"Our mission from the very beginning was simple: evangelize peering."
To this end, we have been undeniably successful. When you consider that Internet Peering is a niche interest, it is pretty impressive that since February we have attracted over 14,000 unique visitors in November alone (using 1&1 definition of uniques here). We can't wait to see what the full month of December brings!
Our strategy is to
To create the number one Internet Peering site we created an authoritative repository for the community Internet Peering research white papers. We then started migrating them to the web and found that they needed to be updated and assimilated into a cohesive form to be best presented on the web. Feedback from the community suggested that we had outgrown iWeb as a web development tool and started migrating to Dreamweaver and a broad suite of Adobe tools. The learning curve and migration is in progress.
So how do we know when we are the number one Internet Peering site in the world? Page views is one metric, and we served up over 30,000 page views in November -- again, quite impressive for such a narrow niche topic. We attribute much of this to the highly successful (and occasionally controversial) ask.DrPeering.net columns.
To educate and evangelize peering we have evolved the Ask.DrPeering.net column to answer a reader question using links to resources on the web and specifically resources on the DrPeering web site. We have amplified the viral effect of the Ask.DrPeering blog by syndicating the Ask.DrPeering.net peering advice columns to the DECIX newsletter and recently to the InterStream blog. This has become by far the most popular part of the DrPeering web site
We have leveraged support from the community for DrPeering by accepting sponsored speaking engagements and speaking at Universities on various Internet Peering topics.
We have rewritten the authoritative Internet Peering research white papers as derivative web pages, freely available to the community
We experimented with Google ads, but some in the community felt that review of articles had an anterior motive; the benefit to the authors of click revenue. We have not ruled out ads to help cover the costs of operating the site, but removed the ads to increase the community feedback. When solicited, or enraged, this community is not shy about providing feedback.
Here we will apply the learning with Adobe software to make sure that web pages and animations and movies make it into presentation media available on the web and for consulting engagements for anyone who wishes to use them. We are getting some real traffic volume to the site so we need to leverage the powerful tools now into a higher conversion rate.
One area where we need to improve is keeping people on the web site. We see in the stats below that users are on average only viewing a couple pages. Towards the goal of being the number on eInternet Peering site in the world, we need to increase the number of page views per visit.
To do this we will migrate to DreamWeaver and employ various Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies to increase the number of external links to DrPeering.net. Today, Google represents 20% of the referral links to the site. With simple and well known techniques such as using header tags with exact text matches to well known search terms, we expect to increase the number of referrals by at least 20%.
Once the SEO enhanced content is up and operating, and we start converting the graphics to enhanced animations and movies, we will start working the business angle.
Finally, we also want to ensure maximum cross linking within the web site itself. Peering sub topics should be linked on the side of the page, and wherever appropriate, text in AskDrPeering should have 3-5 links to relevant authoritative content.
On the Internet, content is driven by partnerships, beyond simple advertising. For example, the number of questions coming in to AskDrPeering, and the number of consulting inquiries is increasing. We will pursue consulting opportunities ourselves where reasonable, but seek out revenue share consulting company partners where possible. This will allow us to scale revenue more efficiently and will likely be more profitable than straight display advertising. Another example is our partner in DECIX - Frank Orlowski and crew have been supportive of this initiative from the outset, and we will continue to support their mission as they allow us to assist their users at conferences around the globe. This win-win extends to an entire ecosystem of interdependent operators in the industry.
DrPeering will work with various content portals to cross promote, seek speaking slots, identify metrics to monitor such as transit and peering port prices, and add adjacent topics aligned with Internet Peering such as the peer-to-peer, evolution of peering, and the emergence of the Video Internet
Dr Peering
DrPeering@DrPeering.net
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The 2014 Internet Peering Playbook is now available on the iPad at the Apple Store and for the Amazon Kindle. The Kindle, ePub and PDF form are also perpetually updated on the DrPeering DropBox share.
