Erich Stauffer

Tag: Analysis

  • Top Posts and Keywords for December 2012

    In this 714th post, I discuss my top content, keywords, and income for this website.

    Ecclesiastes 3:5 says that there is, “A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away (NLT).” Since 2007 I have been purchasing domains for speculation or use, but lately I have been condensing the total number of domains I own. Most of the time I roll them into this blog, but this led to a big pile of disjointed posts that had no real, central meaning. I recently spent a day consolidating the post categories down to 9 main categories + 1 called “Tweets” and then redesigned the homepage to showcase the last 3 posts with a thumbnail + the most popular posts + the last 5 posts from the 9 main categories. This is how I overcame the problem. Looking back, the solution seems simple, but there was a lot of work in eliminating and combining categories for hundreds of posts + the custom programming of the home page to do what it’s doing “automatically”.

    Here is a List of Former Domains Included in ErichStauffer.com:

    • mapstrings.com
    • managingactions.com
    • lostpost.net
    • professionaltechnologyconsulting.com
    • geekhand.com
    • watershawl.com
    • telablue.com
    • yourscor.com
    • white-roof.com

    Audience Overview

    The spike in traffic you see at the left edge of the image above is from combining all posts from the old Watershawl site into this blog. As you can see, the traffic didn’t continue and tapered off, despite leaving the posts in place. Total visits were 2,268 with 2,077 being unique. There were 3,504 pageviews with 1.54 pages per visit. The bounce rate was 75.13%, which is slightly higher than last month. Most people used Chrome (25.5%) followed by Internet Explorer (22.5%), Firefox (20.9%), and Safari (18.5%). Most visits were from New York City (166) followed by Fishers, Indiana (35), San Francisco (33), Chicago (26) and Indianapolis (25). Internet Explorer being topped by Chrome means that the addition of new technical content on mobile devices and query strings has attracted a more technical crowd compared to last month.

    Top 10 Content

    The three posts to fall out of the top ten were Arnart’s Erich Stauffer Fake Hummels (45), Collegeclub.com Email (49), and My CEO Heroes (6).

    Top 10 Keywords

    VINTAGE ARNART CERAMIC FIGURINE- BOY PLAYING BANJO BY ERICH STAUFFER

    • erich stauffer – 55 visits
    • collegeclub.com – 39 visits
    • forward text messages to email – 22 visits
    • college club website – 13 visits
    • erich stauffer figurines – 13 visits
    • arnart imports – 12 visits
    • erich stauffer collectibles – 11 visits
    • collegeclub email – 10 visits
    • erich stauffer figurine prices – 10 visits
    • erich stauffer 8515 – 9 visits

    Despite the new, technical content from Watershawl.com, the only change in the top keywords was the addition of “forward text messages to email.”

    Top 10 Sources

    Erich Stauffer on Twitter

    • google.com – 102 visits
    • t.co – 38 visits
    • m.facebook.com – 10 visits
    • google.co.uk – 7 visits
    • facebook.com – 6 visits
    • watershawl.com – 6 visits
    • google.com.br – 5 visits
    • iphoneunity.com – 5 visits
    • google.de – 4 visits
    • google.pl – 4 visits

    I was pleased to see Twitter (t.co) in the mix this time and I am sure this has mostly to do with my testing of the Tweetily plugin to automatically and randomly send links to old WordPress posts.

    Income Stats

    Amazon Associates Affiliate Program: 82 Items Ordered – 78 Items Shipped – $150 Advertising Fees
    Google Adsense: $127 Estimate

  • 2012 Year in Blogging Annual Report

    If you use Jetpack for WordPress, every January you’ll get a “2012 Year in Blogging Annual Report”. Here is mine from this past year:

    Crunchy numbers

    4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 29,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 7 Film Festivals. In 2012, there were 63 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 260 posts. The busiest day of the year was April 30th with 592 views. The most popular post that day was Email is Dead, Long Live Email.

    Attractions in 2012

    These are the posts that got the most views in 2012. You can see all of the year’s most-viewed posts in your Site Stats.

    Some of your most popular posts were written before 2012. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

    How did they find you?

    The top referring sites in 2012 were:

    • hobbyplow.com
    • Google Reader
    • facebook.com
    • news.ycombinator.com
    • twitter.com

    Some visitors came searching, mostly for “erich stauffer”, “erich stauffer figurines”, “collegeclub.com”, “mexican cat”, and “designed by erich stauffer”.

