Here’s our regular update on how the blog is doing. First to the stats.
June was a bumper month for us with 117430 unique visitors, 229301 visits and 1685704 page views. In July, we were back around the sort of reader numbers we had for April with 89496 unique visitors, 195867 visits and 1442702 page views (as Kim noted, more than Andrew Bolt has….) and August looks like coming in at around the same numbers. The drop off from June coincided exactly with the start of the school holidays (and uni break) and then spiked up a little, before settling back down with the onset of the Olympics. More generally, and obviously there’s a tale there, my analysis of the detailed stats shows that we get a fair bit of extra traffic associated with sustained coverage of particular events or issues – for instance the federal budget, the 2020 summit, the Bill Henson photos controversy, the Garnaut Review report and World Youth Day. That seems to be people interested in those specific things, and where we are now is probably just below the usual level of general interest in what we write about – which garners us around 6200 visitors on most week days, and around 5000 on weekends this month. That’s about 1000 less than it was before school/uni holidays and the Olympics intervened.
There was some scepticism around last year that political blogs would not easily make the transition into the Rudd era, in the absence of the stimulus of the federal election, which is when our numbers really jumped to a level that’s reasonably significant. That concern can be set aside, because clearly we’ve maintained a steady readership at around the same levels throughout this year, and when there’s more focus and public interest on particular issues that aren’t being well covered by the mainstream media, we can pull in around 1000 more visitors a day, and sometimes more – there were quite a few days in July when we were getting visitor numbers in the high 8000s. Some of the traffic “base” if you like of all these numbers is the “long tail” – visits to old posts. But in general we’re getting each visitor looking at an average of 7.5 pages, which when you take into account the fact that a lot of the traffic from seach engines to older pages only goes to one post, means that a lot of readers are engaging with a lot of the blog when they come here.
I still think we can grow these numbers, and we haven’t had any income from advertising yet, so we haven’t been able to do our own promotion beyond what we usually do, but I’d be really grateful if folks who like the joint spread the word, and also very interested in feedback on the mix and quality of posts. I’ve said something about the mix here. That takes me to advertising revenue. Our net in June was $3910.06 but only $2153.93 in July. Astute readers of this post may have noticed that the number of page views dropped back by only about 15% while the advertising revenue fell by a much larger percentage. That’s the economy slowing! With consumer confidence falling, advertisers are spending less, and our broker has found it harder to sell space and is now selling space at a lower rate. So while things remain sluggish in the consumer sector of the economy, I think our revenue will stay at a much lower level than we’d anticipated, even if the readership figures return to their pre-school holidays dimensions. That’s a bit of a pity given that it constrains our ability to achieve the two aims we had for the revenue – promoting the blog, and compensating me for some of the time I’d otherwise be spending on paid work. But c’est la vie, and I guess we should put our faith in the Rudd government’s economic management competence. 
If it persists though, we’ll have to have a bit of a rethink about what we can achieve in terms of outlaying money for marketing and promotion. So any ideas people might have about how we might do that for greatest benefit for smallest outlay would also be welcomed! And I, personally, will have to have a bit of a think about how I earn my crust after this semester finishes – because the lower amount of revenue will be the amount that flows through then given the four month lag between when it’s earned and when it’s paid. The PhD will be more or less wrapped up by then, fortunately, but I don’t think I’ll be doing the full time blogger thing in this economic climate. Though we’ll see!
I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone so much for their participation in and support of the blog. Our vision for LP has always been a community centred one, and I hope that we’re continuing to fulfil that. Any and all constructive feedback is most welcome.
Just a gentle reminder too that we don’t get any advertising revenue if you block the ads with a browser plugin. If that’s what you do, and you’d like to give us some financial support, we’d love it if you chose to make a donation! 
And another reminder that the ad revenue isn’t dependent on click throughs – they’re display ads.
Suck it in and hold out for christmas ad bookings. Don’t tell me your readers won’t be wanting a Makita leaf blower and a Dad’s Army DVD box set. Because they will.
Mark, the four month lag between displaying the ads and getting paid is the nub of
the issue – in business, cash-flow is king.
And from what I’ve seen, if you’re *only* waiting four months, you’re being treated better than many small blogs get treated by the overseas blog networks…
From what I’ve seen of the business model of many different blog networks in both Australia and USA, this is how they stay afloat: a huge time-lag between when the blog does the “work” (ie. shows ads to readers) and when the blog gets paid.
This is the reverse of the network TV and press advertising model, where stations and publishers can sometimes get paid months in **advance** of actually running the ads – ostensibly to cover production costs etc. In much of the media buying I have done, it was not unusual to have clients pre-paying for advertising anywhere up to 180 days ahead of when the ads run (and getting a steep rates discount for doing so) – and so the money gets to the networks way ahead of time.
