Over 9,000 visits in the past month with 40% new visits. 40% of that traffic is driven by google, close to 30% is direct traffic (which I believe includes Twitter) while cocos2d-iphone.org sends less than 10% of the total traffic. My own and recently neglected blog (last post May 23rd) gaminghorror.net still sending about 5%.
I am having a hard time making anything out of it actually, I have been running only one other notable website before and the focus and traffic stats were wildly different. If anyone would like to share and compare numbers I’d be happy to do so. Especially I’m interested if the ratio google vs direct traffic vs cocos2d-iphone.org is comparable to your numbers, or possibly totally different. I also don’t know what numbers can be considered good, ok or bad numbers, especially in context of cocos2d related websites.
The short little peak on July 10th was when I sent out the Newsletter announcing the closed sales period of the Starterkit, the plateau on July 19th was coming from the public announcement of the Starterkit. It’s notable that both resulted in the same number of visits but the Newsletter spike was very short-lived since most people are reading their emails within 24 hours. A funny self-made statistic: I’m able to convert approximately 0,0034% of website visitors to Starterkit customers. How is that for a conversion rate?
I did notice two things, which both surprised myself. One is how cocos2d-iphone.org accounts for less than 10% of the total traffic. The only time I saw a real spike in traffic from cocos2d-iphone.org was with the blog post announcing the Learn cocos2d website. That’s when the website was all fresh and new, and everyone went there at once to check it out. Interestingly, that wasn’t a spike followed by a severe drop-off by several hundred %, instead it created just over twice as many visits as the website gets on average anyway. The other thing I’m stunned to see is how the total number of visits curve over the whole time is astoundingly flat, especially for a website which is less than 3 months old:
Double-Rainbow all the way! But what does it mean?
I have no idea, mostly because I have nothing to compare it to. Maybe you have some thoughts or website statistics you’d like to share?
Here are the full learn-cocos2d Google Analytics results from the last 30 days as PDF:
Analytics_www.learn-cocos2d.com_20100625-20100725_(DashboardReport)
I hope you’ll find that interesting. I know, it’s data alright … boooooring. 😀
I just published an update to the Marketing FAQ beginning with the lesson Your Privacy isn’t.
Those are mostly thoughts i had while i was cleaning out my Twitter list (who i am following) to make room for all the much more interesting people who are now following me because of this new cocos2d website. The Twitter celebrities had to go to make room for you! 
It never actually crossed my mind that the Marketing FAQ would be so popular. For me it was a last minute addition to the cocos2d FAQs from a spontaneous thought. I’ll make sure to update Marketing and PR more frequently. I certainly learned a lot about it while i was busy with my colleagues getting an iPhone game company startup funded for the better part of 2009.
Steffen in bullet points:
- is: a professional game developer since 1999
- wrote: Learn Cocos2D Game Development
- writes: bi-weekly, extensive iDevBlogADay articles
- blogs: about Cocos2D and related matters
- hosts: Cocos2D Central Community
- sells: Line-Drawing Starterkit for Cocos2D and more
- created: Kobold2D, an improved Cocos2D
- is not: an affiliate / representative of Cocos2D
The long story, shortened a bit …
At the beginning, I was merely a Cocos2D developer just starting out with this fine game engine. I started working with Cocos2D in May 2009. Despite many years of game development experience, I struggled many times over - there was so much to learn and specifically for Cocos2D there wasn’t much documentation to go on.
Learn & Master Cocos2D Blog
A year later, I was well aware that besides growing in popularity, the basic issues of getting started with Cocos2D essentially stayed the same. Consequently, beginner’s tutorials got rampant visits from aspiring Cocos2D game developers. So I decided to start this Learn & Master Cocos2D website and blog to help you get started and answer pressing questions while trying to earn a living selling source code products like the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit.
Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development Book
Within hours of going live with this website in early May 2010, I was contacted by Jack Nutting, author of Learn Cocoa on the Mac. He got me in contact with Apress and a short but intense proposal period for a Cocos2D book followed. Then I blogged about the book’s progress every week. What followed were five months of writing and learning more about Cocos2D and writing books than I ever imagined. The book was finally completed and released in December 2010: Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development: The Leading Framework for Building 2D Graphical and Interactive Applications.
Cocos2D Central
During the time I wrote the book, this website had to take a backseat, so I did not grow the tutorials and other content as I had initially planned. With the book finished, I knew I was going to do lots of Q&A and it should be done publicly, so that everyone can benefit from it. The result is the Cocos2D Central forum and community website.
Kobold2D: Cocos2D on Steroids
Another result from my extensive work with Cocos2D is Kobold2D. It is designed to make Cocos2D developers more productive and making it easier to get started. I use it for all of my own work.
Kobold2D originated from the idea to build a consistent framework for all of my Cocos2D projects, instead of inadvertently dispersing the reusable code over multiple projects. If you’re serious with Cocos2D development or just getting started you should really check out Kobold2D.
My Leitmotif
I have always been a nutcracker and firefighter in my previous game industry jobs. I have always been sitting between chairs, as I did not fit a proper, established job description. I’m a jack of many trades, master of some. I program, I design, I write, I market, I sell, I help, I teach, I moderate, I network and I do what I think needs to be done. But most of all, I’ve always been helping other developers - that was always present in every job I did, and when I worked with the right people, those were the best times I ever had. Give me a problem and (most of the time) I’ll want to solve it. I’m happy when I can help others grow and excel. That’s my leitmotif, that’s what I’m doing now for Cocos2D developers.
