DISQUS

calebelston · 1 year ago

On a totally unrelated note, my favorite company t-shirt I have is the Lijit shirt I got at BlogHer last year, supersoft. (don't ask why I was at BlogHer)

micah · 1 year ago

Louis, I am sorry to add a second comment, but I so owe Caleb an email...and I am just glad the softness of our shirt has mellowed him... ;)

calebelston · 1 year ago

Yeah, I wear it like once a week. Sweet.

drewolanoff · 1 year ago

Lijit FTW! Love those folks. Much much more than a widget, and we're going to see great things from them.

micah · 1 year ago

Louis, great post. I think you have outlined many of our features and outlined some of our better benefits. Frankly, I agree with Duncan, regarding revenue sharing and its something that we are working quickly to rectify at Lijit. Its important that we arent just another place to put Google Adsense, but rather a full featured ad solution that truly benefits the publisher. Of course, if this is a major issue for any publisher, please drop me a line at micah@lijit.com and I will work something out in the interim.

You highlighted our "Re-Search" function which seems to drive a click through rate (depending on the publisher and the placement) anywhere from 2%-8%, which are pageviews that Lijit cannot and will not monetize. In addition, by being part of my network, results from LouisGray.com (for example) may appear in my results, driving additional traffic that would be otherwise unrealized. Again, Lijit plans to never share in that revenue. For some, that additional traffic seems to be from 1% - 3% on average (again depending on the placement and the publisher).

Finally, the popular search cloud you show is interesting as well. For some publishers, the increase in searches is astronomical when the popular search cloud is used (some see a 10x increase in searches, most fall around 4-5x.)

It takes great trust on the part of the publisher to add any widget, let alone Lijit. We have no intention to ever betray or infringe on that trust, for without it, there would be no Lijit. I hope outlining some of the statistics is helpful to folks.

Again, thanks for the great post, and I look forward to getting your feedback on new features!

amsall · 1 year ago

I've just started using Lijit (right after reading Louis Gray's post) and I was even more encouraged by Micah's comment (the 1st one ;-)

steveballmer · 1 year ago

You guys are my kinda people!

tony · 1 year ago

Most of my hits come from Mountainview, CA and I don't know why since I do a radio show in Seattle. Can someone explain why the people of that area are coming to my site...doesn't make sense???

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

Google is headquartered in Mountain View. It could be that people are using Google tools that mask the origin of their visits, or it's showing their crawler.

Todd Vernon · 1 year ago

Tony,

A couple of notes. about 30% of page views on most blogs come directly from people clicking through from search engines.. With Lijit stats you can see this stat as "page views with research". So basically those readers generally don't have much location affinity with your publication. Second, geo-location of readers is not an exact science. Lijit is partnered with Quova for this data and they are generally the most accurate source of this information. However, large companys with VPN's or ISPs that aggregate their traffic through super proxies can make the data look wrong from time to time.. Hope this helps !

Roezer · 4 months ago

I started using it the other day unlike most Gadgets as you said the popup window does not require people to leave your site.Most people put a widget on a site thinking it looks cool but they are loosing visitors because they want the gadget also.And the fact that you can filter it and provide visitors with something useful from your network is great.plus i like the analytics

PUB · 1 year ago

Just as, or perhaps more critical then visible PUBlic function of widgets, is the safe use of the private information these widgets may be gathering, unbeknownst to the unwitting Publisher who installs them, about their site.

P.U.B. [Publishers Union of Bloggers] has pending inquires to Widget Providers concerning how they generate their income and what percentage of this income goes to the Blog Publisher making the critical decision to allow a Widget on their site for their readers. In addition we are requesting transparency on the critical issue of how the private statistics from Publishers Blogs are being used, hopefully with the Publisher’s permission!

P.U.B. expects to heard back from Lijit on these financial and private statistics issues from P.U.B’s inquiry we sent to Lijit in mid April 2008. When we do we will let great Blog Publishers like you know their deal. Currently we are also working with Blog Publishers to track performance hit evaluations of Widgets on blogs too. Let us know if you have any follow up on any of these important issues for the blog community.

Will publish these results to keep the community of Blog Publishers informed on this critical component of Widgets on our Blogs.

Barney Moran, P.U.B.

kamla bhatt · 1 year ago

Thanks Louis for this review of Lijit...sometimes it is hard to keep up with everything and a good review makes a world of difference.

Cheers!

kamla bhatt