The Importance of Stories and Statistics
By David Lowrence
February 2 2009
Every once in a while, Phil posts a thread showing our standing in the SportNetwork rugby union sector. I thought it might be helpful to show why this is important, and why we like to have as many stories at any time as possible. Advertisements on a site such as this are important - perhaps this short piece will explain why!
Firstly a word about SportNetwork. The company is owned by Durham Associates; a Web Marketing company based near err.. Durham. Some years ago, tw
o of their employees set up SN as a message board and news site for their local football club. When COYSDC (at the time run by Chris and Rich), together with other Rugby sites was unceremoniously presented with a dilemma by the previous host, SportNetwork took on the Rugby sites and everything was transferred. SportNetwork has grown markedly since those days, and a glance at their portal (here) gives some idea of the breadth of their offering, and the RugbyNetwork page gives a very good summary of their Rugby community activities and stories..
SportNetwork is primarily a news site, and as publishers, we are expected to fill our quota of stories, as well as keeping up the hugely popular message boards. One of the reasons for this is that advertisers (and we can't exist without them!) get better value from hits from stories (more click-throughs) as opposed to chat threads. For this reason, if no stories are posted for 14 days, the site is suspended. This has happened to a number of our fellow Rugby sites, but not so far, to us. During the season, and given the hard work of our regular contributors, this is achievable, but your editors do get paranoid in the off-season!
Our Front Page is also important for adverts (or "creatives", as newspeak would have call them!) and although many of you will have a link direct into the message board, it is worth a look, as this area contains many links, and will shortly have details of our next match.
Last year, SportNetwork introduced a scheme whereby publishers such as COYSDC Ltd. Would earn money from "hits" at two rates; one on the message board, and a higher rate for hits on stories. As one of the better-supported sites, Saints & Sinners was one of the 
higher earners on this scheme. Not enough to replace the Jetsco Yacht though, and next month the board will be meeting to decide on charitable disbursements from these earnings, together with those from our own Google, Amazon and Rugby Manager ads.
The SportNetwork scheme did not have the desired effect, so it has been changed so that we now get payment or stories only. To put that into perspective, in January we earned £17.52 from these hits, and have earned £61.11 since October. When you look at the story graph below, you will be able to see just how well supported we are!
That explains why we badger people for match reviews and stories, and why regular features are so important.
So how did we do in January? I have taken the stats that SportNetwork publish daily, and compared us against other sites. January was our second best month ever for total hits, just behind Bath's ERE site. We achieved over 1 million hits, which we have done before, but we are normally top! Bath's lift above us was caused by the Matt Stevens story, which generated a huge number of message-board hits. When you look at the story hits, it tells a very different story!
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Looks good though Dave.
Not one MoTM in the top ten
“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
Benjamin Franklin
Tetleys Block F E143
I think we should be told.
"Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it."
-- Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161-180 A.D.
