I was working with one of my clients recently who runs an active and growing forum. We were discussing why Alexa code might be important for website owners who would like to monetize their website(s).

What is Alexa?

Alexa is one of the few tools that is available as an external measure of a site’s traffic. The traffic statistics are collected, analysed, and presented on the main website for each website. The statistics are broken down in three ways: ranking, reach, and pages per view. Rankings are subdivided into regional and overall rankings. Reach defines a percentage of users who visit that website, and Pages Per View is quite obvious: a metric that shows how many pages (or how long?) a visitor stays on your site.

You can see the code about this blog on the right sidebar. When you click on the graphic, you’ll be taken to the Alexa page where you can see the metrics rated over the last 24 hours (usually none), the past week, and the past 3 months. You can only have 24 hours ratings if your blog is averaging 100K or less in the rank.

Why Alexa?

Actually, Alexa didn’t use to be that important, but with few metrics available to measure site ‘value’, Alexa has found something of a rebirth in interest, esp. among bloggers. Other metrics generally include Google’s PageRank, and Feedburner Subscriptions. But neither of these actually track traffic to your website. Here is Alexa’s own description:

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis.

The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users)

Thanks, DoshDosh, for the quotation. He has some tips (some useful, some not) on how to improve your Alexa ranking. So, as a measure of traffic, this website can be very helpful in estimating a website’s audience.

Why install Alexa’s code?

In fact, he was a little unsure of the value of having Alexa traffic code on your websites, so here’s what I wrote to him. I thought that my other readers who don’t have an Alexa installed might be interested to read about it:

I noted that you removed the Alexa code again. I’d strongly advise that you replace the code. Why? Because for several important ad-related systems that you may want to use all rely (at least partly) on the value that your Alexa rank has:

Text Link Ads use this metric, and
LinkWorth (you’re now using them) may use this information to value the website, too.
ReviewME,
SponsoredReviews,
Payperpost, etc.. all use Alexa rankings either directly or indirectly.

In fact, although the rankings aren’t particularly accurate, many possible link purchasers will refer to the Alexa rankings as an external way to rate the amount and quality of your traffic (as they can’t access your Analytics information).

I just found the Alexa rankings sited in the stats for each blog/website IN Linkworth. I’ve attached an image for you to look at see what I mean. Even if you don’t wish to use the rankings to make money now, you may find that having a poor ranking (ie below 100K) may hinder you later on.

 

In fact, I noted that your Alexa ranking had increased to over 444K in just the few days that I installed it. It would continue to increase as people visit the website, load the pages and so on.

Installation: It’s a SNAP

Many people install Alexa’s toolbar on their system as a means to record their hits, but in fact, for most bloggers, adding the following code to their blog will allow Alexa to accurately track all the traffic to your blog.

<SCRIPT type=’text/javascript’ language=’JavaScript’ src=’http://xslt.alexa.com/site_stats/js/t/a?url=www.yourwebsite.com’></SCRIPT>

The box is a little ugly and inappropriate for some sites, but you can find a simple text link at the website. For all the codes, just visit Alexa. Then you’ll find that installing the code is relatively straightforward.

Just enter the URL of your website in the Widget. Then copy and paste the code into a spot in your sidebar. I’d suggest putting it at the bottom of your sidebar, so it’s less visible.

What are your experiences using Alexa? Do you think that Alexa can be successfully gamed? I’m not sure, but since installing the code, and trying to attract visitors, my Alexa ranking shot up from over 2,500,000 to approximately 150,000. I’d like to get the ranking under 100K again. So here’s hoping.

After joining several websites that offer paid music downloads, I had finally given up on ANY music website. Most websites suffer from DMCA and similar legislation that enforces geographic boundaries on copyright, and completely disregard the intrinsic the it-is-everywhere nature of the Internet.

Pandora used to be a standout, but then was hammered into line by its fear of lawyers and lawsuits who chose to play a very conservative hand at a time when bold suits were needed.

As I pointed out in my long letter about Pandora, to which the owner of Pandora Tim Westergren thoughtfully and generously commented, the door is open for a short time for new technology to make inroads into our lives before other technologies come along and crowd it out.

The door for Pandora.com was open, but was firmly slammed shut a few months ago. Naturally, I’m still keen to buy and enjoy online music, but there are so few services that are suitable for me, and millions of other listeners out there. Why?

