Smart Bitches Business Update: September 2016

The LadiesWelcome to the Smart Bitches Business Update, our monthly feature wherein I talk about the site, the community within it, and what’s going on in the business side of things.

This is the time of year I finalize the advertising packages here at the site, since I know many folks in publishing are looking ahead to plans for 2017. Over the past month I’ve been looking at statistics and projections, and examining how the way readers use the site has changed over the past year, and over the past 11+ years.

As I mentioned last month, since the last redesign of the Hot Pink Palace, the site has had a responsive design – which means it resizes and adjusts based on the size of the browser you’re using. If you’re on a desktop, you can see it for yourself. Grab the lower right corner of your browser window and shrink it to a column.

Here’s a :49 video demonstration.

Eleven years ago, we had one design. If you remember it, it was screaming hot pink because, well, it’s the Hot Pink Palace of Bitchery, and also came in one size. Responsiveness is important now because of how many variables there are in how people view a website, and how fast the technology we use to view the web evolves.

For example, in August 2016, our platform stats were:

Desktop: 44.79%
Mobile: 36.95%
Tablet: 18.26%

So more than half of y’all were on a tablet or a phone last month. Hi, folks! Don’t walk into anything! Be careful!

That’s a shift from a year ago, August 2015:

Desktop: 51%
Mobile: 30.61%
Tablet: 18.39%

In August 2014:

Desktop: 56.22%
Mobile: 24.29%
Tablet: 19.50%

How about five years ago, August 2011?

Desktop: 90.45%
Mobile: 9.55%

Tablet measurements weren’t taken back in the olden days, I guess. I could nerd out for HOURS looking at differences in device categories, but I’ll stop here.

Looking at the changes in how everyone reads the site means I have a lot to think about, business-wise, such as placement and prices of desktop ad spaces vs. mobile ad spaces, and where and when interaction and clicking happens*. Right now, my plan for 2017 is to bundle the desktop and mobile ads into packages and drop the prices for both so that advertisement purchases include all possible platforms, and maximize exposure for advertiser budgets.

(If you’d like to join the Smart Bitch Insider newsletter for advertisers, you can do so right here. I’ll email you when the 2017 packages are ready, and share all the details.)



*Speaking of clicking! Thank you to everyone who talked about whitelisting the site in ad-blocking software in the comments last month. That was supremely cool of you, and I really appreciate that!

And now, the fun part! Top ten countries for last month? Sure! I’m going to make like Wheel of Fortune’s final puzzle and move past the R,S,T,L,N, and E countries – US, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and India – and share the ten most frequent visiting countries after those five:

  • Germany
  • Philippines
  • New Zealand
  • Sweden
  • Finland
  • Netherlands
  • Ireland
  • France
  • Singapore
  • Indonesia

Hey folks! Welcome! We also had new visitors from American Samoa, Andorra, and – this is interesting – the Åland Islands, which is an autonomous region of Finland where everybody speaks Swedish (according to Scandinavia and the World, which is among my most favorite web comics). The country that spent the most time on average (over 10 minutes!) on SBTB in the past month? Somalia, at over 16 minutes. Is ka warran!

I’ll be back next month with another Business Update. If you’ve got questions or are curious about the site, how it runs, or anything, really, please feel free to email me! Like I said last month, I can nerd-max for hours, and I don’t want to bore anyone. So if there’s something you’re really interested in, please let me know.

And most of all, as always, thank you for being here. Your being here is the best and most important support you can give a site like this one. Thank you.

 

Comments are Closed

  1. Olynne says:

    I love SatW! That was a large part of my introduction to Scandinavia before I moved to Sweden (the other biggest parts were my fantastic Swedish friend who taught me Swedish; the Mastering Swedish radio series; and Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time).

    In more relevant news, thank you for starting this series! It’s really interesting to get to see the business side of things as well.

  2. DL White says:

    I loved the video, I just watched it twice for no reason at all. Also I love your greeting on your desktop!

  3. Ren says:

    umm…hello from Indonesia here :D. I always read SBTB for the sale, but articles here also very interesting to read 🙂

  4. SB Sarah says:

    Thank you very much for the feedback!

    @Olynne: I had no idea about Ordinary Swedish Meal Time. There goes many hours of productivity for me, huh? Thank you!

    @DL White: Thank you! I’m so happy you liked my silly video. As for the desktop, that’s Momentum Dash- https://momentumdash.com/. It’s an extension for Chrome that turns a “new tab” into a beautiful image plus greeting, weather, and to-do list. I don’t use the To-do function, but I love having it installed on my browser.

    @Ren: Hi to you in Indonesia!! I’m so glad you’re here!

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