    Where did they come from?

    135 countries in all! Most visitors came from The United States, but the United Kingdom & Canada were not far behind.

    Who were they?

    Your most commented on post in 2012 was Noise.

    These were your 5 most active commenters:

    • 1. Robby Slaughter 6 COMMENTS
    • 2. J Brock 2 COMMENTS
    • 3. Jessica Poux 1 COMMENT
    • 4. Blake 1 COMMENT

    Perhaps I should follow their blog or send them a thank you note? View the full report here.

  • Top Posts and Keywords for November 2012

    In this 667th post, I discuss my top content, keywords, and income for this website.

    Occasionally I’ll do an analysis of my blog content and share it out for others to learn from what I’m doing. Dukeo does this with his monthly blogging stats so I’m thinking about doing it more often, maybe monthly. We’ll see. Here is my attempt at a monthly blog statistics analysis based on data from Google Analytics, Amazon Associates, and Google Adsense.

    The spike in traffic you see at the right edge of the image below is from combining all posts from the old Watershawl site into this. Watershawl was averaging over 5000 unique visitors a month with two posts, “Syncing Outlook Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks with Android Using Gmail” and “How to Auto-Forward Text Messages to Email in Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, and the iPhone” getting around 2000 unique visitors each. No doubt these will be the top 2 posts next month. Interestingly, they were originally written for my Geek Hand site, but were folded into Watershawl earlier this year so this is actually their second move. I’ve got a redirection plugin up on Watershawl to redirect traffic to Erich Stauffer for now.

    Total visits was 1,544 with 1,417 being unique. There were 2,383 pageviews with 1.54 pages per visit. The bounce rate was 74.61%, which is really high. Most people used Internet Explorer (28%) followed by Chrome (24%), Safari (19.5%), Firefox (18%). Most visits were from the United States with most visitors being from California (128) followed by New York (94), Florida (72), Illinois (61), and Texas (58). Indiana had 38 for comparison. Judging by the use of Internet Explorer, the high content of Florida visitors, and the penchant for Erich Stauffer figurines, I’d say I have an older visitor base that is not interested in what I want to talk about most of the time (more on that later).

    Top 10 Content

    Of my Top Posts of 2011, the only one to fall out of the top 10 is “How to Delete a Digg Submission“. Regardless of how much I try to write about business, technology, and entrepreneurship, “the organism will do whatever it pleases.” My response to that in the past has been to ‘write more of what people are already looking at’ and sometimes I end up creating an entirely new site out of my most popular content, as I wrote about in Analyzing Actions in September of 2009. One post on Youtube Query String Parameters was turned into an entire site, which was later sold for $145. I did the same thing with the How to Stay Alert and Focused post. I’ve since made a new ‘query strings’-type site called Map Strings that gets most of it’s traffic from How To Run Google Maps On the Kindle Fire EDIT: moved the site here starting on 1/6/2013.

    Top 10 Keywords

    • erich stauffer (68)
    • collegeclub.com (31)
    • erich stauffer figurines (17)
    • what happened to collegeclub (14)
    • eric stauffer figurines (12)
    • erich stauffer figurine prices (11)
    • mexican cat (11)
    • arnart porcelain marks (9)
    • collegeclub email (8)
    • erich stauffer figurine (8)
    As you might expect due to the domain name, I get a lot of traffic for the keyword and variations of, “Erich Stauffer”, the Arnart Import’s fake Hummel figurine artist I was named after. Second to that, people are still crazy about Collegeclub.com and seem to still wonder where all of their stuff went when it went belly up. Like them, I was interested so I did some research, found out, and shared it on my blog. I just didn’t think that all these years later it would still be some of my most popular blog posts. The “mexican cat” gets linked to a post called “Smarty Cat” through Google Image Search and that is also the reason “My CEO Heroes” ranks well – people are searching for an image of Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks.

