Page views stats

[voxxdebates]

What should forums look for in the stats under marketing? Page views...or Page requests?
Or are they irrelevant stats?

[D]

I think it depends what you are trying to analyse. If you are concerned with monetising the forum then page views are probably quite important. If you're more bothered about the vibrancy of a community/forum then probably something like average number of posts per day over time, number of new members who convert into active members, etc. would be more important. The two are, of course, inextricably linked in many ways. In general it's always best to use a plural metrics regardless of what you're looking to 'measure'.

[voxxdebates]

At what amount of page views should one consider monetizing?

[D]

It depends entirely on what kind of site you're talking about. Forum, blog, static personal homepage?

[voxxdebates]

Mar 19, 2018 5:56:41 GMT -8 D said:

It depends entirely on what kind of site you're talking about. Forum, blog, static personal homepage?

Its a religious forum.

[Kami]

There’s no universally applicable magic number of views that one needs in order to start monetising. What you need to determine is if the cost of monetising (in this case, being adfree, paying for a custom domain, paying a domain registrar, any additional advertising costs) will be offset by the amount of traffic you get + the type of ad campaigns you run (pay per click or pay per impression) + the revenue you wind up earning per click or impression.

No one can answer this except you: calculate your costs and compare them to your traffic and work out the monthly results. Do you profit, break even, or are you at a loss? We can’t answer these questions for you because we do not have access to your finances or analytics.

I recommend looking into the different types of advertisements, different ad providers and their specifications / requirements / benefits / drawbacks, and determining a total monthly cost to decide whether or not monetisation at this point would be a cost effective venture for you.

[voxxdebates]

Well generally if your forum is getting a minimum of a 1000 to 3000 pageviews and page requests a day is that a promising amount or dismally low? And what do these terms signify anyway? What is a page request...pageview?

[Scott]

Forum Requests - Any request made from your forum to a ProBoards server, except the maintenance mode page or the shoutbox refreshing.

Pageviews - Any non-AJAX request made from your forum to a ProBoards server, and any AJAX pagination of threads, posts, conversations, messages, and members. Requests made by a member with an active ProBoards+ subscription do not count towards this category. This is the number used to track any ad-free pageviews packages your forum may have.

[Kami]

Mar 20, 2018 8:25:16 GMT -8 voxxdebates said:

Well generally if your forum is getting a minimum of a 1000 to 3000 pageviews and page requests a day is that a promising amount or dismally low? And what do these terms signify anyway? What is a page request...pageview?

The question about these terms was answered above so I’ll just address the monetisation with a simple analogy.

Let’s say I want to have a lemonade stand, and 100 people pass by my house every day. Is my lemonade stand going to be profitable?

Simply put you can’t tell. You can assume things — for example you can assume that all 100 of those people will buy a cup of lemonade — but there is 0

way to tell simply based on the number of people that pass by whether or not my stand will generate a profit.

So how could we tell? Well first: how much does it take to set up the stand and keep it running (overhead & supplies)? What will it cost me to purchase what I need in order to have a stand and make lemonade for X amount of time? Second: how much money do I earn per cup of lemonade sold? Third: of those 100 people, how many of them will buy a cup?

Similarly, you can’t solely determine whether or not the amount of page views you are receiving are “promising” amounts because there are other factors to consider. Your overhead and supplies are the cost of adfree, your domain name, and your custom domain fees. Your per cup sold is the amount you get per ad click or impression. The number of people buying a cup are your visitors who contribute to your per click or per impressions. Can you tell me right now with no other figures whether or not you’ll make a profit? How do you expect the rest of us to do so?

If you have 1000 page views / day and use per impression ads that generate 0.01 per view, then you’d get an average of $10 / day. If your cost is $20 / day, then obviously this is not good. But if your cost per day is $10 or less, then this is fine.

So again: there is no magic number that would tel you whether or not monetising would be a profitable venture. You MUST factor in the other aspects of monetisation in order to form a clearer picture.

[voxxdebates]

Mar 20, 2018 9:49:23 GMT -8 Scott said:

Forum Requests - Any request made from your forum to a ProBoards server, except the maintenance mode page or the shoutbox refreshing.

Pageviews - Any non-AJAX request made from your forum to a ProBoards server, and any AJAX pagination of threads, posts, conversations, messages, and members. Requests made by a member with an active ProBoards+ subscription do not count towards this category. This is the number used to track any ad-free pageviews packages your forum may have.

