When I started Drawar I wanted to use it as a teaching tool not only about design and for the community, but also a site that taught me about design and an experiment on creating something successful. Now in terms of a site’s success, there are a ton of metrics that can be used. You could look at traffic, membership number, community participation, revenue, etc. One day I hope to make this a million pageview a month site and although pageviews aren’t the greatest metric in the world, they are still a metric that we can use to measure a site’s health.

Getting traffic is hard. Getting traffic on a consistent basis is even harder. Many of the sites in the design community fall victim to writing article after article that is nothing more than linkbait. Some of the articles here on Drawar fall into that category, but I do so in the hopes of also educating beyond what the 50 Great Red Designs can do. Because the titles and content of the articles are more for people who wish to read and not simply browse through a list it can be hard developing links, but over time I have found that I have gotten more respect for the work done here than I would have if I had gone a different route.

I want to talk about Drawar’s stats for this very reason. If traffic is one of the goals for your site, don’t feel like you shouldn’t put your best content forward or you don’t have anything worth talking about. Every time I write it’s me teaching myself for the first time. I’m writing more to show myself what I have learned than to preach to you about what should be done. I repeat, this is not bragging, but hopefully inspiration to someone else out there looking to start something on their own.

Also these number pale in comparison to the bigger dogs in our community that have been around longer than Drawar. We now don’t live in an age where you can get linked up on Digg every week or hope that people write about you on their blogs. Now you almost have to settle for your links coming from Twitter and Facebook with an occasional link from a real website being considered a treat.

Overall

In my very first stats entry I talked about being happy getting 60,000 pageviews. After 30 days I reached 100,000 pageviews. That set the baseline for me and any month that received less than 100,000 pageviews would be considered a disappointment. After 6 months I knew I should’ve achieved at least 600,000 pageviews if I stayed consistent and continued to push out quality.

Well, I got lucky. If you look in February you will see there are 14 days where I didn’t do anything at all. I didn’t write, upload Gallery items or participate much in the forums. Consistency is the key with any business/project and I failed for those 14 days, but luckily I was able to recover to finish with a strong 782,828 over the first 6 months (plus a couple of days).

For those that think the bounce rate is high you will understand why it is below and why it doesn’t concern me much.

Top content

Some key points to take away from these numbers. Although the homepage is the number one destination of the site, when looking at the aggregate of the other pages as entry points they far surpass that of the homepage so making your inner pages just as viable from an IA standpoint as the homepage is very important.

Also, look at the bounce rate for the article pages compared to that of the gallery and forums. People coming to these pages are usually coming from links and therefore read what they want on the page and then leave. If Drawar was nothing but a gallery and forums and still showed 70%+ bounce rate then I would be concerned. This doesn’t mean the bounce rate can’t be improved, but sometimes people get too caught up in the overall bounce rate without looking at the finer details.

Ironically the top article is a list. Go figure.

Referrers

With content sites you will find that normally their number referrer of traffic is Google due to the amount of search hits they receive. Drawar isn’t like that. In fact, search engine traffic is a small portion of the sites traffic and another reason why it’s an uphill climb. List posts and linkbait articles are geared towards SEO with their titles. I have foregone that (for better or worse) to provide titles that I like.

New sections like questions and workshop will probably be geared more towards search engines, but those didn’t exist for the first 6 months. The direct traffic usually deals with Twitter clients so the majority of Drawar’s incoming traffic has come from word of mouth.

Care to see how little search engines play a role in these stats? Take a look.

Browser/OS stats

Screen resolutions

The advertiser guarantee

Starting in March I setup a promotion where anyone could buy a slot on the site for $600 for the rest of the year with the guarantee that I would get 1,000,000 pageviews from March 1 – December 31. 3 months in the site has received over 500,000 pageviews so I’m halfway there to the goal with 6 months to go.

Other metrics

Moving forward I will start to tracking other metrics. With Drawar+ right around the corner I will need to look at signups and activity per user. These will become more valuable than pageviews since those are only used now to appease the sponsors. I won’t wait another 6 months to write an entry like this again so be sure to follow Drawar on Twitter for updates.