    Top 10 Sources

    • google.com (89)
    • facebook.com (19)
    • qian8ao.com (11)
    • google.co.uk (10)
    • dogpile.com (4)
    • google.ca (4)
    • m.facebook.com (4)
    • google.com.br (3)
    • iphoneunity.com (3)
    • answers.yahoo.com (2)

    I have a pretty active Twitter account so it’s somewhat of a surprise to me to not see Twitter in the referral list, but I did get one (1) referral from Twitter, ranking it at #49. Qian8ao is a “Free Expense-Tracking Application and Personal Finance Community” in China. I’m not sure what link they have pointing to me as Google Analytics can’t resolve it properly and my go-to Google searches aren’t revealing anything, but I’m guessing that it’s not page visits, but a hot-linked image that is causing the count. I post links to this page via my Erich Stauffer Figurines page and the Erich Stauffer page. I have used Yahoo Answers as part of my SEO process successfully for a number of years.

    Income Stats

    • Amazon Associates Affiliate Program: 72 Clicks – 0 Items Ordered – 0 Items Shipped – 0 Advertising Fees
    • Google Adsense: $12.74 Estimate

     

  • Indianapolis Video Surveillance Analysts

    The other day I was in downtown Indianapolis at the Circle Center Mall where I noticed two video surveillance cameras in one of the parking garage escalator areas. This would not have been a big deal, but all one camera was doing was looking at the other. It seemed like perfect fodder for Fail Blog, whose ironic content fits perfectly with Roman poet Juvenal’s famous line, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” from his Satires (Satire VI, lines 347–8), which is literally translated as “Who will guard the guards themselves?” One video surveillance camera had probably just replaced the other without the former being removed, but it still goes to show the value of a good Indianapolis video surveillance analyst.

    Who Will Watch the WatchersThe video surveillance system you choose to purchase and/or update could be purchased on Amazon.com or from a variety of different resellers, but how do you know if it will give you the results you need and how do you know if your IT system can support it? That’s the value that AllThingsIT provides with their Indianapolis video surveillance design services. They have been providing IT networking and video surveillance system support for over 30 years. Their new “Safe Small Towns” initiative is focused on helping small towns and municipality police and fire departments develop and implement video surveillance cameras that give them evidence they can use in court.

    As an IT business analyst myself, I can understand the value of working with a company like AllThingsIT for Indianapolis network management because video surveillance technology changes fast and there are hundreds of different cameras out there – each with their different light sensors and lens types that create a myriad of features. AllThingsIT has the tools to create a turn-key video surveillance solution for your organization that can be proven effective before it’s even installed. If you’re in the market for a new video surveillance system or are looking to upgrade, contact AllThingsIT at 317-755-0200.

  • A Day in the Life of a Business Analyst

    Boiling a business analyst’s primary functions down, you get the following:

    • conceptualize, visualize
    • troubleshoot, problem solve
    • research, mine data and reports
    • identify trends and patterns, predict
    • identify similarities and differences
    • interact with people, communicate
    • innovate and discover solutions to problems
    • create proof of concepts, write business cases
    • document procedures and implement solutions

    Here is a day in the life of a business analyst using some of these primary functions:

    Visualization, conceptualization, and problem solving approaches over a time have matured and are quite structured and repetitive (if done well). However, no matter how structured and repetitive your documents and processes are, the people you work with and report to will always be there to throw obstacles in your way – so expect it. The business analysts role is to confront these challenges everyday at work and constantly innovative to come up with a workable solution.

    A typical business analyst’s day usually contains complexity and challenges, which require an individual to conceptualize, design, research, and report on a variety of products and/or procedures. You may be presented with a question but no data, or data without a clearly defined question. An analysis cannot really start until both the question and the data set is clearly defined. I call this QDAR, which stands for:

    • Question
    • Data set
    • Analysis
    • Report / Revision

    This is similar to STAIR, which is:

    • State the problem
    • Define the Tools
    • Algorithm (procedure)
    • Implement
    • Revise

    Business analysts have to interact with people who have the data but are not ready to part with it for some reason. Maybe they are afraid of what you are going to do with it (such as use it against them) or maybe they feel like you are replacing them (“Hey, I’m the one who owns that data!”), so some social skills definitely come in handy.

    A lot of the time the work you are doing is up in your head. This means you may often look like you don’t have work to do. This is unavoidable, but some things you can do is to make active use of a white board and/or sheets of scrap paper on your desk as a way to look busy, but truly to make sure your ideas get down on paper.

