Hits or Misses: Who is Your Website's Audience?

securitas writes "The Christian Science Monitor's Gregory M. Lamb wrote a story interesting to anyone who runs a website: How do you accurately and reliably measure the audience for your website? From the article: 'Most websites have no idea how many people view their content. This inherent fuzziness is causing problems for commercial websites, especially online publications desperate to make money from Internet advertising... How can you charge for ads when it's nearly impossible to tell advertisers how many people will see them?' The article discusses the flaws and problems with Nielsen/NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix - they grossly undersample workplace users - and the rise in the number of sites requiring user registration."

Comments

You shouldn't care how many people visit ...

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Advertisers shouldn't care how many people visit.

Here's a good example. The website Xlr8yourmac.com is easiest the single most valuable website to me on the internet. I would imagine it's hit totals are pretty low. That said, it generates a good bit of revenue from advertisers, mainly Other World Computing.

My main website generates traffic through eBay sales and by posting in forums such as this around the internet.

I mention that I have a website in all my ebay winning bidder emails.

I also generate traffic by posting in forums about Apple or Mac Community topics.

Further I have a traffic generating site called JackWhispers that follows Mac Community Scams and provides different perspectives on Macintosh news. I could care less if anyone visits. All I know is that the target IS getting my message or at least finding it in Google.

My traffic to jackwhispers has risen from 400 to about 4000 a month.

I also sell to people here on slashdot - people that post in my journal and see my various postings.

Yahoo geocities premium accounts (as my site is) monitor traffic without cookies (if you want them too)