Posts Tagged ‘publishers’
Using analytics to understand your audience, learn about your traffic, and make more money
Jul 8th
by sonya in Community, Lijit publishers, industry
As a marketer, I’ve used Google Analytics for years. The problem with Google Analytics is that it provides too much information… so much that very few people know what to do with it all. It often comes up in conversation with our publishers, and they all agree.
Lijit’s goal is to provide an easy-to-use alternative to Google Analytics so we held a roundtable discussion with 15 publishers to learn about the most beneficial data for their site. Everyone agreed that “actionable analytics” are what’s important. Publishers don’t want or need every last detail about their website and traffic. What they do need is relevant data they can use to grow their site and make more money.
The premise: the more you know about your audience, the more you can tailor your content to meet their needs. This engages your audience which helps increase pageviews and grow traffic. The more traffic to your site, the more money you can make from online advertising.
We have recently done a lot of work at Lijit to enhance our Audience Analytics and focus on what we refer to as “actionable analytics” – meaningful and actionable stats that help you grow and monetize your site. For those of you who may not know about all the data we provide, you can each log into your personalized dashboard depending on the type of Lijit services that you use. Data includes:
- Audience demographics: age, gender, ethnicity, income level and education.
- Advertising performance: stats on ad requests, ad impressions, CPM, fill rate, and earnings to help you optimize revenue.
- Audience understanding: data on pageviews, geography, referring sites and searches, top posts, outbound clicks, and other sites that link to you.
- Search intent: statistics relating to number of searches, top searches and last searches, top clicked results and last clicked results, and searches that returned no results.
For those using Lijit’s advertising services, an ‘Ads Today’ section provides trending data comparing the current day’s ad performance to performance one week and one month prior.
Check out the cool interface:
To download Lijit’s Audience Analytics, click here. Please let us know what you think – we’re always looking for feedback!
Tags: Lijit publishers, lijit stats, publishers | View Comments
Lijit Product Updates: Reader Demographics
May 9th
by Daniel in Company, features, release announcements
We just completed another round of updates and improvements to our publisher products. We’re putting a lot of energy behind building out our ad services and publisher analytics and we’re expanding our offerings with every software release. So what’s new?
Reader Demographics:
The most important part of being an online publisher, is understanding your audience. On top of all of the other great audience analytics we provide to help you understand your readers, we now offer reader demographic data right inside your Lijit dashboard. This new statistic allows you to see the overall makeup of your online audience, and further understand who you are creating content for, and the demographic distribution of people frequenting your site.
Why are demographics important?
- Understanding your readers
The best way to effectively create relevant content for your readers, and to attract new readers, is to know who they are. Understanding the makeup of your audience is key to ensuring you are producing content that will engage and resonate withyour audience.
- Monetizing your site
Advertisers looking to reach the right audience for their online display advertising campaigns always consider demographics when making targeting decisions. You will be better equipped to attract and sell advertising for your site if you understand the demographic makeup of your audience
Check out your dashboard to see the demographic makeup of your site and start down the path of better understanding your readers. Just goto www.lijit.com, login and check it out at the bottom of your Lijit dashboard.
Other News:
- Removed MyBlogLog support
We removed support for MyBlogLog and disabled it’s use as a content and network source for publishers who use our search engine services. MyBlogLog had a great run and was a key integration partner in the early days of Lijit. Yahoo is shutting down all MyBlogLog services at the end of May, so we decided to deactivate it on our side before that happened.
- Welcome Widget support
We made the difficult decision to “end-of-life” our Welcome Widget product. Publishers who previously used this feature will no longer see a UI to manage settings for the Welcome Widget, and we automatically disabled the functionality it provided. We’re always looking for ways to enable our publishers to better engage their readers, so keep an eye out for more site tools and functionality in the future.
Tags: features, Lijit Advertising Services, lijit stats, new features, publishers | View Comments
Lijit Study Shows Publisher Adoption of Social Media Tools Grows 80%
Mar 2nd
by sonya in Community, Company, Lijit publishers
Over 15,000 sites on the Internet use Lijit’s advertising services, on-site search tool, and other widgets (analytics widget, recent readers widget, related content widget). Analytics are built into all of our tools but we do not sell the data. Instead, we feed it back to our publishers to help them better understand their audience and monetize their site. We also aggregate the data and use it to optimize CPMs and fill rates for our publishers.
