Poliblog Perspective

During my holidays in late August I have had a number of Guest Bloggers posting over at my political blog The Wardman Wire . These are my initial reflections on the experience.

To find what they have been writing about, look at the Wardman Wire archives for 27 August through to around September 5th.

General thoughts

The articles that have come back are excellent. That perhaps reflects that we take more time if we are writing a small number of articles for a new audience.

The traffic has held pretty much steady - which is very good for August where traffic traditionally goes down - but has been more diverse as people come in for the different subjects. Different viewpoints and coverage is an advantage in that respect.

My first impression is that exposing the Wardman Wire has been a good thing - again increasing diversity.

Some statistical comments

A bit of analysis on the guest posting (more detailed version will be on the blog after my holidays).

I have been displaying banner adverts for my Guest Bloggers as a “Thank-you”.

There have been about 1500 ad displays for banners for each guest site, and clickthroughs from the banners have been between 5 and 13 (i.e., 0.3% to about 0.7%).

This is in addition to any clickthroughs from the articles themselves - which should be a much higher percentage since a good article is a bigger draw than a good banner.

Statistical Disagreements - I say 18000, you say 2100

In total during the week, there were about 16,000 top-banner ad displays by the server - which roughly tallies with the 18000 page views claimed in my log files.

For comparison, the cockfights on the right hand column Google ads have been 10 (which has earned me one dollar) on a claimed (by Google) 2100 ad displays.

Go-stats gives me a figure of around 2000. If they are this low then nearly 100 clickthroughs on the banner is truly remarkable.

Messagespace is giving me a figure between the 2000 and the 20,000 for advert displays.

This is why I am a statistics cynic.

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