I came across Project Wonderful [1] from Eric Burns [2]. I read up on its advertising scheme [3] and found it rather compelling. I have web space to sell ads [4], and given that Google's AdSense [5] has been a disappointment [6], I thought I would sign up and give Project Wonderful a try.
I'll have to wait a while.
In trying to keep the system from imploding under heavy traffic, they're slowly expanding and I have to sign up for an invite to display their advertising. On the form asking for the invite, they asked for an average number of page views per day my site gets.
I don't have a package like AWStats [7], Webalizer [8] or Analog [9] installed (being too lazy to install and configure them). Instead, I have some home brewed programs that allow me to trawl through the log files manually (which for me gives me a better feel for what's going on anyway). I figured just searching for screen.css would give a good indication of page views (since it's used to render a page view), so I extracted the logs from a few days ago and checked.
Thirty-seven page views.
That's it?
I tried another day.
Thirty-seven.
I went back to the January logs.
Thirty-seven.
Thirty-eight.
Sixty-four.
Thirty-eight.
Oh.
That might explain the rather lackluster results from Google's AdSense.
But in going through the logs, I did come across the following:
Plus other feed readers that don't report the number of readers (about another 70) so my readership is up there, but primarily through outlets other than here.
Well then … perhaps I have to rethink the whole advertising thing then.
[1] http://www.projectwonderful.com/
[2] http://www.websnark.com/archives/2007/03/is_it_really_wo.html
[3] http://www.projectwonderful.com/aboutauctions.php
[4] http://www.projectwonderful.com/sellingads.php
[5] https://www.google.com/adsense/
[7] http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
[8] http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/
[10] http://www.bloglines.com/
[11] http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html
[12] http://www.livejournal.com/users/bostondiaries/
[13] http://www.insanejournal.com/users/bostondiaries/