Cash flow is king!
Hoo well. We’re in a brave new century with brave new business models. Look where the money sits during the time-lag between who gets paid and who does the paying to find out where the profit is…
Beyond the advertising paradigm is rethinking LP’s location within the social milieu or scene of (however defined) progressive social politics.
Proposal: To produce a sustainable income means investing in different forms of infrastructure, such as organising LP-hosted face-to-face event nights. For example, I know that 150-200 punters will pay $10 or so to attend interviews with ‘celebrities’ or panel discussions on certain topics and have a drink or two.
Think about it in terms of diversifying the LP brand and capitalising on the regular-reader goodwill.
Rationale: Most people who work in some professional or quasi-professional amateur capacity dealing with the issues or people discussed on this blog will also be familiar with cultures of social netowrking and the importance of social capital… and having a drink!
Problem #1: LP is an Australia-wide or even international blog, such events need to be ostensibly ‘local’…
Yep, that’s right, Mercurius.
The advantage of doing it this way though is that you get greater selling power through aggregating the readership of all the sites participating in the network, and you also get the services of a broker who’s well established and can get blood out of stones even when selling ads is much harder. If you try to do it yourself, it’s either a full time job just trying to sell ads, and for a smaller niche, or you end up paying someone to do it, which negates any advantage from retaining 100% of a smaller gross.
glen, that’s an idea that’s been suggested before, and it’s a good one, and we did have one f2f event in Melbourne. It’s a bit time intensive though, and I wonder if you factored in the labour in organising events, if it would actually pay off directly. It’s still something I’d like to pursue when and if I personally have more time.
Mark, I think LP’s efforts thus far have been an inspiration. I’d also add that, long term, the trends are very much in your favour as advertising slowly migrates online.
>
Having said that I think there are a range of other revenue strategies LP could look at, including events and, dare I suggest it, merchandise. Finally, while I think there is a great mix of content on the site, there is always scope for more and better content. Topics I’d like to see pop up more often include geopolitics and foreign affairs, international economics, arts and even sport. Yes sport LOL
>
Another point: some rudimentary demographic analysis of the LP audience and their spending habits might help your broker sell better targeted campaigns, and more of them …
Well, I’m coming off a rather low base at my blog – but after doing it for a few months, my provisional conclusions – as relevant to a leviathan like LP – are:
1. Covering Portuguese forts in Asia is unlikely to increase daily hits or revenue.
2. However, film blog is comparatively popular!
“So any ideas people might have about how we might do that for greatest benefit for smallest outlay would also be welcomed!”
“For example, I know that 150-200 punters will pay $10 or so to attend interviews with ‘celebrities’ or panel discussions on certain topics and have a drink or two.”
If yer looking at me here, better make that 149-199 punters. I get all that for free, including unlimited drinks, at APRA events. With great music and drugs as well.
Mark, sure you put a lot of time into it, but you’re getting quite a bit out of LP too. Test flights of material with mucho feedback that you can develop into paid articles and the kudos of being alpha male in one of the nation’s most noticed group blogs. Plus, according to some of the figures you mentioned above, you feel just over 2 grand a month in ad revenue is not a good result. But that’s still 24k a year for something you just wanted to do for hell of it at the start.
But yes, I’m sure there’s all sorts of labour intensive work behind the scenes us punters take for granted, from thread gardening to keep the place nice to paying for server space to the many hours put into the contributor wiki to manage a bunch of overly artiuclate but not always stable blog artistes.
The question you seem to be asking is how does LP better monetize its goodwill (which I use in strict business sense).
Merchandise! I seem to recall a t-shirt competition some time ago. Then there’s the LP Contributers nude calendar…
Or you could just go the Tim Blair route and sell your hand raised crop of eyeballs to a major media outlet.
Actually I do have some coherent and plausible and possibly original ideas about developing new revenue streams for LP which I’d be happy to dilate upon through nominated back channels.
By the way, drink much Red Bull do you?
No I’ve given it up!
One idea for increasing ad revenue might be to add some display ads to your XML feeds. I’m sure you’ve got a fair number of feed only readers.
While you’re doing that it would be awesome if you could please, please, pretty please, provide the full post content in the feed. I really don’t like clicking through from my feed reader and I don’t see any reason why you should make me (unless of course you’re relying on the ad revenue you get on the site but don’t get in the feed).
Simon, I think tigtog explained our reasoning to you on a different thread recently!
