Pocket PC Thoughts Breaks 1 Million Visitors a Month in October

[Jason Dunn]

October 2004 was a momentous month for Pocket PC Thoughts, and not because our server kept dying under the load. :lol: No, October was the first month in the four-year history of the site that we had more than <b>one million visitors</b> in a single month. Breaking the one million-a-month barrier has been a personal goal of mine for several months now. We've been hovering in the 900K range for six months or so, and I knew sooner or later we'd have a really hot month and bust through that one million mark. Here's the official graph:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/1millionamonth.gif" /><br /><br />I'd like to thank all of you, our readers, for coming back to visit us again and again. I'd like to thank you for your financial support as well, through our <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/subscribe.php">subscriber program</a>, clicking on banners and supporting our sponsors, and for buying products through our affiliate links. 2004 has been a rough year financially, but through your support we've managed to stay alive. Thanks for helping up to break the one million mark, and here's to the next big milestone, whatever that may be! :way to go:

[foebea]

Ill do my best to move you right along to the next big milestone, Million in a day! :D

[Janak Parekh]

Million in a day? 8O

In any case, we've obviously found the source of the server problem: too many people. :D We're working on optimizing it, and no, that doesn't mean giving hard quizzes to people so they run away screaming. :lol:

--janak

[ctmagnus]

8)

[OSUKid7]

Great job keeping up with the extra traffic (for the most part ;)). I've only seen a few php/DB errors, and usually 5-10 minutes resolves it. The site has never really been "slow" for me. :D

[arnage2]

your server works surprisingly well. keep up the good work :)

[alex_kac]

What sw do you use for those server bandwidth graphs?

[Jason Dunn]

What sw do you use for those server bandwidth graphs?

Urchin (www.urchin.com) - it's fantastic software, though a bit expensive to buy on you own. We got it from ev1servers for $20... :mrgreen:

[Jason Dunn]

your server works surprisingly well. keep up the good work :)

That's mostly from the awsome work that Janak and Jorj do on the server to keep it humming along. I'd be completely dead in the water without them. :-)

[Jon Westfall]

What sw do you use for those server bandwidth graphs?

Urchin (www.urchin.com) - it's fantastic software, though a bit expensive to buy on you own. We got it from ev1servers for $20... :mrgreen:

I thought that graph looked familiar. We use Urchin at the company I do server administration for. It runs on our linux box and processes 100 or so reports nightly for our windows customers. Its the one thing in the past 11 months we haven't had really 'break'! (Which I'm kinda proud of, since I jury-rigged the entire system together to move reports from the windoze boxes to the linux box - everything runs smoothly despite being a lot of active 'parts' simultaneously) Nice piece of software, but pricey.

I guess Urchin isn't your server's problem... ;)

[Sydney Bristow]

Wow, congratulations PPCT! :D:D:D

Perhaps the next milestone will be two million. 8)

[maximus]

Congrats ! let us know when you reached 2 millions in a month :)

[Darius Wey]

Congrats ! let us know when you reached 2 millions in a month :)

That will require two servers. And 2x Janak and Jorj. Unless you can come up with a cloning device, you may have to wait. :wink:

[ctmagnus]

No cloning needed. No extra Janaks or Jorjs. Why do you think the team was so anxious to bring you on? :twisted:

[Shaun Stuart]

2004 has been a rough year financially, but through your support we've managed to stay alive. Thanks for helping up to break the one million mark, and here's to the next big milestone, whatever that may be! :way to go:

This is without doubt the best pocket pc site available - I would be interested in how much it costs per month to keep the site alive (dollars and more imprtantly man hours) !

Not sure how you feel about sharing this information Jason but I have been using the site daily for 2.5 years and while I am a subscriber - I never really gave much thought to the difficulties you may have in keeping the site going.

Have the "thoughts" websites become your main source of income or are they still a sideline/hobby.

[wocket]

Wow 1 million in a day 8O

The server I manage in work gets nowhere near that and it struggles. Well I suppose ISDN is the wrong thing to run a web server on :lol:

[sundown]

Well this is my favorite PPC site and I think you've done a great job with it.

