How are you tracking your bandwidth usage?

[Seth]

I've been trying to find a good tool to track what sort of bandwidth I'm using with each of my shows but it's been difficult. Has anyone found a good way of getting this information?

[lucky_groom]

Use the site logs.

[X Pat Radio]

Click on show stats

[Soccer Shout]

Libsyn, anyone?

[EclecticMix]

Agreed, use Libsyn and don't bother.

Cheers -

george

[itsafrogslife]

Agreed, use Libsyn and don't bother.

Cheers -

george

Couldn't agree more! Why worry about bandwidth when there are so many no-limit podcast hosts out there?

Graham

p.s. thanks for the email with kind comments about my show, George. Very much appreciated :D

[Slone]

As an Ex-Libsyn user I've been really pleased with PodShow stats. Libsyn is not bad though... If you're using your own hosted account, server stats from 'AWStats' provides some good data.

Seems like this was a discussion here at PCA a long time ago? Could not find it though in search, but then I did not really try ha!

[EclecticMix]

Sure thing, Graham.

Slone -

I wrote a couple of programs for Libsyn and Feedburner (with Awareness turned on) people. I've given the links before, but can offer them again if anyone is interested.

Cheers -

george

[WyethDigital]

Sure thing, Graham.

Slone -

I wrote a couple of programs for Libsyn and Feedburner (with Awareness turned on) people. I've given the links before, but can offer them again if anyone is interested.

Cheers -

george
Just a question, though. Why does Awareness have to be turned on? I've heard this sometimes causes problems.

Eric

[EclecticMix]

Eric -

If it isn't turned on then there's no way to use the API to get the stats. if you go to http://OneMinuteHowTo.com/FeedburnerStats.asp then you can see the stats for my show and some popular ones.

I don't believe that Awareness has caused any problems, but the other two options in that section will cause problems with iPodder and Juice users who do not have the most recent version (where the problem was fixed).

Cheers -

george

[WyethDigital]

Eric -

If it isn't turned on then there's no way to use the API to get the stats. if you go to http://OneMinuteHowTo.com/FeedburnerStats.asp then you can see the stats for my show and some popular ones.

I don't believe that Awareness has caused any problems, but the other two options in that section will cause problems with iPodder and Juice users who do not have the most recent version (where the problem was fixed).

Cheers -

george
Thanks for clearing that up, George!

Eric

[mastermaq]

Libsyn, anyone?

How about Podcast Spot (http://www.podcastspot.com)? Not only do we have unlimited bandwidth, but also automatic media conversion, automatic BitTorrent, and much more! And best of all you can try it out for free.

[zircon]

Eric -

If it isn't turned on then there's no way to use the API to get the stats. if you go to http://OneMinuteHowTo.com/FeedburnerStats.asp then you can see the stats for my show and some popular ones.

I don't believe that Awareness has caused any problems, but the other two options in that section will cause problems with iPodder and Juice users who do not have the most recent version (where the problem was fixed).

Cheers -

george

The numbers I'm seeing here for VGDJ (the podcast I cohost) seem to conflict with what the Feedburner link on our site says about our daily readers. Yesterday, our site displayed that we have only about ~700 readers, but according to that link you provided, we had over 900. Which data is accurate?

[EclecticMix]

If you change the smoothing value to 1 you will see the same numbers that Feedburner gives you. It appears that your daily numbers vary greatly, so (IMO) looking at a specific day will not yield you a good idea as to your audience, as I see a wild swing from 1135 downloads on 9/12 to 629 downloads on 10/7. By applying a smoothing value you see the average number of downloads over that number of previous days. Since your numbers do vary so greatly even with a smoothing value of 10, I tried using 100 and it showed a nice smooth curve, peaking a little over 900.

Just remember that the idea is not to necessarily report daily numbers (you can get that fromFeedburner), but to give you a smoothed number that is an average over the entered time period.

Cheers -

george

[zircon]

If you change the smoothing value to 1 you will see the same numbers that Feedburner gives you. It appears that your daily numbers vary greatly, so (IMO) looking at a specific day will not yield you a good idea as to your audience, as I see a wild swing from 1135 downloads on 9/12 to 629 downloads on 10/7. By applying a smoothing value you see the average number of downloads over that number of previous days. Since your numbers do vary so greatly even with a smoothing value of 10, I tried using 100 and it showed a nice smooth curve, peaking a little over 900.

Just remember that the idea is not to necessarily report daily numbers (you can get that fromFeedburner), but to give you a smoothed number that is an average over the entered time period.

Cheers -

george

Thanks for the information. However, I guess to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what these numbers even mean; when you say downloads, are you saying that on, say, 10/7 we received exactly 629 downloads of our show via iTunes? And on 9/12 we received 1135? Or am I off the mark entirely?

I was originally under the impression that "readers" simply referred to the number of people that were actually subscribed to our podcast.

[EclecticMix]

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

Readers and downloads are two completely different thing. If I download three of your shows that counts as three downloads and one reader. You won't get an indication of the latter with Feedburner, which is why I look to Libsyn for that. If you use Libsyn then you can use the program I wrote at http://oneminutehowto.com/LibsynStats.asp to see how many times each item has been downloaded during the timeframe within your downloaded stats.

Cheers -

georeg

[lucky_groom]

Getting an idea of readers can be just as tough though - people don't turn on cookies or clear their cache and every visit shows up as a new visit instead of a return visit.

For that sort of stuff - site hits - I use google analytics. Not perfect, but it lets me know people are checking us out.

[WyethDigital]

The only stat I'm into right now is our bandwidth meter! We're featured prominently on the front page of iTunes and I'm hoping it holds out!

Eric

[zircon]

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

Readers and downloads are two completely different thing. If I download three of your shows that counts as three downloads and one reader. You won't get an indication of the latter with Feedburner, which is why I look to Libsyn for that. If you use Libsyn then you can use the program I wrote at http://oneminutehowto.com/LibsynStats.asp to see how many times each item has been downloaded during the timeframe within your downloaded stats.

Cheers -

georeg

Thanks, but still a little confused. We have something that lists our daily readers on our site, which corresponds with the site you gave using a smoothing value of 1. But in your post, you called those numbers downloads. Then you said that we don't get an indication of readers using feedburner. Can you clarify what number we're seeing when we look at the front page of our own site? Is that actually readers, or is it downloads?

[EclecticMix]

Well, I'm not sure that I ever referred to the numbers as readers, and I'm not sure what software you are using that lists daily readers, but Feedburner returns the number of items downloaded.

Cheers -

george

[zircon]

We simply use a small bit of code Feedburner provides that displays a counter on our home page. It shows the number as "readers" but apparently that is erroneous and those are actually the day's downloads. Got it!