I have been in this web game for what seems like forever. I know the ups and downs of running a ‘business’ that produces nothing but free content. In fact, I’m the publisher of Splashpress Media so I am even more involved in this model of business than I have ever been before. There have been times where I have been desperate for money and because I wrote a blog and I had a bit of traffic I felt that I could get some money from my audience. I figured they would have no problem sending money my way as they appreciated the content I was producing. I was right in thinking that…however, they also wanted some good reason behind it and it better had been a damn good one.

You see, the thing about starting a blog or free website is that YOU decided to start it. Nobody put a gun to your head and told you to start one. When you published those first words and wanted the whole world to be able to view it without having to pay a single dime that was your decision and nobody else’s. If you continually hold the door open for the same people every single day, you can imagine how weirded out they would feel if you kept the door closed one day and required payment.

When it comes to free content there are two different type of sites. There are sites that don’t offer any ads at all. For a long time Jason Kottke and Daring Fireball went this route and were only supported by the generous contributions of their audience. People are usually more willing to give when they see you aren’t monetizing your content in another way. Then it really is free content.

The second model monetizes the content, but not directly through the audience. This is usually done via ads. If you have ads up on your site people are going to expect that you make money from them. Of course the money you make from them is never enough, but people aren’t there to calculate. They just assume you know how much you should be charging and go about reading your content with no other worries. This is when free content isn’t really free content anymore because someone is paying for it. The readers might not be, but some company might. Either way you are monetizing your content.

Now, if there comes a time where you do want people to support your content that you have been showing them for ‘free,’ then you have to provide a very good reason for them to do so. If you can do that you will find many have no problem chucking over a couple of dollars. This is why you have to understand the frustration of some people with what is going on at Smashing Magazine. In the morning you had an article and in the afternoon you had a splash page saying they need our financial support and you can do so by purchasing their latest e-book. I shouldn’t call it a splash page since every single page redirects to that page now. There is no way to get to another portion of the site.

Smashing Magazine has a ton of ads. They have been ‘giving away’ their content for years now. Probably the largest design site on the web based on traffic. They recently published a book and from an outsider’s perspective seemed to be selling well. They also own Noupe which might be the king of list sites and also has a large number of ads. To get their content they pay people to write for them. Obviously this isn’t cheap and you can see how the bills would rack up. However, there were no signs of anything being wrong until today. I think that is what shocks people.

Add to that you take away content for 24 hrs therefore removing the 24 hrs worth of traffic your current advertisers paid for? To summarize, they have blocked off all content with the only indication of why was that they needed our financial support. How can one not be cynical about this? I’m not mad at them at all and I hope they get their financial issues straightened out, but I also hope others learn from this.

UPDATE: As I published this they have made the content available again.

If the page is only up for 24 hours and they are in trouble now, does this mean they constantly need us to buy their book to keep them afloat? What is going to stop them from doing the same thing next month? I’m not saying they will, but I don’t have any other information to go with. There has to be some sort of trust here. Add to the fact that many people are saying they can’t even buy the book because the store won’t load.

You see when you own a site like Smashing Magazine you aren’t popular because you got yourself there. You are popular and loved because the community made you that way. It never is free content because the community pays it back in commenting, participating, linking, retweeting and spreading the word. You don’t get to be big alone in the dark. It takes the tiny effort of tens, hundreds, thousands and now millions of people.

I put my effort into Drawar, but I am under no illusion that it would be a success without you. Yeah I write most of the content, but you are the ones that tell people about it. My voice only goes so far. In a sense that is why this site is almost as much as yours as it is mine. Same goes with Smashing Magazine and that is why if you are going to take something away, even if for 24 hours, there should be a better explanation involved.

Again, I want nothing but the best for Vitaly and his team. From my brief interactions with him he seems like a great guy and I am always appreciative when they tweet one of my articles. I just hope they get this straightened out and provide a better message to the community to assure that when we buy the book we are doing the right thing. Best of luck Smashing Mag.

If you haven’t seen already, Drawar has one of the best advertising deals in the design community. A number of companies have already jumped on the opportunity to advertise on the site for the rest of the year for only $600. Part of the reason for this offer is so I can build relationships with companies for future projects and for the most part everyone that I have been dealing with has been great.

Unfortunately, there always has to be a bad seed. One of the companies that committed had a change of heart, which isn’t an issue at all as others are lined up, but their ‘counter offer’ was down right insulting. I don’t know if it’s just a problem within our industry or if you see this everywhere, but it isn’t the first time I have been shortchanged by a design company.