Over the last few weeks we ran a detailed analysis to see what widgets are most often deployed on publisher sites across the Lijit network. We compared 2009 and 2010 data to identify market trends. Outlined below are some of the most interesting takeaways.
Background:
- 2010: 735,834 sites surveyed, 84.8% with widgets installed (13,541,022 widgets)
- 2009: 744,848 sites surveyed, 84.7% with widgets installed (13,826,562 widgets)
Key research findings:
The Lijit Top 50
Below is a list of the top 50 widgets and tools implemented on publisher websites. The adoption of social media widgets – including tools used for social networking, micro-blogging, bookmarking, and photo sharing – grew 80% from 2009 to 2010. Widget adoption specifically related to Facebook and Twitter almost doubled, growing from 6.96% to 11.86%.
Additional analysis revealed the following trends:
- Many content and engagement tools joined the Lijit Top 50 list for the first time in 2010. These tools include Twitter’s image sharing service, LinkWithin, Wibiya, and Tynt.
- Related content tools to keep readers on-site longer didn’t make the list of Top 10 tools in 2009 but are now being used by 3.68% of sites surveyed.
- Online advertising services continue to track at a 20% adoption rate; however, new monetization tools used in affiliate marketing programs such as Skimlinks, Infolinks, and Amazon saw a 16% increase in 2010.
- Audience analytics tools from Quantcast are becoming much more prevalent. Over 44% of the sites that use analytics use Quantcast to gather reader data, representing a 15% year-over-year growth.
- Website commenting systems now integrate social media components. Disqus, used on almost 75% of the sites that use a 3rd party comment provider, now supports social media commenting and sharing on Facebook and Twitter. In addition, Twitsteps, a Twitter-powered commenting system, now ranks the second most widely used commenting system after growing 356% in 2010.
Referring traffic
Three main categories of referring traffic data were analyzed: 1) search engine traffic; 2) organic traffic (defined by sites linking to each other); and 3) social media traffic. A deeper look at referring traffic from social media sources verifies that both social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter as well as social sharing tools such as StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit are being used to drive traffic to publisher websites.
For additional insights into our research analysis, please read our press release, “Lijit Networks Announces Results of 2010 Publisher Tools Analysis.”
Our methodology:
Our definition of “widget” is “any regularly-occurring functionality on a website powered by an external service, voluntarily installed by the site owner, and powered by Flash or Javascript.”
- “Functionality” includes analytics widgets. These add functionality for the publisher but are invisible to visitors.
- “Voluntarily” excludes widgets automatically added by the hosting platform. We are only interested in widgets that publishers make an effort to install.
- Image-based badges, such as FeedBurner subscriber counts, are not counted. HTML forms, such as the original Google search boxes, are also not counted. We may include support for these in the future.
- Our crawl is “centered” on sites with the Lijit widget (ad tags, site search and other Lijit widgets). Our crawler then expands outwards by following blogrolls and other linked sites. This may skew the overall results since research originates from sites within the Lijit Network.
Tags: industry, Lijit publishers, lijit stats, publishers, widget statistics | View Comments
Are you interested in learning more about how to create and manage online communities?
Then come join us at the Forum and Communities Conference in San Francisco next Wednesday, February 16. Todd Vernon, Lijit’s founder and CEO, will be speaking on a panel titled “Technology and Community” along with executives from eBay, VigLink (a Lijit partner), and CloudFlare. The panel will be moderated by Dan Gill, co-founder and CEO of Huddler.
During this one-day event, a team of experts will provide guidance on how to effectively engage with communities, give tips on how to maximize the value of communities, and offer insights into new services to try and trends to watch out for. Click here for additional details on the event. We hope to see you there!
Tags: events, industry, Lijit publishers, publishers, Todd Vernon | View Comments
Launch of the Lijit Stats iPad Application
Oct 13th
by toddvernon in Community, Company, Lijit publishers, release announcements
This week we are launching version 1 of Lijit Stats iPad application for publishers. In the coming weeks the iPhone and iPod versions will launch (the code isn’t quite done yet) with similar functionality.
