discuss: Generic Software Developers Guide
Subject:
Re: Generic Software Developers Guide
From:
Stein Gjoen ####@####.####
Date:
8 Feb 2003 11:45:43 -0000
Message-Id: <3E32EBD2.1040101@mail.nyx.net>
Michael D. Crawford wrote:
[snip]
> Your suggestion of pointing back to my website from the HOWTO is a good
> point. I would like to know what others think of it.
This ties into another current discussion: that of web statistics. I
have a few datapoints that could be relevant. On Nyx, where I have my
web pages I have full shell access and have taken the opportunity to
make some very, very simple shell scripts to analyse the web logs.
My main document is the Multi Disk HOWTO and it is the main reason
for the web hits as judged from the analysis. My other HOWTO and the
templates give very little hits.
The Multi Disk HOWTO is now 6 years old and started out at a plateau
of 100 hits per day. A tiny bit of web promotions (this was in the
time you had to submit to search engines manually) I reached about
300 hits per day. I managed to slip a link to the HOWTO into a
relevant discussion on Slashdot, and though it was deeply buried in
the thread it resulted in an extended "peak" of 500 hits per day
for about a week. This in contrast with the Slashdot effect of
hammering down the door and burying the webserver alive, putting it
out of service for days.
The last year things have improved further and now I get about 500
hits nearly every day. One reason is perhaps that at least one disk
manufacturer has linked to my HOWTO. Occationally I submit a link
to the HOWTO to articles on web magazines which brings hit count to
about 600-700 per day.
All this is of course the tip of the iceberg as the HOWTO is mirrored
on more servers I can guess there are. Add to this 4 translations and
you are talking about big exposure.
What this exposure translates to in business I cannot guess. Unless
you already do this I would suggest you ask your clients where they
heard of you. That would give you the second set of datapoints you
need to make a fully informed suggestion.
Regards,
Stein Gjoen
