Here are this month's website results:

Contrary to what we believed and said at the end of last month, traffic increased significantly this month. Traffic was up an additional 26% this month to around 170,000 unique daily visitors and 351,000 total visitors (up from 271,000 visitors in May).

Around 60% of the users who came to WinCustomize came from bookmarks or typed it in. Leaving 40% of the users to come from other websites.

To stress again, referrals are the lifeblood of a website. Without referrals, no site can grow.

Here’s where our visitors came from who were referred:

Stardock: 63% (down from 68% in May)
Deskmod: 11%
DeviantArt: 2.8%
LotsOfSkins: 2%
LS2K: 0.2%
LightStream: 0.2%
ShellFront: 0.2%

Sometime in early June, the traffic of the site increased to the point where our existing bandwidth could no longer handle it. This site has a monthly grant from Stardock the is fixed. That grant pays for considerable levels of bandwidth but is not enough to cover the increased bandwidth. WinCustomize has purchased bandwidth that effectively triples the amount of bandwidth dedicated to the site.

The solution chosen is to begin selling WinCustomize CDs now, T-shirts soon, mugs and hats a bit later and other things later on. Through the sales of these things we can continue to pay for the increased bandwidth we’re currently enjoying. To pay for the new bandwidth, we need to sell 250 units per month.

The CD will likely only meet 20% of that goal each month. We hope to have T-shirts and mugs available in July. And eventually some other things by Fall.