More on manuals

"I would think that if I had, say, 10,000 manuals, it would be perhaps

No, only if the original download would disappear after it's first reading. You have a situation where once a customer has downloaded a particular file he will never download it again. There is no direct relationship from one day to another.

Same situation for automobile dealers. Once sold, a customer will not buy again for at least four years.

The answer is advertisement for new customers. That is why so many TV car ads! You need to find a way to promote your files. Then you will generate more downloads.

Paul

This is not how I see it (and I have been doing websites for 15 years).

I see it that there is 300 million people in the US. Every day some of them need a manual because something broke, they purchased a machine, just curious etc.

So they go out and look for the manual, and sometimes stumble on my website and download a manual.

So, every day the people are new, the number is random, but day to day (or week to week) it should be stable. Here's the data for the past 12 days:

The first number is how many days ago, and the second number is how many downloads from Google SERPs.

How many of those do you think are real people needing manuals vs. robots?

I looked for all entries in access log involving 'pdf', and having google in the referer, and excluded Googlebot crawler.

So, I think that all are real people. Maybe one person downloaded more than one manual, or one manual more than once, but all are referred by google.

I counted originating IPs and there is 673 unique originating IPs for yesterday.

I bought a dual DVD collection called Guns & Glory for $15, delivered. With 1500 PDFs and jpgs on it, it would have take a whole lot longer for me to have downloded it individually than it was worth. I think I got a deal (a penny apiece), even though they're all PD files.

It has all the gov't manuals (guns, HE, survival, basic, command tactics, medical, dental training, etc.) plus 100+ rifle and pistol use and repair manuals, and a lot more. I would have taken me weeks to find and download all those, let along burn the DVDs. I think that's a steal, myself.

I've bought other decent sized collections (engineering, bookbinding, construction, etc.) for good prices, too.

Yeah, here are some braindead dealers who want ten bucks (+ $5 for shipping) for a pair of PDFs, and that's a ripoff. But most of them want a buck for the CDs.

Why the rabid hate for these guys, Ig?

-- A smile is the shortest distance between two people. -- Victor Borge

Larry, if you could get any of those manuals when you need one, you would not even want to buy a DVD.

Additionally, I am sure that you did not get everything, not even close.

My website is running, and my book is going to be out in a month or two. I would be glad to put you on my website FREE. It is such a pain when you go looking for a manual, find FREE downloads, put in a boatload of personal information, and then reach a checkout page that wants $20.

Steve

You forgot to answer this, Iggy.

That may be true for some people, but I like to keep libraries of useful things, too. I didn't need anything in that particular library at the time I bought it, but knew it would be handy during any possible second American Revolution, knowwhatImean,Vern?

Interesting statement, seein' as you haven't even seen the TOC for the DVDs yet.

-- A smile is the shortest distance between two people. -- Victor Borge

This the one Larry?

That's it, Steve. I think it was only 1,500 manuals and 2 discs when I bought it. Now it's 5k! I got the smaller version for $15 and couldn't even compile the listings for that price, let alone track down the files and burn 'em.

Pretty nice compilation, isn't it?

-- If you're looking for the key to the Universe, I've got some good news and some bad news.

The bad news: There is no key to the Universe.

The good news: It was never locked. --Swami Beyondananda

And you can use them in places where there is no internet available. Iggy might try it on a smart phone, but sometimes you need to print out a few pages to make notes on.

There are manuals in there that I have never heard of.

Some of them could be interesting though...

Dental training as a military manual?

-- You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.? -- Ronald Reagan