Wednesday, December 21, 2005

We've added a Forum

A penny for your thoughts. Or just seeing your name in print!

New Product Line

We will be launching a new product line around January 15, 2006. Be sure to visit EatStayPlay.com for the news!

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Marketing Plan

Well, I've been hard at work on the marketing plan for EatStayPlay.com. I have all these ideas about how to get more people to visit the site and NONE about how to get them to become members...

Plus, we're moving the office soon: same great website, service, and phone number BRAND NEW address, carpet and paint. How exciting!

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Google Reader

So, if you are new, be sure to check out the new Google Reader so you can keep up on the happenings with EatStayPlay.com!

Monday, January 24, 2005

Meeting Expectations

As an excersise in logic, I projected what our natural growth should be, in terms of unique daily sessions. Well, as the title of this post suggests, my projections and the numbers that we are actually obtaining are within 5% of each other. These projections are about the NATURAL progression of growth for daily sessions- they do not take into account additional advertsing either on-line or off, nor do they account the current month's addition of states.

January is also experiencing record spikes for usership of the website. There have been two spikes this month: Jan. 5-7, 2005 & Jan. 17-19, 2005. Each spike is exactly three days long. Also, after the spike drops off, the growth pattern repeats, building by 10-12% each day.

We are in the middle of implementing our new optimization plan. It took a bit longer than I had anticipated to get the updates done and loaded. But, I am expecting big results from the revamp. Turns out, I had THOUGHT eatstayplay.com had been optmized in this manner and we weren't. That is unfortunate, because the research for this optimization had already been purchased. Still, this change will be fully implemented by 1 Feb 2005. Then I will watch the growth and change patterns for the month of Feb 2005 and use that to recalculate our natural growth pattern.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Traffic Update

No, NOT the type that fills up the highways!

For the past week (our stat software looks a week backward from yesterday) our daily session were growing by 20% a day. Now, when you look at ALL OF JANUARY, you see that this trend is dead steady.

We've also had some HUGE spike days this month. Like I don't even bother trying not to get excited big. Our hypothosis is that these were days where eatstayplay.com was mentioned in some form of print media.

Just for the potential SEO readers out there: I know that the search engines have trained their bots NOT to include links from blogs as incoming links into websites. Finally! Somebody caught on. I hope this helps the poor people who have been google bombed! Anyway, I'll continue putting links to eatstayplay.com, just so you can click on it and not have to copy and paste into your browser.

In other news:
The snow storm has finally left and it has been warm and sunny all week. Whew!

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

New Search Engine Plan

We have been dancing with a couple of on-line marketing companies lately, and are adding more variety to our strategies. Part of this will be some new work and research into easy SEO methods- something I can do without having to hire 14 people to code.

This new update should be available in our test area (of the website) by 15 January 2005. Then, I'll be able to track our results against what we have been getting. We've been breaking session and referral records left and right, but I think that this easy change could really help.

We're also looking at some more, different, print media advertising. I'll keep this blog more or less updated - I'm hiring more salesmen in January and I am very busy with the systems to support them.

Friday, January 07, 2005

Search Engine Results

I am very proud to report two new records for number of sessions:

Full day results: Wednesday 5 January 2005 - 1,213 sessions
18 hour split: Thursday 6 January 2005 - 1,126 sessions

In addition, we have had lots of quality search engine referrals (new optimization plan seems to be working)


Monday, January 03, 2005

Blog creation, readership rises in 2004

The following article is from the Prescott Daily Courier, from 3 January 2005.

NEW YORK (AP) - Readership of online journals known as blogs grew signigicantly in 2004, driven by increased awareness of them during the presidental campaign and other major news events, according to a study released Sunday.

Twenty-seven percent of online adults in the United States said in November they read blogs, compared with 17 percent in a February survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Blogs that cover the tsunami disaster and relief effors are bound to boost readership further, said Lee Rainie, the project's director.

First merchant of 05

We signed up our first merchant in 2005 today. May it be the first of many to come!

Sunday, January 02, 2005

December Totals

Since I've been keeping running updates about how the sessions for eatstayplay.com is doing, I'll make this post dedicated to the wonderful month of December.

We averaged 408 unique sessions a day. This is below the estimated 500 a day that held for the first week of the month, but we are up significantly from November. Our traffic from search engines is nothing but quality as well, still holding to the 8% of total traffic being referred from engines.

Spiders

Spiders, don't forget these sites:

Alaska Recreation
Arizona Recreation
Colorado Recreation
Hawaii Recreation
New Mexico Recreation

ChangingLinks.com

Thanks, Spiders!