Because we don’t live in a country with an Itunes store or similar legal venue to purchase music, we don’t have a credit card with an address in one of those countries, and we can’t listen to music services like Pandora.com or many of the other services like XM.Radio online…

As a loyal listener, I’m limited (thankfully) to three primary services for finding my music, and I’m making increasing use of each over the past few years. In fact, it’s almost becoming a habit…

1. Amazon.com where I can legally order and receive CDs, DVDs, and many other physical goods. That’s fine, if I’m already familiar with the artists. (Local radio plays few artists that I really like, mostly it’s mush for the under 17s who buy CDs here). The only downside is that I can’t pay by Paypal which I like.

2. EMusic.com which allows international sales of its music. The upside is that you get to hear a lot of independent music, can download legally, and can burn CDs as you wish. The downside is that you don’t really hear many well-known artists, can only download a certain amount, and don’t get any actual radio streams.

3. Sky.FM is an online radio service that streams dozens of channels along with DI.fm. I enjoy both of these and would gladly pay for them. In fact, as soon as my bill for Emusic.com comes in, I’ll buy a 12-month subscription to SKY.fm. It makes a great difference in my life, as I get to hear the music I can’t find on EMusic.com.

So, one way and another I can find music online. As each of these services innovates, expands and creates new opportunities, it will be much harder for upstarts to grab market share or even mind share. This is all money that Itunes Stores or Pandora or Yahoo! Music or any of dozens of other traditional companies could have had, but now I’m enjoying the different selection. And, like thousands of other music lovers, I discovered something amazing:

There is a WORLD of music outside the big four (‘dumb’) record companies, and much of it is GOOD.

Shhh! Don’t tell SonyBMG! They might try to buy it!

If you are a regular customer of many larger consumer product companies, like Coca Cola, Walmart, etc., you may be lucky enough to be able to get a coupon when you purchase an item from them. Typically, coupons would be found in newspapers, magazines and the products themselves. Occasionally, you’d find sheets of coupons distributed in various ways.

Recently, though, coupons came to the Internet. For many products, you can search for coupons that can save lots of cash on up front purchases. Such coupons can either be used directly on companies shopping websites, or printed out and used at stores.

When I started out hosting my websites on Dreamhost, I didn’t know about such things! Apparently, there are lots of coupon codes for such companies. Search through this blog to find several such coupon companies, and see the list of companies that offer coupons.

If you are disciplined, you could use deduct difference between the regular price and the price with a coupon and put that in an interest bearing account. Not only would you save money on your purchases, but you’d actually earn a decent return on the money saved. Of course, this would work best on items that are regularly purchased.

For example, you get a 10% reduction on CouponChief’s website for books purchased from Barnes & Noble priced at $85.99. You get $8.56 savings which you put in the bank or building society account. While you won’t get top rates of return, you will still see 3%-4% returns on your income. Do that 20-30 times a year, and the amounts will add up.

But it isn’t the only way to make money with coupons. Occasionally, some sites will allow customers to create their own coupons and then give them away. One good example is Dreamhost which will allow you to earn money from referrals and has a coupon scheme, too.

The traditional referral scheme allows you to make a percentage of any sale for a customer whom you refer. But Dreamhost goes one step further. You can actually create your own Coupon Codes. I made several today: Blogger2yr and Blogger1YR

For example, Blogger2y coupon code will allow a new customer to purchase a plan and get $60 off if s/he pays for two years at once. This represents quite a saving: upto a maximum of about 46% (if my math is correct on the smallest plan!). That’s quite a saving over the 1 year payment for the customer.

Since the promo codes are offering upto a maximum of $97 per discount, that’d mean any customer who uses that discount would get a great deal BUT $37 would still go to the referrer!

I’ve found a few websites that are happy to take information about new coupon codes, too. So once you have created your coupon code, you can visit these websites and add your new code information there.

1. Redeem Coupon at http://www.redeemcoupon.com/ this website works very much like Digg.com. It was easy to get listed there.
2. http://www.couponshock.com/ is focused much more on hosting and domains. I submitted my listing but it hadn’t shown up by the time of this posting.
3. http://www.retailmenot.com/ is also a coupon site that offers a wide range of coupons, worth checking out, and worth submitting too.

So, look around for a coupon site to save a few bucks or use a coupon making facility at one of your favorite stores (such as …) to make a few bucks that way. Either way is good! Both are better!

Disclaimer: I am a customer of Dreamhost, and this email contains affiliate links.