May 7th, 2004.
The software is released and listed with www.filehungry.com

June 8th, 2004. - Some shareware listing sites suck.
During the first month I attempted to list the software with different listing services while waiting on www.tucows.com to review and refuse my submission because of the wrong file format (What can I say - tucows.com - sucks). Meanwhile, the software was confirmed to be listed with www.topdownloads.net and www.rocketdownload.com.

I also started collecting adviews and download statistics. With debugging resulting in most usage of the software (it was me who’ve seen most ads) 5215 ads were displayed and resulted in 4067 exposures of my ad which yielded 3 click thrus and to my best knowledge no download. At the same time, about 40 people downloaded the software thru shareware listing services.

July 6th, 2004. - Do Banner Exchanges work?
The concept of self-advertizing software is somewhat questionable. Left to its own devices the software displayed 1538 ads that resulted in 839 exposures (almost 2:1 - very bad) of my ad and just 1 click-thru in a month. Those numbers represent what roughly 40 visitors/users could do to promote using "banner exchange" - absolutely nothing. At the same time, about 40 people downloaded the software thru shareware listing services.

August 5th, 2004. - Banner Exchanges do not work
Another month confirmed??? that the concept of self-advertizing software is somewhat questionable. With a lot of "debug adviews" 5168 other people ads have been shown resulting in 5114 exposures thanks to 2000 signup ads from www.bannerswarm.com. This yeilded 12 click-thrus to www.topdownloads.net but didn't skew download stats giving the same 26 downloads as in the previous month. Yet www.topdownloads.net came out as the leader out of other shareware listing services giving almost half of all downloads.

Sept 5th, 2004. - The surge.
From the begining www.topdownloads.net generating most of the downloads, but in August something happened and downloads from there surged almost 10 times more then doubling total number of downloads (users).

In August the system was once again left to its own devices displaying 2330 ads that resulted in 1575 exposures (about 3:2 - better then 2:1 before) of my ad and the same 1 click-thru in a month. Those numbers represent what roughly 200 visitors/users could do to promote using "banner exchange" - absolutely nothing. However, those numbers put a yardstic of about 10 ad-views a month per user or about 100 ads per day total that somehow need to be converted to dollars.

Sept 14th, 2004.
With close to 400 total downloads I made the software count number of translation (uses) at bcentral and added a new advertisement panel displaying amazon.com ads to test how many would click the ad to buy a relevant book. This would ultimately test "pay per click" concept even when the advertisement is relevant. If nobody would click thru to amazon.com to buy a book on language or translation, then nobody would click thru period. And thus no matter if they pay a $1 per click it still at the end would result in $0. On the other hand, amazon.com pays 5+% in commisions and with an average book price at $20 it would make $1+. So for the purpose of translation software using untargeted "pay per click" advertizers doesn't give any edge whatsoever.

Oct 4th, 2004. - Get more users to increase 12 translation a day.
In 20 days since Sept 14th the software did 245 translations or 12 translation a day on average - another yardstick in a quest to convert ad-views to dollars. Going forward logbook is split into following areas we are trying to test while making free internet software pay for itself

• Banner Exchanges
  September adviews numbers are skewed by debugging. Yet they show the change in ads distribution with LinkExchange is generating no click-thrus and thus being used as a counter, and just 3 networks left to do ad-rotation. Apart from www.bannerswarm.com the quality of other 2 networks (France and UK) is very questionable. Thus overall, if Banner Exchanges would have worked it would be the time to get new networks, but since the whole concept seems to be useless anyway - I doubt I would waste more time on it.
• "Pay per click"
  In 20 days since Sept 14th for every translation one amazon.com ad was displayed for a total of 245 ads that resulted in no click-thru. It would take couple more months to get to 1000 views and 1 click, untill then keep it rolling.
• Paying advertisers
  Paying advertisers are all pop-up advertisers paying for unique visitors. I could fit "slide-in" advertiser, but with only about 5 unique visitors a day and $1.25 per 1000 unique users it is not yet worth the annoyance (would take a year of annoyance to make couple dollars). So for now keep on testing "pay per click" untill the first click to amazon.com.
• Growing user base or making users use the software
  3 high quality shareware listing sites give on average 90 new downloads a month. I listed the software with 15+ "junk" sites for which download statistics is not available to see how it would increase 12 translation a day current number of uses.

