So… I have to admit that I really don’t know much about BitTorrent. I do know however that torrent users are not being kind to me. Several people have told me and my co-author that they were able to get our book, Web Analytics for Dummies, for free through torrent downloads.
This sucks. I’m all for freedom of information, but we spent a lot of time on that book. We both sacrificed weekends, turned down paying gigs, and generally worked really hard to get that book written. When someone downloads the book for free instead of paying for it, it means our efforts went unappreciated. If this happens on a small scale, I suppose it wouldn’t be a huge deal, but as of this writing, to my dismay, links to torrent downloads make up four of the top five results for the google search “Web Analytics for Dummies”.
It’s obviously hurting our sales at this point, and quite frankly, I’m not sure what we can do. If you have any ideas, please let us know in the comments.
For those of you who are interested in the book, please order the book legally.
I was talking with Reese Spykerman, a web designer who specializes in blogs, about blog analytics. Reese agreed with me that web analytics can be a powerful asset for a blogger, particularly if the blog serves as a business or self-promotional vehicle. Analytics tools can help measure traffic, the popularity of a particular article and hits from search engines for particular keywords.
“The combination of this data can empower a blogger to write more carefully targeted articles (in response to the popularity of a particular previous article, or in response to keyword searches), which can build a bigger and more loyal blog audience over time,” Reese says.
There’s plenty of tools, both free and commercial, from Google Analytics to Mint to HitTail. What’s your favorite and why?
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