Nabs, I didn’t want to suggest it was small change! Just that from the point of view of an aspiration to be a full time blogger, it ain’t enough. Certainly good money for a hobby though. But, as I was saying, it restricts our capacity to grow by lessening the amount we can spend on marketing/advertising ourselves. But hopefully crowdsourcing some ideas – and thanks everyone for what’s been said so far – will pay a dividend! Anyway, will be in touch with you.
Had an offer last year, just after the election. Knocked it back. I’m totally not prepared to give up on the idea of an independent blogosphere!
I should point out though, before the all seeing eye of Tim notes this and sends me another email, we don’t actually know how and why Tim’s blog moved to the Telegraph’s site. Perhaps – in a spirit of bloggy accountability – he’ll explain. But we’re just speculating otherwise.
Mark, you’re right, tigtog did provide an explanation. Still, including ads in your feeds was a serious suggestion to help your revenue. The only thing is, I would be pretty unhappy about ads in a feed that didn’t also have the full content. So I guess I was just taking the opportunity to plug my cause again.
Ps – re “alpha male” – that is so not me!
Well, persistence is admirable, Simon!
I haven’t looked lately, but last time I did look it was about 300 subscribers through google reader, and 90 ish through bloglines. I’m aware there are things you can use to calculate more accurately the feed readership, but I haven’t really looked into it. I should have a look at how many times the host serves the feed. It does look like the great majority come here via the front page, as in regular readers, not people getting here for a specific topic or post via a search engine. The reach of feed readers might be a lot smaller than those of us who have made them a habit think.
Nevertheless, thanks for the input – I’ll have a think about the ads on the feed suggestion, and I’m sorry we can’t be more accommodating in response to your suggestion.
“Just that from the point of view of an aspiration to be a full time blogger, it ain’t enough.”
Aha! So that’s the master plan? In that case yer right. 24k annually is a gentleman’s bar bill not an income.
“Or you could just go the Tim Blair route and sell your hand raised crop of eyeballs to a major media outlet.”
I was funning you there. Though I suspect there would probably be more A/B eyeballs focused on this site than on that one.
“we don’t actually know how and why Tim’s blog moved to the Telegraph’s site”
And interesting that AFAICR he never gave a reason nor was asked for one by his regulars. It was a big move and really fragmented a whole community who had coalesced at spleenville over several years. And then just like that, with no questions asked or answered, it was over.
Anyway, I do hope you’ve dismissed the LP Contributers nude calendar idea out of hand.
Fair enough, those numbers are way smaller than I would have expected. It’s probably not worth your while.
Is your only reason (as, I think, tigtog suggested) for not including the full content in the feeds already is that you’re running an old version of WP and have no intention of upgrading? If that’s the case, and you can tell me which version you’re running I’d be happy to look into providing a patch for the source which will include the full content in feeds.
Just on the feed reader thing, I’m one blogging regular who never uses them, with the exception of when I’m putting together Missing Link over at Troppo (google reader).
Maybe it’s the graphic artist coming out, but I like blogs that are well designed, because I like to look at nice things! That’s the rationale for putting so much effort into making ’skepticlawyer’ a nice blog to look at, with attractive artwork and clean design. I suspect (shallow, I know) that I don’t spend as much time at less attractive sites, even when the content is good.
I like Glen’s Idea !
Larvatus Prodeo…the Musical!
mark, you aren’t thinking like a capitalist! The easiest way to overcome come the organisational problem is to ask for tenders/submissions from people/organisations that already run event nights and set up synergistic relationships. LP has its readership and content distribution to sell, which I imagine would be attractive.
The problem with thinking like a capitalist is that your word is then worth money; the blog loses some of its social efficacy if it only discusses events which it has a finacial relationship with.
Mark, I think Glen has alluded to it – play on your strengths and that is your content and your community.
I think you have room to expand your site to include paid membership to your blog to participate in additional features – such as discussion forums, chat etc. Enhance the online community relationship. Further, if you are on discussion forums, then you can get your own membership base to pay for advertising features on their signatures or even a specific promotions board to promote their own various businesses/organisations etc. For many small businesses, it is difficult to pay for proper advertising space, however, many are able to afford signature advertising on forums. It then has a roll on effect that if they want maximum exposure for their business, they would need to contribute in many discussions.
Chat sessions can be like f2f events – a small fee to register for a chat session.
I also like the idea of t-shirts. I think more can be done to promote the LP brand.
Anyway just some of my thoughts.
Some good? t-shirt slogans (with apologies to The Word magazine):
Appetite For Discussion (in goth lettering)
I Read It For The Articles
Larvatus Prodeo: Intelligent Life on the Intertubes (mostly)
And without apologies to The Word:
Blog Beats Bullshit Better
Larvartus Prodeo: I Don’t Know What It Means Either
Larvatus Prodeo – the only independent blog collective in Australia with men and women!