    Some times you’ll lead projects even if you are not a project manager. This means you’ll have to collaboratively strategize, generate acceptability, and ownership. Getting all these people on the same platform and presenting the idea through their perspective while keeping everybody’s attention is one of the hardest parts and primarily what your function will be along with organization of the project.

    Before beginning any big endeavor you’ll want to create a sort of proof of concept (PoC) document. Don’t get too caught up in formalities here. This report is for you as much as your boss to help guide you through the project or task. You’re more than likely going to be working on more than one thing at a time and you’ll likely get pulled away long enough to forget your ideas about the initiative so get th plan down on paper while you can. Use the STAIR acronym if it helps. If there are Business Requirement Specifications (BRS), include those in the document too.

    Once the plan is in place, revised, and approved, it’s time to start implementing. Execution may be the easiest part, but sometimes is the hardest to do because its not analyzing, it’s work. If you’re making a system change, be sure and use change control processes, and when you are done, test, and review. Finally, report on the initiative, get feedback, and move on to your next assignment. You’ve just had a productive day!

  • Strawberry Cake Pie and the Facebook Coefficient

    Strawberry-cake-pieLast night I had a dream that I went to a restaurant with a couple of friends and we all ordered a strawberry cake pie.  It was served in a “taco salad”-like pan with a friendship bread, cake-like base.  The topping was similar to a strawberry pie, but the kind with strawberry glaze mixed in.  That was our meal.

    In the morning I called my friend on the way to work and he thought the idea was fantastic, but then he took it to the next level.  He said, “Why not take strawberry cake mix, churn cold butter into it, and make that the crust instead.” BRILLIANT and DELICIOUS-sounding.  I’ve got another friend who makes exceptional deserts (such as the 7-layer bar) who is going to do the testing.

    Analyzing Facebook

    During our conversation I had mentioned that I was so excited about the strawberry cake pie that I had posted it to Facebook first thing in the morning.  This led to a discussion about a recent Facebook “analysis” I had done on this friend’s Facebook profile.  I had noticed that his wall posts were down compared to a month ago so I mentioned that his Facebook wall posts were down 83% compared to last month.  I hadn’t really done the analysis, but he thought I had, which made me think that Facebook is ripe for analysis.

    A while back a different friend of mine did a quick study to find out how many wall posts one of his friends made before and after a point in time. He was able to go back through all of his wall posts to discover that, even though they had been Facebook friends, before the event there were no wall posts, but after the event, the wall posts were near-spam levels.  The metric in that analysis was wall posts, which inspired me to use the same metric for what I call the Facebook Coefficient.

    facebook-coefficientThe Facebook Coefficient

    The Facebook Coefficient is the number of wall posts you make compared to the number of wall posts received.  This is a measure of your popularity on Facebook  (or how big of a jerk you are, which a friend of mine pointed out).  The coefficient takes into account the last time the user logged in, not counting incoming wall posts until after the user logs back in.

    The coefficient can be computed manually, but would best be done by a Facebook App.  I am a member of the Facebook Developers community, but I have yet to produce a Facebook app.  This is in part because I never had a need to or an idea of what Facebook app to write.  If you are a developer, feel free to use or adapt this idea.  I would be interested in using it.  For more ideas, check out this blog post about wanting Facebook Statistics.

    What Facebook apps would you like to see? On May 19th, 2009 I posted about using Twitter as a business research tool. If you are a Facebook developer I would consider doing something similar.  Here’s why: the following two wishes have been granted.

    WISH there was a way to permanently hide any news feed info relating to those “What kind of blah blah are you” quizzes on facebook.

    wish there was a way to opt out of getting messages from some people in facebook. Seems like whey need a spam filter.

    But this one still has not:

    wish there was a way to post PDFs in #Facebook messages…

    So if you are a developer who wishes to develop a popularity app like The Facebook Coefficient, then you may have already developed Popularity.  Popularity is a, “fun and rewarding ranking game that calculates how interactive people are with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr,” but when you try to use it on Facebook it errors out and says

    There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of Popularity are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged – if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!

    You may have heard the expression, “There is no such thing as competition.”  No matter how good of an idea you have, if you can’t execute it, then it is not worth much.  Execution is really the name of the game and whether you are baking a strawberry cake pie or a Facebook app, you must deliver the goods – otherwise, it’s just a half-baked idea.