Just curious....I'm tracking the number of hits I get per month/week/day. Do the rest of you do this? I find it incredibly helpful to see where most of my people are coming from and also just as a good goal to see my webtraffic overall increase! However, I'm totally clueless as to what is "typical." The last 2 months I've almost trippled my webtraffic from around 100-150 people per month to about 300-350 or so.

I'm just curious what other people are experiencing and seeing what a "ball park" range is.

Chris,

Have you done anything different to promote your site? I wonder if Pictage might be part of that. What do you do to increase traffic? Search engines, web links, etc?

Kurt

Hey Chris...I also used to see how many people visit my site too...(rigth now it's under major construction)...higher traffic is usually during the spring and fall for me. I live here in south Louisiana so my busiest season is Jan-May and Sept-December. It's total hell here in the summer and no one really would dare try to book me in that crazy humidity!

KK

PS....Hey Chris...Congrats on your engagement! Marriage is like bath....it's nice and soothing at the beginning...then after a while it gets cold! Just kidding...

the key is to have God in your lives and He adds more warm water. (But i'm sure you and your Hunnie Bubu know that)

Chris,

I agree with you. Your webstats are valuable free information. It tells you what pages are viewed the most, in some case even what photo is viewed the most. Also nice to know how long people are staying at your site and where they are coming from.

I have a photo on my site that I was tired of and was going to remove but when I checked the stats it is consistantly the in the top 3 most viewed photos. So it stays:-) I've attached it below BTW.

I assume you mean unique visitors when you say "people per month". Right?

I used to get around 400 unique visits per month, and then I started listing myself with every photographer listing on the net I could find. I also pay about $200 a quarter to be the number 2 listed photographer for the state of Florida at marketingtool.com

My traffic has tripled in the last 3 months to over 1200 unique visits. (This is what I'm tracking this month).

The more sites that link to you and you back to them the better you will rank eventualy on search engines. At least this is how it's been explained to me.

Ok, so I have mentioned on a couple of posts that I am in the process of working on a site for myself. It is not done, but I have it up so people could access Pictage from the last wedding I shot.

I never though about checking the traffic on a site so I just tried it. I don't know if this is right, but it says that I have had 4,500 successful requests in the month of April. Could I be reading that wrong?

I still need to complete my gallery and I am in the process of trying to figure how to center the site. If you interested you can view what I done so for at Hilmerson Photography

Let me know what you think.

Kurt

Hey Kurt,

Glad you're working on that site. I know what a great feeling it is to make progress on it!! Looks good what you've got so far. I like the format of it. Let us know when it's done.

I don't think that is the main traffic...I think you were looking at like 'hits' or 'pages' or something like that. Try to find something that refers to unique visitors. That will tell you how many people are coming to your site.

Pictage has brought a bunch of new people to the site, as well as this forum, as well as the WPJA. I get quite a few hits from all three of those sites. Any other sites out there that you guys have seen bringing a lot of traffic to your sites?

typically 1,500 to 4,000 UNIQUE visitors per month, topping out at 35,852 unique visitors in June 2004. over 96,000 unique visitors total since my site went up in 2003.

there are two things that drive an incredible amount of traffic to my site (and cause my hosting bills to go through the roof)!

Brian,

I'm curious what those two things are! That's awesome you're able to swing that many people to your site!

unfortunately, most people visit my website for the wrong reasons.

1. i have a famous name (even though bryan adams' first name is spelled differently), so i get a lot of people looking for "photos of brian adams" (when they spell his name incorrectly), and they get directed to my website. the funny about this is that, invariably, i get at least one email a month from a 14-year-old girl in germany or australia or russia telling me how great my music is and how much they adore me.

2. furthermore, i photographed the wedding of a rather infamous person and my website is still linked to a variety of media websites. this experience is much more than meets the eye and has cost me tons of time, money, and aggravation. i'm sure i'll tell the whole story one of these days . . . it would probably be of strong interest in this forum. i'm just trying to figure out the best way to put it into words.

keep on keepin' on . . .

brian, not bryan, adams

I'd like to know what I need to do to drive couples to my site, currently my site has only been up less then a month & I'm still working on it. I'm still not listed, people have to type in my URL in order to get to my site.

I'm currently being hosted by yahoo, can anyone recommend an awesome host who actually helps you list. It seems I'm having to research more then I need to & I'm still trying to figure it all out.

Thanks,

QUOTE (BrianAdamsPhotoGraphics @ April 27 2005, 07:48 PM)

2. furthermore, i photographed the wedding of a rather infamous person and my website is still linked to a variety of media websites. this experience is much more than meets the eye and has cost me tons of time, money, and aggravation. i'm sure i'll tell the whole story one of these days . . . it would probably be of strong interest in this forum. i'm just trying to figure out the best way to put it into words.

Now you know we all want to hear the whole story now! :-) Com'on Brian you can't leave us hang'n :-)

The pimp daddy certainly wants to know ...

QUOTE (BrianAdamsPhotoGraphics @ April 27 2005, 04:48 PM)

. . . it would probably be of strong interest in this forum. i'm just trying to figure out the best way to put it into words. keep on keepin' on . . . brian, not bryan, adams

Hey Bry...errr...Brian!

Forget words. Howz about just showing some photos?

This thread has officially changed topic: "Brian's Notorious Photo Shoot"

Now ya did it, tell us tell us tell us!

Chris,

it is totally helpful to track your hits. I keep my tracking simple - I focus on how many hits I'm getting daily and where they are coming from. Most of my hits come from yahoo searches so now I'm focussing on how to stay on top of it by optimizing content in my pages and the meta tags. I've given up on Google, there's way too many websites with bogus pages packed with search words/phrases - plus a ton more that have pay per click ads - too hard to compete with that. Here is a site with great information:
http://selfpromotion.com/

QUOTE (Carlos Hernandez @ April 27 2005, 05:13 PM)

I'd like to know what I need to do to drive couples to my site,  currently my site has only been up less then a month & I'm still working on it.  I'm still not listed, people have to type in my URL in order to get to my site. I'm currently being hosted by yahoo, can anyone recommend an awesome host who actually helps you list. It seems I'm having to research more then I need to & I'm still trying to figure it all out. Thanks,

Carlos,

I don't know too much about how yahoo listings work, but I can give you some guidance as to why google isn't picking up your site. Google's page ranking is based on a couple of things: keywords that are used in the text and titles of your site and the number of other sites that link to yours.

I think you're not getting picked up by google because there is very little, if any text on your pages. Most of the text that I see is actually image files that have been worked into your layout. Google can't decode those images to see the text; it's like it isn't even there.

You also need to submit your site to Google and even then it takes a while. It took me about 8 months before mine was ever listed on Google.

Chris-

I've only tracked my website since mid-January, but in February and March I had about 160 unique visitors/225 total visitors each month. In April (so far) I've had 375 unique visitors and 550 total visitors. Cool!

But I know that this increase is related to my doing something new at the two weddings I shot in April. I handed out loads of business cards with a sticker on the back explaining to guests how to see the pictures from the wedding online with Pictage. I force them to go to my site first. This way, I'm hoping, I'll get more jobs in addition to more hits! (That's what we really all want, after all.)

My question is (for everyone) -- how many inquires do you get a month and how does that correlate to hits to your site? (I haven't been tracking this long enough to be able to make sense of that question for myself...) If you get more hits are you getting more inquiries too?

LK

the only numbers that i trac is the number of benjamins going into the bank. J/K