Man, that moniker’s stalking me.
Larvatus Prodeo: Yes, She Lipsnigers
Random thoughts (possibly incoherent due to bad head cold):
1. Academic/media/arts/policy job board – the tech blogs are making money hand over fist with targeted job board systems – look to http://authenticjobs.com/ as an example of an individual writer/designer with a strong brand extending that brand into an exceptionally useful product. It could be a good way to connect individual academic researchers with eager and willing research assistants, for example.
2. If you haven’t already, you should be looking at Feedburner to collate better information about your RSS-based readership.
Happy to help with graphic design for tee-shirts, too. I mostly use Zazzle.com for my stuff as they seem to have the best print-on-black technology.
Love it!
Ben, if you’re into Basketball, The Sport Count http://thesportcount.com/ there are some super smart and cool guys behind it. And After Grog Blog for eveything Aussie.
tough acts to follow…
I’d wear that one!
Mark — I am starting a service soon that may interest you. Please drop me a line.
>>..”Or you could … sell your hand raised crop of eyeballs to a major media outlet….Had an offer last year, just after the election. Knocked it back.”
Just out of interest, … who wanted to buy us, what price was not good enough for us, and if someone does eventually stump up an offer that can’t be refused, will there be a dividend for the eyeballs (metonym or metaphor?) that are the
commodity tradedactual value proposition? How will we know when we’ve been sold – unsolicited, albeit a cut above the usual, offers start appearing in our inbox?Nabakov>> “24k annually is a gentleman’s bar bill not an income” … Hmmm, that’s 2000/mth, 500/week, 70/day … Good Lord, s/he’s right, that’s not even a goode glasse per arduous hour, let alone leaving $ome aside for prudent medical expenses/insurance … It’s the gout y’know.
danny, I’m not going to discuss it further but you can rest assured that as far as I’m concerned, I can never envisage this blog being for sale to anyone. It was not an offer – however attractive – that I considered for even a second.
So … what we need is a topical political issue that consumes the airwaves for months. Mmm, I wonder what’s the odds on a double dissolution within the next 6-12 months (and who do we have to see about organising one)???
Sell kittens jumping out of cakes
I, for one, much appreciate your reassurencingnesses Mark. Eyeball shares are one thing, and neither here nor there really, email databases are quite another.
I would also bet I’m not the only one who’s just a tad curious, (along the lines of “You mean I haven’t seen everything yet?”) as to who on earth could possibly be at all interested in the present company as a viable market proposition, whether they were delusionals, or geniii , or both. Not that I expect, or even want, enlightenment, considering the likely in-confidence nature of the offer that wasn’t even considered for a second. We do understand ethics here.
On the other hand, if it meant that someone could do some targetted demographic marketing magic, use us as a cornerstone to build a sustaining buyership for a Nation Review type weekend paper, f’rinstance, that’d be a fine thing, and I’d be first to put my hand up to be sold. It would be so good to have something to look forward to at the Newsagent’s on Saturday morning. Maybe Nabs is right about A/B eyeball market share.
Of course I assume that it’s not Crikey, ‘cos most everyone here would have had their free go at that, so they’ve already got that email addy database and the continuing squattermail exposure, there would be nothing much extra in it for them. Likewise New Matilda.
No, it must be someone else, hmmm…..Damn, I’ll just have
sit on my secateurs and spinstew.danny, just clarifying, we don’t maintain a database of email addresses or IP addresses or anything else of commenters and visitors, and if we did, it would be illegal to sell it to anyone. The Privacy Act means that any website can’t transmit any data it may have on visitors to any third party without their consent.
Kim: I didn’t know that, and I’m very glad you told me. Taa.
No probs, danny.
I would like to see a T-shirt devoted to LP’s celebrity commenters. How about:
Fyodor, Nabakov and Liam
Derailing blog threads since 1872!
The traditional thing for lazy journos (ie nearly all of them) is to pick a party and bang the “OMG LEADERSHIP SPECULATION” drum at various volumes.
Just to nitpick, but you do keep such a database. Wordpress automatically records the supplied email and IP address of every commenter.
True, Jacques, but we don’t do anything with it in a marketing sense.
Sure. Just the pedantic nerd in me showing. And you’re quite right about the Privacy Act protecting your visitors.
>> “… the federal election, which is when our numbers really jumped to a level that’s reasonably significant …we’ve maintained a steady readership at around the same levels throughout this year … ”
You’re saying you’re getting the same traffic during ‘08 as you did during ‘07? Even without the compelling subject matter of teh election? Now that’s loyalty for ya.
