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- New traffic record at Shepherd.com!
New traffic record at Shepherd.com!
Ben Fox
December 02, 2022
Traffic grew 34% in November! 🥳
(Feedback Request) Replace ads with your books.
Ready for genres and age pages?
Update on the ugly display ads
Traffic for November
Ben’s life updates and reading list
Traffic grew 34% in November! 🥳
To put that in perspective...
In February, the site averaged 2,000 visitors a day
In July, 4,000 a day
In September, 6,000 a day
In November, 10,000 a day.
That is incredible growth! I hope it continues to climb as I continue to roll out new features for authors and readers.
Replace ads with your books.
I want to get rid of all the ugly display ads.
How?
I want to replace the ugly ads with in-house ads for books relevant to the web page the reader is on. The in-house ads would be beautifully integrated into the website.
So if someone is browsing a page with books on Roman history, romance, or science fiction, there would be ads for books related to that genre/topic. The goal is to show book ads that a reader is interested in.
Whose books would be advertised?
I am considering bundling this into the Founding Member program as a perk for authors.
How would that work?
As part of the Founding Member program, authors would get a certain amount of advertising for their books each month. So a Founding Member might get 1,000 ad impressions for their book each month.
What do you think?
Ready for genre and age pages?
Work starts in January!
I turned over a 25-page spec document to our part-time developer last week. This spec is the first part of the work to add book genre and age data to the website (i.e., a science fiction page, a page for middle schoolers, and so on).
The developer and I had a lovely 4-hour conversation about details. And I will know more as he plans things out in a few weeks.
When will we start this work?
We will start in early January. Right now, we are finishing work related to adding the concept of book editions to our system, improving book description data, and adding more automation to book creation (going from 0% automated to 90% automated).
I am working on part two of this spec (how we show genres and age groups on the website). The designer and I are playing with how this will look on the website's front page, bookshelves, etc.
Just a small reminder, this is all expensive to build. So if you want to support our mission, please join us as a Founding Member (special perks for authors).
Update on the ugly display ads on Shepherd
On November 15th, I reduced the number of ads on the site and optimized placement to be less intrusive. I do not like the ads, but they pay a lot of our costs. And this is expensive to build, even with our bootstrapped mentality.
I want to get rid of the ugly display ads.
How?
Check out the idea I pitch at the top of the newsletter.
Shepherd traffic updates
For November, we had 299,000+ visitors and 373,000+ pageviews. That is 34% higher than last month and a new all-time traffic record. That is up 627% over the previous year.
Traffic from Google was up 37% month over month, which is fantastic! That will accelerate as we get more pages and features shipped. It usually takes ~3 years to rank for competitive Google searches (we are 19 months old).
My goal for 2023 is to reach a million monthly visitors.
What else is going on?
What am I reading?
I am almost done with The Prisoner of Paradise by Rob Samborn. It is a dual-timeline thriller set in Italy. I love the Venetian setting.
My Name Was Five by Heinz Kohler. A riveting memoir about growing up in Berlin during and after WW2.
I haven't started it yet, but Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton is next on my list (one of my favorite sci-fi writers)
We spent last week celebrating Thanksgiving in Dublin, Ireland. Apart from a nasty cold, the trip was magnificent. I visited with dear friends I hadn't seen since 2017 (and their new family member Evie!). I had a blast playing games and eating delicious pecan and pumpkin pie (with vanilla mascarpone whip creme). I hope to see my friends again soon; it has been too long.
I hope all our Americans had a great Thanksgiving with friends and family. I am looking forward to seeing my mom and stepdad next month for Christmas. The last time I saw them was in 2019 (before our move to Europe and Covid).
I wish everyone a fantastic holiday season full of good health, delicious food, family, and friends. I will talk to you again in 2023.
- Ben Fox
Want to join our membership program?
The membership program launched in late September, and we've had 130+ readers and authors sign up.
That is amazing and makes me so happy.
This helps us financially, and I have many more perks for authors and readers. I will share more details in the coming months.
100% of your membership goes toward new features.
My goal is to hire a full-time developer in 2023. Currently, we work with a fantastic part-time developer named Marton. My goal is to hire a full-time developer in addition to Marton. This would allow us to speed up the development of new features.