LFGSS: Turning a hobby into a technology startup

^ some sound thinking in there though

Consumers of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but your American Express card.

Yeah I have nothing to add Velocio from my zero experience of business, other than you seem focused enough to carry this out despite the tough times, and you have a forum full of people who I'm sure would be willing to chip in whatever's necessary to help this along.
Keep up the good work man!

Great stance velocio, made me think and donate. Best of luck, (real name withheld)

I've just turned off Google Analytics.

There are now no third party components on this site, except those that you guys put into your posts (embedded images and videos).

This should speed things up fractionally (about 60ms per page), but better still... it will mean that nothing on this site is explicitly tracked by anyone.

Very last set of numbers out of Google Analytics:
Tuesday 3rd April had 18,694 visits from 11,692 unique visitors, viewing 163,287 pages.

In the last calendar month, there were 509,006 visits from 198,570 unique visitors, who viewed 4,200,389 pages.

Average number of pages per visit was 8.25, and the average time spent on site was 9 mins 13 seconds.

31.98% of all visits were from new visitors.

Of the visits, 79,912 were on mobile devices, and 429,094 appeared to be desktops/laptops, etc.

Of mobile visits, Android adds up to more than Apple by just a fraction. The most popular Android devices are the HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy S2.

An interesting stat: The most addicted 20% of visitors accounted for 42% of all pageviews. The least addicted 31% (people finding the site on Google) accounted for 12% of pageviews.

On browsers, Safari and Chrome are tied equal at 27% share each. But this is Safari on all platforms including Windows and iOS, whereas Chrome doesn't include Android Browser or IE with Chrome Frame... which would push Google's share to 34%.

IE is less then 12% share. IE9 accounts for more than half of that. IE6 is only 1% of IE share, less than 800 visits in total.

One I was pleased with: Social Engagement "Not Socially Engaged".

Demographics: 324,726 visits originated from the UK... no other place was then dominant, it's just a long tail of North America, Europe, Far East and Australia.

One last interesting fact, donors generated more average pages per visit than any other user group (21.4 pages per visit, whereas most other user groups were close to 15 pages per visit, and guests at 5.9 pages per visit).

Anyhow... done... no more tracking.

I love stats... analytics should stay!

Too late.

Bugger

We need a wrap up report ... with lots of charts. Colourful ones.

will you be able to get any stats at all now? Do you run a different package instead?

I reflected on this before I did it.

I do have some stats from server activity... how many people log in during a day, how many people post, etc.

Then there are rules of thumb that have held true since the forum started... for every 1 post 10 people login, for every 10 people that login 100 read without signing in.

So the traffic numbers are all accurate enough to be deduced from forum activity. And although there is a margin of error in there, there was always a margin of error with Google Analytics (you users of noscript and more aggressive privacy blockers).

What I will lose visibility of is percentage of which browser in use, how many people access from a mobile. Things that are only known on the client.

But I'm OK with not knowing that for a while, and when I do need such thing I could always build a very simple tool to measure just that for a short window of time and then turn it off once done.

So... no other package in place beyond some SQL queries on the database.

If I ever feel the need for stats (which I will), I will apply a combination of http://piwik.org/ (self-hosted, open source, Google Analytics replacement) and running my own stats engine.

Interesting. I guess the data you will get anyway will be enough to make a case for selling ads on the site?

I guess... that would imply an advertiser is happy to pay for ads in which they are not the ones who gather the data. Most aren't. I'm fine with there being no adverts... adverts corrupt sites and companies. They lead to the gutter.

I read this yesterday: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/the-inadmissible-assumptions.html

It is yet another thing that continues to convince me that advertising is not in the interest of this site or the people here.

I regard it as my job to figure out how not to make LFGSS subject to the whims of advertisers. That really means, my job is to figure out how to make sites like this profitable without advertising. I like that.

Will removing Google Analytics affect how prominently lfgss.com appears in Google search results, or is the data it collects only used for the analytics output itself?

Just secured a 2 day per month contract at £500 per day.

Which is just enough of a basic contract to ensure the viability of everything going forward, and to not consume my time or distract me too much from the underlying hard work.

My cap of 4-5 days per month to third party contracting is now halved because of it... but long term security of the company is becoming more secure.

Also... on money, donations used to average a couple of hundred per month, but in the last 2 months have almost doubled. This has partly been due to this thread, but also due to two very kind people who donated £100 a piece this month and last.

Donations are a weird thing... I've got to make sense of them at some point. Now I'm a company, donors are effectively customers, and it doesn't work so well to say that this is for a service already rendered via provision of the site. But the problem is that to formalise this into an exchange would change the structure significantly... should I force everyone to pay? Or should I stop donations altogether? I will spend time thinking about this.

Unfortunately becoming a company might put an end to the whole concept of "pay what you want, according to your means and the value you got out of it", which is a shame as I think that's the most decent thing to do.

I want to find the equivalent charging model as a "Pay what you want" restaurant. It may be as simple as just changing the terminology I use from donations to online content sales, you pay for content already consumed, the value you felt it was worth to you.

Affiliate revenue continues to be what really sustains the company and myself, though now I'm drawing a wage it wouldn't be possible without all of the side pieces of work I've done that beings in an equal amount of revenue.

That's the dull money post.

Will removing Google Analytics affect how prominently lfgss.com appears in Google search results, or is the data it collects only used for the analytics output itself?

In theory the latter, I'll find out over time though.

It would be anti-competitive of Google to use GA that way, so I really doubt they'd risk it.

In theory the latter, I'll find out over time though.

It would be anti-competitive of Google to use GA that way, so I really doubt they'd risk it.

That's what I guessed, but I didn't know if there was some kind of opt-in/out to send additional data, with the carrot of higher results ranking.

Makes sense that it would be considered anti-competitive though.

Congrats on the contract.
To celebrate you should buy some washing powder.

Popping out at lunch time to do so.

I'm thinking Persil.

Might get coffee beans too.

Just secured a 2 day per month contract at £500 per day.

Awesome!

Do you consume enough nowadays to justify getting a Costco/Makro membership and buying non-perishables in epic bulk?

I love stats... analytics should stay!
This!!!

Too late.
NO!

Bugger
now this

Donations are a weird thing... I've got to make sense of them at some point. Now I'm a company, donors are effectively customers, and it doesn't work so well to say that this is for a service already rendered via provision of the site. But the problem is that to formalise this into an exchange would change the structure significantly... should I force everyone to pay? Or should I stop donations altogether? I will spend time thinking about this.

It's not really a donation; it's a transaction. I bought a star!

It's not really a donation; it's a transaction. I bought a star!

Excellent, the new funding model is to sell avatar jewelery. Can I pay extra to get a little chainring instead of a star?