Nov 2nd, 2004. - Banner Exchanges do not work - confirmed.
Another month confirmed that banner exchanges do not work. October gave maximum number of ad-display(13815), clicks (21) on my banners, yet the number of downloads from www.topdownloads.net (to where ad links to) was bellow average. This however was expected and in October I verified two things:

1. How mass-submission to third rated ("junk") download sites would bump software usage? Listing with 15+ download sites improved usage by about 50% which was especially noticable at the end of the month with average number of translation per day as measured by LinkExchange comming close to 40 a day v.s. 12 average for September.
2. "Pay per click". Since "pay per click" advertisers pay for actuall clicks on their ads I was testing how many ad displays it would take to make users click on RELATED amazon.com ad. My estimates was over 1,000. And indeed it was on about 1,000 display I've got 2 people clicking on amazon.com ad, however not buying anything. Thus, the next test would be to see how many ad-displays it would take to make users buy something.

Quarterly ad-views stat May - Jul 2004 Aug - Oct 2004 Nov - Jan 2005 To date Exp Me/Them Clicks Exp Me/Them Clicks Exp Me/Them Clicks Exp Me/Them Clicks LinkExchange 4,111/2,063 0 (0%) 2,779/1,390 0 (0%) 2,101/1,085 0 (0%) 8,991/4,538 0 (0%) asiabanner.com 1,828/1,218 4 (0.33%) 2,049/1,366 4 (0.30%) 7,429/4,952* 41 (0.83%) 11,306/7,536 49 (0.65%) www.zencudobusiness.co.uk 793/797 4 (0.50%) 5,775/5,643 4 (0.07%) 8,910/8,850 23 (0.26%) 15,478/15,290 31 (0.20%) pub.doyoono.com 2,149/2,149 2 (0.09%) 7,514/7,514 23 (0.31%) 9,389/9,389 4 (0.04%) 19,052/19,052 29 (0.15%) www.bannerswarm.com 3/2202 5 (0.23%) 6,804/4,075 10 (0.25%) 11,454/8,097 10 (0.12%) 18,261/14,374 25 (0.17%) Other 3,421/1,449 1 (0.07%) 308/3 3,729/1,452 1 (0.07%) Total 12,305/9,878 16 (0.16%) 25,229/19,992 41 (0.21%) 39,283/32,373 78 (0.24%) 76,817/62,243 135 (0.22%)

Ad-views stat May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 Aug 2004 Sept 2004 Oct 2004 To date Exp Me/Them Clicks Exp Me/Them Clicks Exp Me/Them Clicks Exp Me/Them Clicks Exp Me/Them Clicks Exp Me/Them Clicks Exp Me/Them Clicks LinkExchange 2099/1062 0 (0%) 749/362 0 (0%) 1263/639 0 (0%) 1268/880 0 (0%) 649/76 0 (0%) 862/434 0 (0%) 6890/3453 0 (0%) asiabanner.com 481/315 1 (0.32%) 180/125 1 (0.80%) 1176/778 2 (0.26%) 258/172 1 (0.58%) 1791/1194 3 (0.25%) 0/0 0 (0.00%) 3877/2584 8 (0.31%) www.exchangead.com 533/573 1 (0.17%) 318/87 0 (0.00%) 1751/134 0 (0.00%) 296/3 0 (0.00%) 12/0 0 (0%) 2910/797 1 (0.13%) www.zencudobusiness.co.uk 138/153 0 (0%) 38/26 0 (0%) 618/617 4 (0.65%) 157/188 0 (0.00%) 2209/2173 0 (0.00%) 3409/3282 4 (0.12%) 6568/6440 8 (0.12%) pub.doyoono.com 1964/1964 1 (0.05%) 185/185 0 (0.00%) 241/241 1 (0.41%) 304/304 0 (0.00%) 2028/2028 13 (0.64%) 5182/5182 10 (0.19%) 9663/9663 25 (0.26%) www.ukbx.net 68/54 0 (0.00%) 629/503 0 (0.00%) www.bannerswarm.com 3/2202 5 (0.23%) 47/28 0 (0.00%) 2398/1592 3 (0.19%) 4362/2455 7 (0.29%) 6807/6277 15 (0.24%) Total 5215/4067 3 (0.07%) 1538/839 1 (0.12%) 5168/5114 12 (0.23%) 2330/1575 1 (0.06%) 9087/7063 19 (0.27%) 13815/11354 21 (0.18%) 33805/28417 57 (0.20%)

Download stat May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 Aug 2004 Sept 2004 Oct 2004 Nov 2004 Dec 2004 Jan 2005 To date www.filehungry.com 44 11 18 6 7 17 8 1 4 120 www.topdownloads.net 27 26 26 203 75 46 17 13 10 403 www.rocketdownload.com 12 7 8 4 8 5 39 Total 77 44 52 213 90 68 35 26 14 629