A $130-a-Year Website Reached 56,000 Users Without Ads
Drake Weinert, NaturalFarmingHawaii.net (site operator), Hawaiʻi; trained in computer science · United States (Hawaiʻi)
Drake Weinert reported eight years of running NaturalFarmingHawaii.net, a one-person WordPress blog that cost about $130 a year and was never advertised. Google Analytics showed 56,456 users, 95,858 sessions and 237,176 page views since 2010, with most visitors arriving through web search and very few from social media. The odorless pig page, Cho's learning materials and how-to-apply guides drew the most views.
What they found
Main claim: one person with a cheap blog and no advertising can carry natural farming knowledge to tens of thousands of people in many countries.
NaturalFarmingHawaii.net, a WordPress site started in 2008, run by one person for about $130 a year, with Google Analytics since 2010. All-time figures (2010 to about September 2016) and a separate 'past 30 days' window (about September 2016) from Google Analytics screenshots. No measure of whether visitors went on to farm with the methods.
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56,456 users since 2010
Total Visitors slide: 56,456 users, 95,858 sessions. The speaker said 'nearly 60,000 people'. Google Analytics 'users' are distinct browsers or devices, not verified people.
▶ 3:11 Said and shown on the slides
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237,176 page views, 2.47 pages per visit
Spoken as 'almost 250,000 page views'. Slide: 237,176 page views, 2.47 pages per session.
▶ 3:26 Said and shown on the slides
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Average visit 3 min 25 s; 41% repeat visits
Slide: average session duration 00:03:25, 58.90% new sessions (so about 41% from returning visitors), bounce rate 62.27%.
▶ 3:48 Said and shown on the slides
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About $130 a year, one person, no advertising
History slide: WordPress platform, started in 2008, $130 per year to keep online, operated by one person.
▶ 1:40 Said and shown on the slides
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Search brought most visitors; social media about 5%
Visitor Acquisition slide, recent month (September dates on the chart): organic search about 1,723 of roughly 2,900 sessions (about 59%), then direct, referral, and social about 157. The direct and referral counts are too blurry to read with confidence.
▶ 2:18 Said and shown on the slides
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Past 30 days: USA 1,449, Philippines 223, Russia 190, India 146
Geographic Interest slide, sessions in the past 30 days: USA 1,449; Philippines 223; Russia 190; India 146; Malaysia 79; Indonesia 75; Uganda 69. The table behind it also lists Australia, United Kingdom and Kenya.
▶ 4:37 Said and shown on the slides
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The Russian visits look like automated traffic
On the slide's table the Russia row reads about 1.01 pages per session and an average visit of about 4 seconds, a pattern typical of bots or referral spam. The speaker presented them as new Russian readers.
▶ 4:47 From the slides
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Odorless pig page was the most viewed content page, about 6% of page views
Most Viewed Content table: home page about 53,880 (22.72%), then /learn-natural-farming/odorless-pig-technology/ about 13,878 (about 5.85%), CGNF materials about 9,388, application guide about 8,804, Master Cho tag about 8,244. The speaker said 'about half the traffic' wants the odorless pigs; the table does not show that.
▶ 5:26 Said and shown on the slides
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Egg yolk oil out-drew the IMO recipe
Speaker's ranked list: 1 odorless pig technology, 2 CGNF learning materials, 3 how to apply solutions, 4 topics on Master Cho, 5 egg yolk oil recipe, 6 fermented plant juice recipe, 7 indigenous microorganism recipe. He had expected IMO to be the most popular recipe.
▶ 6:26 Said and shown on the slides
- Reach, not results: page counts say nothing about whether readers made or used the solutions.
- Google Analytics 'users' count browsers and devices, not people; 'nearly 60,000 people' overstates the certainty.
- Two different time windows: all-time totals, but countries and channels only for the last 30 days.
- The all-time sessions chart appears to have a gap of several months around 2014–2015, so the totals may undercount.
- The table figures were read from a phone video of the projector; small numbers are partly blurry (marked 'about').
- The speaker runs the site and also owns this archive.
- A cheap, plain site with recipe and how-to pages can be found worldwide through search alone.
- Readers came looking for practical topics: pigs without smell, Cho's materials, how to apply the solutions, and recipes.
- For this site, search and word of mouth brought far more visitors than social media did.
Next to Master Cho's teaching
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Agrees
Odorless pigs, 'thanks to Master Cho' Cho's book describes the natural farming pig house: no wastewater, manure left on a fermented floor, and no odor, flies or medicine.
Cho, Janong Natural Farming (2010 draft), p. 75
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Goes further
Egg yolk oil as a 'miracle cure' Cho told him about Cho teaches egg yolk oil but says plainly it is an old Asian folk remedy, 'not something created in Natural Farming'; he advises starting with small amounts.
