Tuesday, March 18, 2008

On Baseball and the Reds is Two!

I forgot about this, but March 1st was this site's second birthday! Here's a link to the debut post, as well as last year's post.

The site continues to be the source of a tremendous amount of fun and satisfaction for me. I never have time to do as much as I'd like, but I'm pleased with what I have been able to do. Running a blog is a great way to follow and learn about baseball, and it's allowed me to interact with a lot of very interesting, talented, and (thankfully!) friendly people over the past two years. Thanks to everyone who continues to visit!!

Site stats:

I'm a stathead, so I gotta throw out some usage stats:

As of today, the site has had over 100,000 page loads, over 80,000 unique visits, and most importantly to me, over 30,000 visits from returning visitors. Granted, a lot of sites do that much traffic in a few hours, but for an esoteric little blog like mine, that seems pretty darn good.

What's amazing to me is how the site continues to gain traffic: from March-December 2006 (10 months), the site received 21,000 unique visits. This year, from January through mid-March (2.5 months), it's already received 14,000 unique visits.

We also received a modest sponsorship this past winter from Theseats.com, which helps pay for the minor expenses associated with my activities here (subscriptions, books, etc). Please give them a look when you're buying your tickets this year. And I'm half-way to my first check from Google Adsense! Just one more year ought to do it... :)

Here's some other fun, big brother-esque stuff that I can learn from Google analytics. These data only go back to April 2007...
  • People
    • 52% of you use internet explorer, 42% of you use firefox, with Safari coming up a very distant third.
    • 90% of you use Windows, 9% of you use a Mac, and 0.5% of you use Linux. And 3 hits have come from someone's Playstation 3. :)
    • 44% of you use high-speed cable, 17% use DSL, 14% have a T1 connection, and 3% are on dial-up (though 22% of you are "unknown").
    • 92% of you are from the USA, 3% from Canada, and 3% are from either Taiwan, Japan, or South Korea.
  • Traffic
    • 47% of my traffic comes from direct links to my site. Of those visitors arriving via links:
    • 28% of my traffic comes from search engines, and 93% of all search traffic comes from google. Yahoo comes in at 4%, with AOL at 1.5%, and MSN at just 0.4%.
One thing that becomes clear from all of this is how important Redleg Nation and Red Reporter are to the Reds' blogosphere. I would never have gotten off the ground if it weren't for the traffic delivered by Chad and JD, especially early on. Thanks!
Posted by at 1:21 AM
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9 comments:

  1. Congrats on the anniversary and the traffic; it looks pretty good for a stat site dedicated to one team. I love the content and appreciate all the work you put in to it.

    "90% of you use Windows, 9% of you use a Mac, and 0.5% of you use Linux."

    Not so fast now. I know I've visited using all three. No Playstation 3 though I'm afraid. :P
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  2. Justin -

    Congratulations on two years of blogging. Having just started blogging myself, I only hope to have a fraction of the success you have. Your work here is required reading for any fanatical Reds fan. Also the piece in the Hardball Times Season Preview was incredibly well-written. I've been through that content at least five times now. Keep up the excellent work!

    Chris
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  3. I'm from Taiwan and I added your blog to my RSS reader about three months ago. I learn a lot from your articles these days. Two thumbs up.
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  4. Justin, you are the sole reason that I read anything Reds-related. I'm a big Yankee fan, but you have made the Reds my #2 team.
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  5. Thanks everybody!

    @brad, you're right that I should have just said 90% of hits were windows, etc. But it was more fun to write it the other way. :)

    @Chris, you're off to a great start. Thanks for the kind words about the hardball times piece--it was a lot of fun to do. I hope they tap me for that again next year. The only bad thing is that I ended up wanting to post all of that info here, as it would update all of my player profiles...some of which are getting rather dated! But that'll take care of itself, eventually. And it's actually kind of fun to still be able to go back and see my back to my first (and hopelessly off-mark) take on Brandon Phillips, for example. :)

    @Georgia Peach, it's pretty exciting to me to think that people from Asia actually read this stuff. I wish I could reciprocate (Shinjyo has a Reds blog), but I don't know the languages!

    @dan, I'm surprised that my work would make someone actually like this team, as the main thing I"ve learned about them is how bad they are! But that's still a heck of an endorsement, even if it is coming from a Yankee fan.. :)
    -j
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  7. I was on here last week popping off about Daugherty and Baker's comments on Dunn etc. being more aggressive. I found this article that would support Baker (and refute me) and wanted to share. The suggestion is Dunn doesn't swing enough and doesn't change his approach with 2 strikes.

    http://mvn.com/mlb-stats/2007/05/24/the-adam-dunn-debate-defining-plate-discipline/
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  8. Congratulations on surviving two years in the blogosphere! Hope there are many more to come.
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  9. @Deaner and Bluzer, thanks!

    @Anonymous,

    Yeah, I wrote about that article, and the more in-depth study it was based upon here.

    In retrospect, I disagree a bit with PC's interpretation. I think his work is an excellent description of hitter tendencies. However, extending it to say that what he's reporting is an indication of hitter quality is a bit of a stretch. I think the key point is that what's average in terms of take rates and swing rates is not necessarily what's "good," at least not for all hitters. Different hitters will use different approaches, and what will work for one hitter may not work for another.

    Dunn's approach has been extremely successful for him. Yes, he strikes out a lot. But he also flat-out produces--he gets on base a lot, and he advances a lot of baserunners with his power. Could he improve? Sure. But I we're talking about trying to make a guy who is a very good hitter into a great hitter...not make a terrible hitter into an adequate hitter as it's often portrayed.

    The problem with Dunn as a player has nothing to do with his offense--it's his defense that is the real issue. It cuts his value by at least a third. That's where Dunn haters should be focusing their energy! :)
    -j
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