Reiki Music. Video Marketing

IPM business metrics

It should have been a nice relaxing long bank holiday weekend.

I was really looking forward to having some time to chill and to think.

But sadly it was not to be. And FREE became a very costly reminder in BAD value.

Like any artist or business, it’s best practice to find out what your audience likes and doesn’t like. In Internet website terms it used to be simply called “web logs”. But of course many services exist to make the process of looking at the huge web log text files, more, erm, “fun”. And some people may not have access to their raw web logs anyway.

But these days, most hosting packages do include raw access web logs and most CPANEL accounts also include at least 1 program to make analysing them a darn site easier than a text file. Yep they draw graphs and cluster things together.

But I guess with Web 2.0, talking about web logs must seem like a caveman tripping on luddite juice (now there’s imagery) but you’d be amazed what you can learn from your every day “old school” web logs. Secuirty attacks and everything. I think web logs are vastly underated.

But not all web log analysers are created equal, and the very best was literally several hundred pounds. And it still misses the mark in several respects.

The free/open source ones that come with cpanel, are largely fair enough, but they take more human interpretation to identify “trends” than the big girl analysers.

But of course, this is not 1990 any more, and people like The Google have Google Analytics, so we can avoid looking at our own web logs and look at their logs of our activity, instead.

Google Analytics. is fair enough. Apart from the fact that you have to add a code snippet to your pages or blog, they even host it and take the bandwidth hit for you. The statistics and trends they present are also quite nice.

But I am me, so I’ve always had a problem, letting the same company who decide my PPC advertising rates, and my SEO and PR ranking, see exactly who my customers are. Even though they say they work independently. Yeah?

So naturally when an open source web analytics system came out (piwik) I was very pleased to try it.

Piwik is nowhere near as nice as Google Analytics, still. But all the basics are there. And they like doing AJAX stuff. Which is nice if you like AJAX stuff. So I was happily using it on a few hundred of my sites, till erm. Friday.

Now I don’t totally understand why, or how, because piwik is hosted on your own server. Which SHOULD be great for privacy.

Except when I cam to use my OLD version, it said I couldn’t!

WTF?

I had changed nothing, so how did they know? Why did they care? And what business was it of theirs anyway?

I had deliberately not upgraded because the newer versions needed both PHP5 and some, what one of my hosts referred to, as a VERY FLAKEY PHP module.

Yet now, despite that, and not upgrading, something had auto upgraded, or phoned home, and said, hey you are out of date, we won’t play any more. Like Wordpress does, but without the moaning and asking first.

Great!

But NO warning, no choice, no roll back and now no metrics on several hundred websites.

As you might imagine, I was not terribly amused.

So i have been left with no choice but to make my own multiple site web metrics logging system. And it’s almost complete in phase 1.

It was something I had on the table for much, much, much later on. Because the only real way to get the information you want, is to do it yourself. And that is exactly what I am doing.

BTW Piwik are the same people who do OpenAds, so that will be the next thing I will be binning, before I am forced to. They are also obviously VERY keen to host it for you. And I don’t want to go there, especially given this last FARCE.

The moral, for me at least, is never trust any one with a name that sounds like a toy. And more importantly never “rely” on anything which is free.

Naturally that doesn’t mean you can always rely on what you pay for either (think Virgin) . But at least if you pay, you can expect some kind of STANDARDS and QUALITY OF SERVICE and not to be “cut-off” without at least some notice, or an apology.

I don’t know if I will be “selling” my service or not yet. It needs a bit more time to mature anyway. But I think what I have planned will be very interesting, in terms of the way it presents information. Let’s see what happens when a business man is let loose on coding

Why wouldn’t I make this open source or give it away? For the exact same reason why I was forced to d it…

Everything worth having costs something to use. Whether it is in money, or free advertising, or to borrow your clients, or as a rouse to suck you in and than charge you once you are reliant. And web statistics also require bandwidth and processing power, and they cost something as well.

The trouble with free and open source “good intentions” is it’s great that people “start” something for the right reason. To fight injustice. to enable the less fortunate (i.e. poor or differently enabled), to improve freedom and civil liberties. There are many great reasons.

But the problem is, people are people! They get bored. They grow old. They die. They lose interest. They find NEW more worthy causes. And that all leaves a nasty stain at the bottom of the (once dedicated) user base.

Sure so can “companies” but where there is “cash” there is some enterprising delivery.

And even with free stuff, there is a product life cycle. Competition (even free) comes along, technology changes, peoples desires move goal posts, things shift in life priority.

Without “money” to focus a team, the chances of a great and long future are OMHO less likely.

And even open source and free is starting to realise that. Here are some real quotes I’ve received recently and I am NOT making these up;

• Please subscribe (with money) to support this free service
• Adopt a line of code (for money)
• Donate and get a badge or link from our website
• Please support our fund so we can continue our free work
• Donate and get all these extra add-ons for free
• Pay a monthly subscription to get the code in advance

Well may be it is just me, but that is quite like paying for it, no?

Yes you see, even “volunteers” and charity workers, can have an expectation to earn a living if they spend all their time working for nothing. Erm Furony.com

LOVE makes the world go around. But money pays the rent, the food, the clothes, the education, etc..

Some times the cost of FREE is way TOO much! aka Value vs. Cost.