What was the counter offer you ask?

We would request you to create a custom position for us in the left side of existing banner. We request you to provide us with the image mentioning our banner on your website.

As far as pricing is concerned, $600 is too much for a period of 9 months. We would like to pay $600 for a period of 12 months.

If the site was littered with ads I could completely understand requesting a new position on the site. However, it’s the only ad that shows up on the site and the design of the site almost guarantees your eye is drawn to the ad for at least a couple of seconds. Secondly, being attached to the Drawar brand for $600 over 9 months is more than reasonable, but extending that to 12? Come on. On top of that you want me to design the ad for you free of charge? I think my head just exploded.

Sorry, that just isn’t how you do business. I won’t try to hustle you and I definitely don’t expect for you to try to hustle me. No wonder so many people in the design industry fight tooth and nail for every dime and nickel they can scratch up.

Last week I announced that February ad prices were being reset to January levels and I am going to make another change. I have never been a big giver of charity. I mean, I give when the need arises, but it is never much. I’ve already sent $20 to the RedCross in their efforts to help the people of Haiti, but I am in the mood to do more.

I also wish to help the design community that has been so receptive to Drawar in the first two months of existence. To do this I am going to offer the whole month of February to one sponsor at minimum rate of $200 and I am going to give all the money to charity. I say minimum rate because you are more than welcome to pay more if you wish knowing that it is going to charity. I don’t know what charity yet, but it will be decided in the first week of February and when it is done everyone will have proof that the charity received the funds.

I always found it funny how companies claim to give money to charity, but the public never sees it. If you have any suggestions as to what charities you would like to see the money go to please feel free to share. Of course if nobody takes me up on this then January rates will apply.

Want to help fill the ad slots coming up this weekend and some of the empty ones next week? I am giving them away and to win them it is pretty easy. Just slip into the forums and start a new thread. I’ll randomly pick two people who have started a thread from now till the end of tomorrow (Thursday). Of course by randomly I mean the better the thread, the better your chances.

Make sure that your profile is updated with the correct Twitter url so that I can contact you. You won’t have a choice as to what day you get, but free advertising is never a bad thing.

It has been great to see how well received the advertising model has been here at Drawar. The goal was to have it increase every month as the site grows and although the site has been growing I am going to go back on my plan. I am resetting the prices to start at $1 again so it’s like January all over again. Why would I do this? Because I like to see new companies get exposure that they might not have taken a chance with before on another site. Also, by the end of February there will be three brand new sections on Drawar, which will only make the site bigger and more of a community. I say by the end of Feb to cover my own butt of course and I’m sure one or two will even launch this month.

The site will again achieve over 100,000 pageviews in January and more and more people are coming everyday. Drawar is becoming synonymous with great design content. Advertising will never be the main source of revenue of the site (at least that is how I see it) and there is no reason to try and charge obscene rates to people if they aren’t going to get a decent ROI. I’m also working on an advertising platform, just for this site, that will allow me and advertisers to measure the performance of their ads and compare their performance with other ads. Even advertisers have the right to learn on Drawar and there are bound to be lessons that the community as a whole can take from this.

February is like January all over again. Be sure to look at the Advertise page for all the details. I am reserving Feb. 1-5 for something special so please don’t ask about it and stay tuned if you are really interested in it.

As Drawar is approaching 1,000 followers on Twitter I thought we could make a contest out of it. If you are the first person to send me a screenshot of our Twitter page showing 1,000 followers I will give you a free ad slot for a day here. As of this writing we are at 935 followers so who knows when Drawar will get to a 1,000.

In contrast, my own Twitter account has been active forever and has less followers. I have created something more popular than myself and I’m not sure if I should be happy or go cry in a corner. I guess I’ll be happy since it is a new year.

When you start a site I think you always have high expectations for it and dream about the millions of millions of visitors that will come to it. However, every site must start with one visitor viewing one page view. Drawar was started on November 25 and 30 days later on Christmas day (December 25) the site delivered its 100,000th page view. Now I have been involved in a lot of sites and achieving 100k page views in the first month is not small feat, but this wouldn’t have been possible without the great support from the design community.

Special shout outs go to Mike Rundle, Tyme White and Smashing Magazine for being the catalysts in getting people to view my articles.

Here is to the next 100,000.