I got the idea for this several months back when we were talking with some of the early adopters of the Lijit Ad Platform. A good number of publishers using Lijit to monetize their site are one man shows. They spend most of their time writing or curating great content for their site. It’s their full time job and they are keenly aware that when they stop, so does their livelihood. One publisher I spoke with mentioned that he was often concerned when he left his house for extended periods of time that he was losing situational awareness of what was happening with his traffic. For instance, one time one of his posts was featured on the front page of Yahoo. While this should have been a great event for him, it was bad because he didn’t know it and his site ended up crashing without his knowledge.
Another individual told me that it was a matter of knowing what was trending so he could take advantage of it. For instance, when he starts getting a large number of referring pageviews for an older post, that usually means that subject is hot in the news again. He would like the opportunity to re-address the subject to capture those readers.
All these comments resonated with me. We had a full development queue so I decided to pull the CEO/founder card and light this project up as a skunkworks project. As these things go, it grew to a roar of development in the last week trying to get it done for BlogWorld this weekend in Las Vegas. Thanks to our committed development team and the promise of the 12 pack of Bud for its safe delivery we got our final build done this last Friday and submitted it to the App Store Sunday. Our previous build was from a week earlier so we are in a dead heat to see if the latest gets released by Apple before this Friday!
As Chief Beta tester I used the app all weekend to track the traffic on my blog. My blog is pretty small but receives a fairly constant stream of pageviews around the clock. This summer I saw several stops on the RUSH Time Machine Tour which I have documented on my blog. All summer I have watched my Lijit stats tell me that my main referral is from Google for “rush time machine tour”. As the weeks passed by I watched my traffic shift from city to city as the tour progressed through the US.
This weekend as I watched my real-time stats on the iPad I started to see an increasing number of pageviews coming from locations in San Paulo and Rio De Janeiro Brazil, the tour’s final stops. This weekend is the last show of the tour in Buenos Aires, Argentina and now I have started to see page views from there as well.
Another cool feature of the Lijit Stats iPad Application is the integration of automatic IceRocket queries for my blog URL. One of the reasons I receive so many hits for RUSH is due to my mention in another more heavily trafficked site, RushIsABand, that linked to me after the opening night in Albuquerque, NM. The ticker along the bottom of the app shows the last chronological mentions of my site.
While my use case for the Lijit Stats iPad Application is certainly less mission critical than our devoted publisher base, it’s awfully fun to watch readers hit my site in real-time. I am super excited by the way this turned out and I think it makes a great platform to build on as we add more situational awareness to the world of publishing.
Give it a try with your Lijit account, it’s free in the App Store and super cool. If you are at BlogWorld this weekend, stop by the booth (#324) and register to win an iPad – we are giving one away each day. Get a demo and if we are lucky we will have the beta iPhone and iPod versions to see there as well.
Tags: Lijit publishers, lijit stats, publishers, release announcements | View Comments
ANNOUNCEMENT: Recently, it came to our attention there has been a malicious site that may be attempting to mimic Lijit.com and collect publisher login information.
We have contacted the Domain Registrars as well as the appropriate authorities as a precautionary measure. We will be sending this update to each of our publishers via e-mail and once the issue has been resolved, we will post an update.
These screenshots are from the malicious site – this site is NOT www.Lijit.com – Please do NOT give this site your username or password.
We want everyone to be assured, there is no action needed on your part – this is just a precautionary note to keep you informed as we believe in transparency and taking care of our publisher network.
If you have any questions or see suspicious activity, please send us an email at feedback@lijit.com.
Regards,
The Lijit Team
Tags: Announcement, Lijit publishers, publishers | View Comments
You would think, that with all the good things happening here at Lijit, we couldn’t want for anything more. While basically true (we’re healthy, have funding, and mostly like one another), there’s always room for dreaming. And after asking around the office, it turns out there a few things that Lijit wants for Christmas. File these under “publishers we want to be using our search” and enjoy the list!
Design*Sponge features the absolute best in home and product design, including product reviews, new designer profiles, trend forecasting, student design and global design shows. Lijit could help Design*Sponge by searching everything they’re doing so wonderfully on the web: their press and accolades, their Flickr photos and featured podcasts, each contributor’s content, and their newest video collaboration via YouTube with the New York Public Library. Not to mention, with design in mind, they can use our WordPress plugin and not change their current blog design and layout.