Cho - DVD rips/NAT_FARM_13 @ 1:04:31 (translated)
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Agrees
Food (FPJ) as a health drink for people Cho writes that natural farmers drink FPJ and that it is good for human health.
Cho, Janong Natural Farming (2003), p. 117
“Even though we think social media connects us so much, word of mouth in this case is more powerful.”
▶ 2:56
“How do you keep pigs without smell? That's a revolutionary technology thanks to Master Cho.”
▶ 5:35
“This website is able to reach thousands of people 24 hours a day.”
▶ 3:19
In this talk
Transcript
Transcribed and checked by hand against the recording. Click any time to play from there.
0:00 Aloha. My name is Eric Drake Weinert Jr. I'm named after my father. So today the presentation that I thought would be most relevant for our international audience is the work that I've been doing as a person who is trained in computer science. In computer science I learned about artificial intelligence and I realized that our most advanced algorithms are actually based all on nature so when I found Master Cho and his teachings I then got my PhD in computer science by returning to the soil. So I have been running a website, NaturalFarmingHawaii.net,
0:54 for the past eight years and today I want to talk a little bit about it. Here's a quick summary of what I'll go over. So what I've been running is basically a WordPress platform. It's a very simple blog platform to push content out to the world. I've been keeping analytics with it with Google Analytics, which has enabled me to get broad insight to the interests of natural farming and who and what is looking at it.
1:39 It cost me about $130 a year to run this website and as one person I'm able to keep it and get all this information out. I think it's interesting that there has been no advertisement for this website. The way people find this is by searching online. They may hear a keyword, natural farming, and they go to the internet and they type that in. And as you can see here, the majority of the viewers are just finding it by organic search.
2:27 no paid results, no anything like that. The next result is direct access. So maybe someone hears NaturalFarmingHawaii.net, types that in, and arrives at our website. The next is referral. And this is maybe when someone links it on the internet from a different website where they link it. And what's most surprising to me is that social media is this small sliver down here. So even though we think social media connects us so much, word of mouth in this case is more powerful. Since 2010 we've had nearly 60,000 people visit this website so if I think of how many people I can
3:19 tell personally about this this website is able to reach thousands of people 24 hours a day. We've had over 200 almost 250,000 page views so of those visitors visiting the website many people are looking at multiple pages so they're interested and they're exploring deeper into what's offered there. The average time on the site is about 3 minutes and 25 seconds which is pretty good that's including all visits some people just click go away but people are reading this information you know they're accessing and people are also coming
4:05 back multiple times to visit this website so they learn and they come back this is a very useful tool the other interesting thing is that we are reaching a global impact with this website because I'm in Hawaii and right now that's considered part of the United States obviously United States and the whole website is in English obviously the United States has the majority here but we are reaching the Philippines where natural farming is hugely taking off. Russia, which is new. I haven't had as many Russian visitors. This is in the last
4:52 30 days, people from Russia coming to find this information. India are looking. Malaysia, Indonesia, and Uganda. So people in all nations, developing nations, are able to get this information immediately through the internet. When people come to the website, what are they looking at? What are they interested in? And by far the most interesting topic is the odorless pigs. About half the traffic through the site wants to find out about our odorless pigs. How do you keep pigs without smell? That's a
5:40 revolutionary technology thanks to Master Cho. They're next interested in Master Cho's learning materials that I provide for the world through this website so that we can all get access. Then they're interested in once you've learned how to make the recipes how do we apply them how do we use them on a field Then, Master Cho is pretty legendary. People are specifically anything I tag with Master Cho, that's what they're clicking. They want to know about this man and his teachings and what he's brought for us.
6:26 And surprisingly to me, the most popular recipe, I would think, would be IMO. It's actually egg yolk oil. This is a miracle cure that Master Cho told me the story of and it's a beautiful story of how he got this recipe and here to share it with the world. Next is one of my favorite things, it's the fermented plant juice, which I find not only for the plant health but human health. And I've been spreading that as a health drink for people to drink. And finally the seventh most popular topic on the website is the IMO itself, which is
7:12 the heart and soul of natural farming. So with that, I would like to kind of conclude. I would like to thank God for bringing us here, for giving me the wisdom, for continually humbling me that I may be of service. I want to invite you to connect with us through our Facebook group that we have. It's Korean Natural Farming. It was started by an intern that I had at my farm. I just made a really nice URL, easy to find. I would also invite you to check us out on YouTube. Myself and Chris have
8:05 been putting out these videos, and while that platform is free, we should really all take advantage of it. Many people here... It's funny, I travel to Korea and people know me from YouTube. And this, all of this right now, I'm filming this. I'm going to put this on YouTube. I think the more we connect, the more we put this out to the world, the faster our message can spread. And I'd like to invite you also if you have direct questions to email me. If there's any way, shape, or form I can help you with the technological aspects or computer networking. That's my
8:53 passion. I love doing that. I love the soil and I love God. So may the beneficial microbes be with you.