Who Visits The Black Dahlia Web Site?

I get many requests about the number of people who visit this site, and who they are. While I can't give demographics specifics, I'm happy to share the following information.

In the month of August 2006, an average of 7,300 unique visitors trekked through this site each day. On average, users navigated through 40+ pages, spending more than 1 hour in the site. The most unique visitors to hit in one day was on Sept 15, 2006, when more than 60,000 people navigated this site.

The majority of visitors reach the site directly by typing in its URL, while the rest reach it via Google searching, Wikipedia and personal blog sites.

I now receive an average of 70 comments per day, and the subjects range from those wanting more information, to those offering up their own theories.

Common search terms to reach this site are "black dahlia" and "elizabeth short".

Site Parameters

By using text strings as much as possible, as of July 2006, The Black Dahlia Web Site hosts nearly 350MB of data. I expect this to reach nearly 1 GB by the end of the year.

The site transfers more than 20GB of data per month, and during peak times (when TV shows or movies are released) will hit up to 200GB of data.

My email account receives nearly 5MB of data each day.

Site Costs

Costs of running the site depend on many factors: Bandwidth (based on number of visitors and what they do), domain registration, and other content (costs to retrieve and post information - like telephone, copies, etc.). Rarely if ever do I pay someone to do any work, and all my time is voluntary.

All costs configured, it runs anywhere from $60 to $400 a month to operate the site.

I spend on average 20 hours per month on the site, but expect that to double by the end of the year.