Yep! It’s good stuff! And for a lot of the time, we’re getting more traffic. I think it’s a neat way – among other things – of demonstrating that politics is about more than a horse race!
Dear Mark:
I just ran across an article you wrote on Larvatus Prodeo entitled Economy Tanks, blogs suffer!, http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/20/economy-tanks-blogs-suffer-or-advertising-and-readership-accountability-post/#comment-497628, and I would like to raise an issue that is of concern to Selling Power magazine, which is the use of our trademark.
The word “Selling Power” is sometimes erroneously used as a synonym for sales effectiveness. For example you wrote: “The advantage of doing it this way though is that you get greater selling power through aggregating the readership of all the sites participating in the network…” We do not condone such uses of our trademark.
As a practical matter, when you describe sales effectiveness, there are a wide range of terms available such as: sales excellence, sales savvy, sales mastery, sales acumen, sales efficiency, and many more.
The reason for this letter is to educate writers like yourself that we want to protect our trademark, since we don’t want to risk Selling Power being declared by the courts a generic word. Therefore we ask you not to use Selling Power as a phrase since it is our legal trademark.
We would like to receive a written acknowledgment of this letter stating that you will in the future identify Selling Power as a trademark if you should write about our magazine, and not use Selling Power as a phrase. If we do not hear from you, we will need to take further action.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
All the best,
Gerhard Gschwandtner
Founder and Publisher
Selling Power
1140 International Parkway
Fredericksburg VA 22406
Office: 540-752-7000 Cell: 540-273-2555
P.S. Watch Selling Power videos online http://www.sellingpower.com/video
GG:ts
Gerhard, that sounds like serious crap. The phrase “selling power” has been in the public domain for yonks. As a reader of this blog, I’d like to forward this letter to the condemn posts with a red flag and a bloody good laugh.
Oh my, legal spam! You saw it here first
That’s got to be the funniest load of horseshit I’ve seen for a long time!
Uh-oh. Gerhard, you’d better hope that Sales Excellence, Inc. doesn’t see this.
Or Sales Acumen.
Dear Possum,
While I appreciate you are expressing yourself here in good faith, I find myself once again forced into the educator’s role. I write here with a polite though heavy heart.
Please try to understand my situation, before I must gently castigate you. When I began my business I did not expect to be spending all my time cleaning the world of wrongdoings, not only against me but the position I stand in. My business name is continually taken in vain, yet I am a purveyor of some of the finest horseshit available and imaginable.
I exhort you, with the sincerest kindness, to refrain from dropping my business name into any of your future doings, be that in speech, writing or thought.
Yours faithfully,
Rusty Bellwether
4560395 Central City
Manhattan
ps. I am registering for ownership of the words “long time”, due to the way it suits my business, so please be similarly warned.
I have to ask Gerhard, do you do this often, and if so can I see a graph of these posts and how they relate to the timing and severity of DDOS attacks on your website? Thanks.
Sad to say this, skepticlawyer, but I was around for the first legal spam – which wasn’t actually that legal after all.
Is making bogus legal threats illegal?
I just missed that, but arrived while the combo of that and the September that never ended was still cursed on a regular basis.
I’m here to tell y’all I have just registered the as my trademark. Iwould like to receive a written acknowledgment of this letter stating that you will in the future identify *the* as a trademark if you should write about anything at all, and not use the in a phrase. If I do not hear from you, I will need to take further action.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
H. Pissfahrt (Mrs)
Upper Bluttfueck, Vic. 3666
I have the patent for teh pending!
I’ve got “a” as well.
But only in the indefinite article, not in every word the letter appears in. I’m not greedy.
I assert worldwide rights over all Pirate Queens everywhere.
I don’t know how you people can make jokes about this. Didn’t you read Gerhard’s post? He threatened to take ‘further action’. Further action. You can’t say he didn’t warn you.
just for you, i disabled ad block pro on the lp domain.
re: gerhard, trademarks are national. i know the interwebs are international, but still, lp is effectively (actually?) constituted in australia, he’s have to have an australian trademark for an australian court to do anything about it. and an american court has no assets to seize, even if the assets an australian court could sieze would be tiny and anyway all exhausted paying lawyers by the end of the case.
usually also with trademarks, in australia anyway, you HAVE to defend your trademark, if you don’t send threatening letters you can lose your mark registration. and – i may be wrong – i’m pretty sure it’s also wrong to just send the letter, you got to back it up with actual legal action.
my view is the whole thing is just SPAM to get the /link/ associated to the keyword.
Yep, legal spam.