Before I go on…this is not a tech blog, so I’ll keep this…uhh…tech-lite. Recently Elite Cadre has moved back to Amazon for its download provision, which is neat, but also means that due to Amazon’s insanity we no longer get proper download stats (But does mean I don’t have to have a hissy fit at itunes every month when I upload the podcast).
So, I looked for a solution because frankly I need my ego inflating, and we need to keep in mind things like where out listener base is from. Well, the podcast is free, so our budget is pretty much £0. Sad, but true. We do pay a minimal amount for hosting but that’s out of my pocket. So, cue S3 Stat. Now, most people ask for money for their service, but S3 Stat have a plan for deadbeats like us. They ask that we blog about their service S3 Stat and how good it is (it genuinely is good, by the way, even I can use it, and frankly that’s an advance on most web-based things), and then we might get to keep using it for free. If we didn’t blog about it, well, that’s $10 a month…while it would be nice if we had the $10 I’ve already told you our budget.
So yes, we aren’t doing a Patreon, we’re not sponsored, we don’t advertise to you (except this), we don’t even look at your cookies on the site to sell that data to advertisers, and this will probably just be a one-time thing so we can tailor any content to the listening audience.
Anyway, that’s it. If you do use Amazon’s S3 hosting, and you want a way to track the awful awful job of logging that it does then S3 stat might be for you. With S3 Stat we can look at how many downloads are occurring, how much data’s being transferred, where in the world it’s coming from, we can look at trends over time, a whole boatload of statistics that frankly nerds like myself like having access to. It’s simple, easy to read, and certainly gives us what we need to know about the show as a whole. If you want to take a look, or are just mildly interested then go to S3 Stat to find out more.