Alex, the author of Blogsessive, is “obsessed with blogging” and covers all the tips, plugins, themes, coding, etc. that goes along with blogging. His site is a mecca for the blogging expert to the first time blogger, however, the one missing tool he hasn’t featured or tried out is Lijit’s search. We see this as a holiday win-win, because his reader base will learn another Lijit blogging tool while he could increase his reader’s engagement, pageviews and searches done on his blog.
If Geeks are Sexy, then those of us working at Lijit have got it going on. However, we would argue that using Lijit makes you even sexier. We couldn’t agree more with the blog’s mission to provide “up to the minute tech news, reviews, and tutorials.” So why not include Lijit’s search and help out your readership of “IT professionals and computer enthusiasts”? Don’t they deserve a good search option as well? Plus, we know that Yan who runs the blog just loves our “Too Lijit to Quit” style.
Ken Rockwell is a go-to source for reviews on photographic equipment and advice. While Ken is currently using Google’s site search, we’d really love to see him using Lijit, if only to see the valuable information contained in his network! In many parts of his blog, Ken says that he supports his family with his site’s revenue, so he might be interested in ways to increase his ad revenue (Lijit can do that!) and since his site winds up as a destination for many Google searches, we also know he’d see the real value keeping searchers on his site longer (Lijit can do that, too!).
The Talking Points Memo is high on the list of favorite political blogs amongst Lijit employees and has organically grown over the past eight years into something of a blog network. It’s also the epicenter for a lot of original reporting that pushes the mainstream news cycle. All that political coverage demands a better way of searching through it, in order to receive trusted and relevant results. Memo for the New Year, Talking Points: Install Lijit.
We wish Political Wire was Lijit because many in the office consider the site’s author to be something of a political guru. Taegan brings current, up-to-date information to readers on the hour and the site’s breaking news aggregator provides quick insight about what’s going on in the world of politics. Also, with a blogroll like the one on Political Wire, doing a Lijit search of their trusted network would bring back a wealth of information. Here in the office, we’re hoping Taegan will vote for a change…in his blog’s search tool.
We enjoy a good laugh around the office and Stuff White People Like delivers the goods every time. Besides being funny, it’s true. Unfortunately, this blog is hosted on a wordpress.com site, which means that they can’t use Lijit. 
So, I guess what we really want for Christmas is the ability for bloggers to use our search on wordpress.com sites. (Hear that Automattic, you can make our holiday wishes come true!)
From all of us here, we hope you have a wonderful holiday celebration and that you find all you’re searching for! Also, if you see yourself listed on our wish list, please understand that we mean it as the highest form of flattery and are keeping our fingers crossed that you might be susceptible to a little holiday guilt. Hey, a startup can dream, right?
Tags: industry, publishers | View Comments
Because of publishers like you, Lijit continues to grow in new and exciting directions. We’d like to tell you about our newest one right now: During 2008, Lijit has been developing features that allow advertisers to present your readers with highly targeted ad placements in search results. But that’s not all – we’ve also developed features that allow YOU to share in the revenue from these ad placements!
The beta release of the Lijit Ad Network will be open to advertisers and publishers like you starting October 8th, 2008. In this release, publishers will be able to opt-in to the search-based ad network and begin receiving a share of the revenue for ad units displayed in your search results. As a thank you for your patience while we’ve been developing and testing these features, your account will be pre-loaded with a credit for estimated revenues based on your search history during this period (a minimum of $5).
We’re not done yet! In the near future those publishers who have opted in to Lijit’s Ad Network will be able to sell their search based ads directly to advertisers with whom they may already have relationships, targeting just their own publication and making even more money for themselves. This is going to be big!
To start capturing your share of revenue from the Lijit Ad Network, log in to your Lijit account and at the top right of your profile page, click the “Start Now” button. (If you don’t want to participate in revenue sharing, you certainly don’t have to and can continue using Lijit as you do today. We promise to use your share of the ad revenues wisely.)
Our new publisher FAQ answers all the questions we could think of during development and alpha testing of this cool feature, but if you can think of one we haven’t covered, please email us at support@lijit.com.