Wednesday I wrote about ads on websites and how often they can be a distraction to the user and very little benefit to the advertiser. I wanted to provide a way for the site owner (me), the reader (you) and the advertisers (them) to be happy. Readers understand why ads are up on a site to a certain extent and as a site owner you hope that ads don’t take away from the quality of content you are producing. As a site starting off it can be hard to make any money simply because you don’t have the traffic.

For this reason I thought it would be cool to do a sliding ad rate system that grew along with the site. So far I have sold 20 days in January so that leaves 11 left. Be sure to jump in and get your spots if you have something cool to show people, this could even be your own blog. The days that are available are the 11th, 17th and 23rd-31st.

Just visit the advertise page for more details.

Officially, I made this site public on November 25, 2009. It wasn’t a day I had planned on launching because I never had a day in mind, it just happened to be the day I published my first article. That article was, Smashing Magazine Killed The Community (Or Maybe It Was Me), and generated way more interest than I could have had imagined. Part of the article talks about the need for higher quality content in the web design community. When discussing this point I couldn’t help but have this nagging idea in my head that it is pointless to talk about such things unless you have proof that quality can also generate traffic.

The reason there is such a high focus on list type entries is because those are the ones that generate the most links and tweets (unproven, really just taking a guess here). They are easy to digest and require little thought so they are passed around quickly. Writing them takes less effort and you aren’t putting your opinion out on the line as you might with another type of article. When you put things in this perspective it is understandable why many sites only wish to focus on lists.

However, in the long term, I am still of the opinion that articles that generate discussion and thought amongst the community are more beneficial. You build a better reputation, you become memorable and your site begins to develop a community. If you are looking to make money, it is hard to beat a great reputation and a strong community, the money almost makes itself in those scenarios.

Either way, I figure it is only fair that I show you the traffic on Drawar from time to time to not only prove my point about high quality articles being able to compete with lists, but also to use it as an educational tool for all of us looking to increase the traffic to our sites.

Here we go. You can click on the images to get the full size.

As you can see this is the overall traffic stats for the first 14 days of Drawar. If you compare it to the giants like Smashing Magazine or A List Apart it is miniscule, but it’s hard to find any complaints when you can generate 60,000+ pageviews in just 14 days. Five articles were written during this time period and as you can see the first article about Smashing Magazine was the most popular.

The fifth article, You Are Not A Designer, I Am Not A Musician looks like it will be the second most popular over time. It is no coincidence that these two articles also have the most tweets.

An issue that I experience and I’m sure many of you do as well is that when you have one of your articles do well, you want all of them to reach the same success. You fall into the mentality of trying to hit every ball out of the park, but in most cases this just isn’t realistic. That is a short term mentality that you need to get rid of. The long term goals for Drawar are to make it a great community for designers and when there is an article published it meets a standard that I have set. Sometimes the articles resonate with the public and sometimes they don’t, but I like to think they are all consistent in sticking with the goals of the site.

The long term goals of the site are much more important than what can happen in the short term and as site owners we would do well to keep this in mind. The feedback I have received through comments on the articles and on Twitter only help to reinforce this idea.

What do I like about the above numbers? I like the average time on the site. It makes me think that people are taking their time when they get here instead of taking a glance and leaving. If Drawar was on the front page of Digg then this number would be much lower as that traffic is known to not read what they are actually clicking on.

I wanted to be sure to post these numbers because many sites like to fabricate their traffic for advertisers. Most sites would claim 26,000 visitors if they had these numbers when in reality the site had 18,000 uniques which is what advertisers are more interested in. Even this number probably isn’t accurate as a unique might be just for a 24 hour period, but it is what I can show and it is definitely more accurate than the overall visits to the site.

No surprise here seeing how this is a site for designers and developers. I know a lot of companies that would beg to have their IE usage at 3%.

I am not sure if I should be surprised or not at these numbers, but I’m sure Apple would be pleased to see them. I think the most surprising thing to me is that the iPhone beats Linux. Might be time to consider an iPhone version of the site already!

Not much to go into with the other stats, but I have posted more below so you can draw your own conclusions. As time goes on I would like to do more of these traffic posts with a deeper analysis as I make changes to the site. For now though I can only hope that it has encouraged you to produce the best content you can because it really does pay off if you stick with it. I won’t go into how you also have to bust your ass marketing your content and making sure people know about it. People don’t magically just find the site.