Anyway, that should be a million visits a day, right? I come here 5 times a day but I should show up as one unique visitor per day, every day. So it's probably not 1 million unique people, rather 1 million unique visits which could be somewhere between 33,333 and 999,970 (subracting my daily visits) unique visitors each month.

[mr_yellow]

Wow

I can't believe most of the hits come during the weekday! While people are at work no doubt!

niiice...

[Atomb]

i don't know if i'm indicative of most new visitors...but i was VERY unimpressed with the T5 (being a long time Palm user) and so I started to research PPC sites....this one attracted me more than others and so now i'm here and looking forward to my first PPC!

If it means anything from a new guy, your site is good and it attracted my attention and membership!

[jasondearyou]

so does that mean, you get paid more for advertising? I could imagine now that you are the top site when it comes to PPCs.

Everything is on this site, from the U.S. Army to Microsoft, and 1 million a month has a lot of pull, an clout.

Use it wisely.

[Jason Dunn]

This is without doubt the best pocket pc site available - I would be interested in how much it costs per month to keep the site alive (dollars and more imprtantly man hours) !

Dollar amount in terms of our server costs is about $300 USD a month. Man hours is something I've never calculated, but I'd say well over 1000 hours a month easily between all of the team members.

Have the "thoughts" websites become your main source of income or are they still a sideline/hobby.

They're my main source of income, though I'm often amazed that I manage to pay my bills. 8O

[Jason Dunn]

Anyway, that should be a million visits a day, right? I come here 5 times a day but I should show up as one unique visitor per day, every day. So it's probably not 1 million unique people, rather 1 million unique visits which could be somewhere between 33,333 and 999,970 (subracting my daily visits) unique visitors each month.

Um, no, not exactly. One million visits a day would blow us off the grid - I'm not sure where you're getting that from. In October we received over 1 million unique visits, not VISITORS. A visit counts as a browser session. If you visit once at 8 AM then again at 2 PM, that's two visits. Trying to track unique visitors is tricky because of shifting IP addresses, or companies where ALL the users come from the same IP. I think with Urchin there's a 30 minute window for what is considered a session. So if you visit the site, shut down your browser, then come back again in five minutes, it doesn't re-count you again. Certainly, many of the 1 million+ visits were repeat visits, but I don't think that makes it any less valid.

[Jason Dunn]

If it means anything from a new guy, your site is good and it attracted my attention and membership!

Thank you so much, and welcome to Pocket PC Thoughts! :-D

[Jason Dunn]

so does that mean, you get paid more for advertising? I could imagine now that you are the top site when it comes to PPCs.

Unfortunately, the advertising market is pretty brutal right now - you might see a lot of banners on this site, but most of them are coming from brokered ad networks that take 45-50% of the profit. Companies are paying less and less for ads now - it's common now to get 75 cent CPM campaigns. That means that for every 1000 banners that get shown to visitors, I get 75 cents USD. :roll:

That's why I value the sponsors I do have, like Pocket PC Techs, Two Peaks, SYWARE, and the other companies that support us directly.

[lapchinj]

I think that's me on the 8th bar from the left :D

As far as the banners are concerned I don't really think that their intrusive "in your face" type (IMHO) and I'm doing fine with them. It would be nice if you could make a little more money from them. 75cents for a thousand banners doesn't really seem like bill payer. I guess I'll have to try and visit more often in order show up on all the bars on your graph :D . I'll go into my banner consuming mode.

Jeff-

[sundown]

Um, no, not exactly. One million visits a day would blow us off the grid - I'm not sure where you're getting that from. In October we received over 1 million unique visits, not VISITORS.

Sorry, my mistake. I misread that.

Certainly, many of the 1 million+ visits were repeat visits, but I don't think that makes it any less valid.

Didn't mean to imply it wasn't valid. I'm in the web business myself and I always have people mis-reading stats. It's why we don't tout "hits" anymore. I was thinking some people reading the "million" visits might think it was a million people coming to the site. That's still some awesome traffic man.

Keep up the excellent work. There are only a few sites I visit as often as yours and the others are mostly general news sites.

Bill