We look forward to working together with you to help you monetize your search results. It’s an exciting time to be Lijit and we welcome any feedback you may have. Thanks again!
Tags: ads, events, features, money, press, publishers, release announcements, revenue | View Comments
We are excited to be one of the sponsors for the upcoming Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash, taking place on Thursday, next week in downtown Denver. In addition to having the usual suspects gang of bloggers from the area, because of a certain little event that will be taking place at the same time (ahem, the DNC, cough, cough), there will be MANY more bloggers in attendance that night. The response from attendees has been overwhelming and it’s shaping up to be a bash to remember.
If you’re interested in joining us, you can find out more details and RSVP here.
And if you’re worried about missing Obama’s speech, don’t. The RMBB has reserved the only room in the bar with a TV.
Finally, if thinking about the parking in Denver stresses you out, don’t. (As in don’t even think of driving!) The organizers of the RMBB have put together a useful guide to help you navigate Denver’s public transport system.
We look forward to seeing you in the Mile High city and yes, there will be many comfy Lijit t-shirts at the party as well. So, whatever your political leanings, remember that this party is for the bloggers, by the bloggers, and booze has no party affiliations.
Big thanks to the organizers, Shannon and David, for making this happen and thinking of Lijit as a worthy sponsor. (Funny that they asked around the same time we got our recent funding…)
**The RMBB numbering scheme is as mysterious as the recent sightings of Sasquatch. Less hairy, but still unexplainable.
Tags: Denver, event, lijit, publishers, RMBB | View Comments
Yet another BlogHer wrap-up
Jul 23rd
by Tarable in Company, Lijit publishers, employees, events, fun
Micah and I attended BlogHer this past weekend, held in San Francisco. This was my third BlogHer event and they’ve all been unique. With a thousand attendees, the BlogHer organizers did a fantastic job of logistically insuring there was an ample amount of activities scheduled in order to have lots of opportunities to meet other bloggers and learn from them. As a representative of Lijit, it was helpful knowing some bloggers going into the event. On top of that, Lijit was mentioned on two different panels as a useful tool for bloggers. (Yippie!) And to round out our good Lijit vibes, when I told people where I worked, I was greeted with looks of recognition.
From attending a session on why mommyblogging is a radical act (shhhh…it’s because women are telling the truth) to a session on how to pursue your passion, there were intelligent and dedicated bloggers all over. I know that some women were concerned with the high school/sorority aspect of the conference, but for me, it was all about thanking the publishers who are currently using Lijit and following up with those who have yet to install. Building relationships is a HUGE part of my job and BlogHer presents a wonderful space to do just that.
I would never have started blogging if it weren’t for taking a job with Lijit and I love that because we make a blogging tool, it’s a no-brainer for us to have a presence there. (I’m thinking that next year, we might even have to get a booth!) It’s amazing how being social, striking up conversations, and meeting people can take it right out of you. I never realize how hard I work at a conference until I come home, sleep-deprived and with a three-inch stack of business cards.
Micah wrote a post about his experiences as one of the few BlogHims in attendance, while I posted some personal highlights of the trip over here.
In order to share the link love, here are some of the blog publishers that I ran into at the conference who are currently using Lijit:
Schmutzie’s Milkmoney Or Not, Here I Come
califmom
Everyday Goddess
Greeblemonkey
electromute
Send Chocolate
Whiskey In My Sippy Cup
Dirt to Dish
PHAT Mommy
Average Jane
Pause
This Mama Cooks! On a Diet
Scheiss Weekly
Greek Tragedy
Table for Five
contentious
CityMama
Queen of Spain
Mommy Needs Coffee
SecondHand Karl
MOMocrats
A Mommy Story
POP! PR Jots
Her Media
And then, if that isn’t already a great list, we’ve also had some blog publishers sign up as a result of Lijit being at BlogHer. We’d like to welcome these new users…
bad mom
Elkit in Wonderland
Oh, The Joys
happykatie
Alex Year Two
Glossed Over
Moms In The Right
Thanks to all those who gave us great feedback and shared their thoughts about Lijit. We loved having the chance to listen to what you had to say and appreciate your continued support!
Tags: BlogHer08, conference, lijit, publishers | View Comments
