The First Half Year in Figures – January to June 2011

It’s now six months since Soccerwidow.com launched online and for those interested in the figures, here is a summary of the first half year.

However, please bear in mind that the blog has been virtually dormant for the last three months due to our return to Europe following a two-year spell in Uganda. Despite this ‘time-out’, surprisingly the stream of visitors hasn’t completely dried up, as the following graphic shows:

Up until February, the blog’s popularity grew consistently and daily, and had by March reached an average of 54 visitors per day. Three months later with literally no new content added, there are still approximately 32 daily visitors to Soccerwidow. This 31% decrease in traffic may also be due to non-functioning WordPress plugins (some software updates have not been applied), and many folk must have been frustrated by constant ‘404 error’ messages.

An entire day was spent getting the many technical problems back in order. For example, WP Link Robot switched off, and there were problems with the navigation (PixoPoint Multi-level Navigation Plugin), some of which remain unfixed. Also the WMPL Plugin (multilingual pages) provided further headaches as the WPML gurus had changed the formerly free plugin to a commercial version and unfortunately, the old version is not 100% compatible with the WordPress updates; hence the multi-language categories were showing 404 errors.

However, no Soccerwidow readers queried any faults, which is a lesson learned: A blog owner must identify any broken links and check his/her Web site regularly for performance. Because there is so much choice available on the Internet, readers are more likely to vote with their feet if a site is or becomes unreliable.

Due to the aforementioned, Soccerwidow’s Alexa page rank naturally dropped:

Comparison: In March the blog had an Alexa page rank of around 254,000.

Readers and most popular topics

The German articles were viewed 71,588 times, whilst English language articles attracted 131,195 page views. The most popular article was Calculation of Odds: Probability and Deviation, viewed 5,265 times since its publication on 11.3.2011; approximately 46 times per day.

Comparison: The German version of this article Kalkulation von Wettquoten: Wahrscheinlichkeit und Abweichung, was likewise the most popular in this language. It was published on 20.2.2011, three weeks before the English translation, and has since attracted 3,182 readers, an average of 24 per day.

These are surely small numbers compared to more successful blogs but nevertheless, I find the statistics worth mentioning, particularly since there seem to be very few articles in the Internet where one can compare one’s own blog performance and start-up experience with others.

It is interesting that the English article Self check: Do I have A Gambling problem? attracted 3,205 views, placing it at number 9 out of 44 published articles, whilst the German translation: Spielercheck: Habe ich ein Spielproblem?, achieved a ranking of 35 from 52 articles. Are English language readers more concerned about their gambling habits than German speakers?

On the other hand, the German article Über Mich is at position number 18, with 1,558 visitors. The English version About Me is not so popular with only 777 visitors ranking the article 43rd most popular out of 44. The Germans seem to be more interested in the author!

A further phenomenon is that the German speakers, although accounting for 32% less page views, provide substantially more comments on the articles. Likewise the article rating system (the six stars) seems to attract substantially more interaction with the German readership. The German readers therefore represent a more tangible audience than the English, who remain curiously anonymous. This is also borne out by the poll asking whether people make money from gambling, which attracted four times as many answers from German readers than from English ones:

According to the survey 15% of the blog’s German readers are non-gamblers, compared to 0% non-gamblers amongst the English fraternity. 80% of the ‘English’ also answered that they lose more than they win, compared to just under 50% of ‘German’ readers.

Altogether in six months, the blog received 4,317 unique visitors from 102 different countries, with 71 different language groups. This equated to an average of 24 new visitors per day. Over 2,000 first visitors returned to the blog at least once, representing almost half of all first visitors.

The majority of readers are based in Germany: 2,202 unique visitors, more than 50% of the entire readership. If the other German speaking countries, Switzerland and Austria, are added then the total grows to 2,435 readers, or around 56% of the total readership.

The remaining 44% of readers are distributed across 99 other countries and speak 67 different languages, the majority being from countries where English is not the native language. This may go some way to explaining why English language comments on the blog are sparse:

Income via affiliate programs and advertising

Today’s article finishes with the largest disappointment. Not a penny has been earned from affiliate programs or advertising in either language! After many hours spent registering with different affiliate programs, downloading their banners and inserting them into the Web site, still no income for Soccerwidow, but plenty of free advertising for them, especially as the articles have been viewed a total of 202,735 times.

Various SEO blogs in the Internet explain that one can expect between five and eight Euros per thousand views. This would mean that with approximately 202,000 views, with three to four different adverts on each page, Soccerwidow should have received by now around 700 times say five Euros, or 3,500 Euros income. Even half of this would have been an acceptable result but, Soccerwidow’s blog finishes its first half year with ZERO commercial income.

Herewith the income table (the listing is not complete; there are approximately twice as many affiliate partners but all show zero income!):

…and 888Sports charges $25 for a bank transfer, hence the $13.85 sitting as credit in Soccerwidow’s affiliate account will probably remain an untapped source of income for some time to come! Soccerwidow would genuinely be interested in hearing from anyone in the Internet who actually makes money with affiliate programmes…

The only real income from the blog was through sales of the article Practical Guidance to Recognizing Value Bets, which sold 13 times for 5 Euros a piece, however only in the German version and not once in English!

Therefore, for the time being Soccerwidow will remain a hobby as we doubt it will ever provide enough financial support to take on as a full-time occupation.

To close, thank you to all our readers who remained loyal and patient despite the three month sabbatical. Life is now settling down again, which should allow time to analyse some football data and get everything ready for the new European seasons. Hopefully, we will again publish regular picks and plenty more articles explaining betting maths, if only to dispel the myths surrounding gambling!

Back to: The First Month in Figures – January 2011

Back to: The Second Month in Figures – February 2011