar 06/03 30
Mer 07/03 45
Jeu 08/03 50
Ven 09/03 57
Sam 10/03 50
Dim 11/03 57
Lun 12/03 38
Mar 13/03 40
Mer 14/03 48
Jeu 15/03 50
Ven 16/03 54
Sam 17/03 59
Dim 18/03 63
Lun 19/03 52
Mar 20/03 53
Mer 21/03 50
Jeu 22/03 42
Ven 23/03 36
Sam 24/03 43
Dim 25/03 42
Lun 26/03 36
Mar 27/03 43
Mer 28/03 32
Jeu 29/03 33
Ven 30/03 50
Sam 31/03 42

Total : 1439

And from my host webstats (unique visits and not unique visitors) :
1/3/2007 Jeudi 180
2/3/2007 Vendredi 211
3/3/2007 Samedi 171
4/3/2007 Dimanche 191
5/3/2007 Lundi 223
6/3/2007 Mardi 180
7/3/2007 Mercredi 182
8/3/2007 Jeudi 190
9/3/2007 Vendredi 202
10/3/2007 Samedi 194
11/3/2007 Dimanche 195
12/3/2007 Lundi 313
13/3/2007 Mardi 309
14/3/2007 Mercredi 304
15/3/2007 Jeudi 374
16/3/2007 Vendredi 329
17/3/2007 Samedi 264
18/3/2007 Dimanche 252
19/3/2007 Lundi 359
20/3/2007 Mardi 234
21/3/2007 Mercredi 292
22/3/2007 Jeudi 301
23/3/2007 Vendredi 327
24/3/2007 Samedi 263
25/3/2007 Dimanche 230
26/3/2007 Lundi 239
27/3/2007 Mardi 275
28/3/2007 Mercredi 201
29/3/2007 Jeudi 363
30/3/2007 Vendredi 274
31/3/2007 Samedi 280

7902 Visites uniques

Big fish games friends : about 1400 since november 2006

[Polycount Productions]

In case anyone is interested, my blog is at http://www.mygamecompany.com/blog/index.htm. If you're not interested, that's ok. You're not my primary audience anyway. :)

Heh, good one :)