FROM my Forum? Im confused I thought forum requests or page views were from NON forum members checking us out from somewhere else?
Please educate this dimwit.

[voxxdebates]

Mar 20, 2018 10:22:32 GMT -8 Kami said:

Mar 20, 2018 8:25:16 GMT -8 voxxdebates said:

Well generally if your forum is getting a minimum of a 1000 to 3000 pageviews and page requests a day is that a promising amount or dismally low? And what do these terms signify anyway? What is a page request...pageview?

The question about these terms was answered above so I’ll just address the monetisation with a simple analogy.

Let’s say I want to have a lemonade stand, and 100 people pass by my house every day. Is my lemonade stand going to be profitable?

Simply put you can’t tell. You can assume things — for example you can assume that all 100 of those people will buy a cup of lemonade — but there is 0

way to tell simply based on the number of people that pass by whether or not my stand will generate a profit.

So how could we tell? Well first: how much does it take to set up the stand and keep it running (overhead & supplies)? What will it cost me to purchase what I need in order to have a stand and make lemonade for X amount of time? Second: how much money do I earn per cup of lemonade sold? Third: of those 100 people, how many of them will buy a cup?

Similarly, you can’t solely determine whether or not the amount of page views you are receiving are “promising” amounts because there are other factors to consider. Your overhead and supplies are the cost of adfree, your domain name, and your custom domain fees. Your per cup sold is the amount you get per ad click or impression. The number of people buying a cup are your visitors who contribute to your per click or per impressions. Can you tell me right now with no other figures whether or not you’ll make a profit? How do you expect the rest of us to do so?

If you have 1000 page views / day and use per impression ads that generate 0.01 per view, then you’d get an average of $10 / day. If your cost is $20 / day, then obviously this is not good. But if your cost per day is $10 or less, then this is fine.

So again: there is no magic number that would tel you whether or not monetising would be a profitable venture. You MUST factor in the other aspects of monetisation in order to form a clearer picture.

This is excellent stuff Kami...Thank You!

[Kami]

You’re welcome! I wish you the best.

[Kami]

Mar 20, 2018 10:42:12 GMT -8 voxxdebates said:

Mar 20, 2018 9:49:23 GMT -8 Scott said:

Forum Requests - Any request made from your forum to a ProBoards server, except the maintenance mode page or the shoutbox refreshing.

Pageviews - Any non-AJAX request made from your forum to a ProBoards server, and any AJAX pagination of threads, posts, conversations, messages, and members. Requests made by a member with an active ProBoards+ subscription do not count towards this category. This is the number used to track any ad-free pageviews packages your forum may have.

FROM my Forum? Im confused I thought forum requests or page views were from forum members checking us out from somewhere else?
Please educate this dimwit.

You’re not a dimwit, it’s just a matter of a different perspective but it’s the same thing.

Whenever a user (guest or not) accesses your forum — either through a link posted elsewhere, or a bookmark, whatever — they use the forum to make some form of request — loading a conversation, a thread, a profile page, whatever. The server then interprets that as a request FROM the forum (as the server cannot “see” the user themselves).

Think of it this way: when you call someone on the telephone, you as an individual are not connecting to the other person’s phone. You use your phone to connect to your service provider who then completes the connection. Similarly, your usage of the forum connects via the internet to the server, so the requests TO the server are FROM your forum (as opposed as a server request from a different website to the same server).

[voxxdebates]

Well is it a safe assumption if Im getting 200 guests logged but 3000 pageviews the rest are looking at us from somewhere else?

[Kami]

Mar 20, 2018 11:52:00 GMT -8 voxxdebates said:

Well is it a safe assumption if Im getting 200 guests logged but 3000 pageviews the rest are looking at us from somewhere else?

Not quite. Those 200 guests are likely those 3000 views. For example:

I visit your site

I read the rules

I visit a custom page

I go to the home page

I look at a board

Based on these actions, I am responsible for five page views but am still a single guest. Every act that involves clicking a link and sending a request to the server to display the content of that link is some type of page view or forum request.

The number of guests and the number of page views will not be a 1:1 ratio, hardly ever if at all.  This is part of why the number of guests is not an accurate metric to measure potential activity on your forum.