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October 31, 2005

Oct-05 web stats keep growing, Mon., Oct. 31, 2005, 11:50 PM

It has been a long day. And a long month.

My reader stats continue to grow at a rate of about 10 pct W/W. This month I had close to 3.5 million hits, with 24,000 unique servers accessing my blog, There were also 2 million files accessed and 400,000 pages downloaded.

I'm still trying to figure out what it all means, but with that kind of market acceptance, it's hard to take a vacation. However, I need one. It's also getting too hard to do all this by myself. So I need help.

I have a goal of 1 million hits a day. Maybe I'll set up a tip jar to cover the costs of having a website makeover and getting some admin help. I saw that another popular blogger had done that, but received donations from just one pct of his readers, so I don't know if it's worth the time to set one up. I do know advertising would cover the extra expenses I have in mind, but I decided against it because I'm too independent.

I also set aside for a couple months the plans for a premium service called MarketRhythms for the simple reason I'm not convinced I can do what I want, as professionally as I want, for under $250,000. Then again, if I get to a million hits a day I believe I'll have enough demand to make that kind of expense worthwhile.

Anyway, I'm going to work on both, including taking a risk on the former. Everything considered, I decided to bring in an expert by the name of James who will take over the management of those admin decisions starting mid-November, so I can focus on the market and writing.

James can help make this website more efficient and more attractive, and I also think he'll be able to help John Cowie complete the MarketRhythms program to my expectations.

Now I need a publicist/manager who has international mass media contacts because I'm starting to get requests for articles, columns, whatever, and I'd like to expand that way, if possible. So if you know somebody who might fit the bill, encourage him or her to contact me.

I have a friend who is a top-notch marketing analyst, who in January advised that I just keep doing what I like doing and the rest will take care of itself. I'm not so sure it has. Then again, I was always a front-office kind of person, never paying too much attention to the rest.

In the past I'd just get an inspiration, set a target, and things would happen.

I think things are happening here too.

btw, I found four good sources of info on Cramer. I'm now trying to find out if CNBC is trying to shut them down. If not, for fun I'd like to take a contra position to Cramer's picks. But I'm not going to if I have to do all the research myself.

And I found an interesting article in yesterday's Seattle Times that is worth reading. I think it pretty much much sums up Cramer. His producer Susan Krakower sounds like a pip: "What do you got? ... Give it to me."

Click.

Posted by Posted by Bill Cara on October 31, 2005 11:50:13 PM | Category: Cara re: Cara