Saturday, May 20, 2006

The Rent My Blog Analysis Update




So the Rent My Blog Analysis got a lot of feedback which I think qualifies for an update rather than going in and just editing the original post. The two things this update will do is 1) Better explain the formula I devised and 2) Address a few things some people pointed out.

The Formula Redeux

For those of you who don't know Miss Ann Thrope... well your missing out. I suggest you click and become familiarized with her and take some lessons. Miss Ann felt my formula was fatally flawed and that she in fact would not measure up to anything higher than a slumlord. In fact, her exact comment to be summed up was, "So pretty much for 15 credits, my average of 60 unique clicks and maybe a mention or two sucks. Somehow i don't think so. "

Luckily, she rented to me for a week so I could see first hand what it was like to stay at her place (which is really nice by the way... mega soft pillows and plenty of pussies for me to chase around the yard).

So I will now demonstrate the formula step by step using my rental time at Miss Ann Thrope's. The Rent My Blog Stats for that stay are as follows: Hits: 1226, Unique Hits: 361, Clicks: 91, Unique Clicks: 65, and Credits: 15. Now over the course of the week Miss Ann mentioned me in 3 different posts with the Rent My Blog link. I was mentioned on 5/13 "It's an Aries Thing", 5/14 "Couple of Things", and 5/16 "Could be worse, could be... errr". Now for those of you who read those posts... look at the end for comments about "cool bitchy dude" and look at the link. It's the rent code. Some people may say "Oh, but she didn't mention your name or say anything real about your blog"... well besides the point that I made in my original analysis about people linking to their renter's secretly, I think being called a bitchy dude is probably the absolute best description I have heard of myself in almost forever... which is just proof she knows me. So total number of mentions is now 3.

So now let's start plugging numbers with their values. The Hit numbers get thrown out. If someone wants to advertise on a site for impressions then they'll be using a 468X60 banner and not a 150X150 square. Hits have NOTHING to do with Rent My Blog other than it show the % of traffic clicking through.

Clicks: 91. I subtract the number of Unique Clicks (65) from the total number of Clicks (91) to give me the number of repeat clickers of 26. Since those are repeat clicks they do not get a full credit, so it is multipled by .5 which gives me a non-unique click value of 13. We will call this Variable A.

Unique Clicks: 65. A Unique Click has a value of 1. It's a 1:1 value deal. We will call this Variable B.

# of Mentions by Entry: 3. As I pointed out above I was mentioned and linked to in 3 separate posts. The value of 1 mention is 25, so in this case 25 multiplied by 3 equals a total mention value of 75. We will call this Variable C.

Now we will pull the formula together. We start by adding A+B+C=D... D is now a variable equal to the Total Value. Using the numbers from this rental it becomes 13+65+75= 153. Now to discover the percentage of return we take the Total Value, which is variable D, and divide it by Credits which in this case is 15. So the equation now become D/Credits. In this case it is 153/15= 10.2. Now we make it into a percentage by moving the decimal point two places to the right... which makes 10.2 into 1020%. For those of you curious about hits... simply divide the number of Unique Clicks by the number of Unique Hits. In this case it is 361/91=.180... move those decimal points... and the click through % of Unique Hits at Miss Ann Thrope's is 18%.

So for a cost of 15 BE credits I received a total of 91 Clicks, 65 Unique Clicks, three mentions as a "cool bitchy dude" which resulted in a 1,020% return on my initial investment. This makes Miss Ann Thrope the Queen of Rent My Blog. Long Rent the Queen!!! So there ya go Miss Ann... there's your ranking and your explanation. I hope it was thorough enough... and if you decide you still don't understand then let's try this novel idea... just trust me that I do know what I'm talking about and that your the Queen of it all!

Some Random Arguments:

• Positioning of Rental Space: I did not include taking into account exactly WHERE the rental box is. Some people have it "above the fold", some have it half-way down the sidebar, and others have it at the very bottom. I relate the location of the rent code to what type of room you would place your guest. Do you give them the guest room on the top floor, make them sleep in the living room in the middle of it all, or stuff their corpses into the basement with the sewer rats. Usually a good indicator once again in clicks. Those at the top of the tower will receive more attention than those in the dungeoun... although if somebody does stick you in the dungeoun you could very well get as much attention as any other.


• Permanent Links: There are a few blogs that add their previous renters permanently into their blogrolls. Now I would normally say that is absolutely worth something... but then we would get into the argument of how much a blogroll link actually is. I know there was this other guy who came up with a forumula and a way for figuring out how much your own blog was worth based on the value of links... but links alone do not bring value. Clicks do... and since I can find no fair way of rating blogroll links or to know how many people click on the blogroll... well it needs to be excluded.


• Impressions versus clicks: As I mentioned in my original analysis, 1 BE credit equals 1 visit. Some people apparently are judgeing their worth based on 1 BE credit equals 40 impressions which is basically what BE charges for banner impressions. The problem with this ideology is that those banner impressions are 468X60 pixels which is 28,080 pixels. The thumbnail for Rent My Blog is what, let's say 150X150 pixels? That equals 22,500 pixels that shorts you around 5-6k pixels of space... and which by the way you cannot decide what it says... it is simply a picture of your blog. If I was after impressions... I'd just do a banner.

I hope that this further explanation of the methodology used helps those who still weren't able to figure it out. I also hope that those of you who are applying it are having better renter experiences because of it.
Posted by New York City's Watchdog :: 5/20/2006 01:03:00 AM :: Permalink :: 3 Bones Added to the Pile

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