Well, it has been over a year since I've updated my blog traffic diary - I haven't been too diligent about it. A year ago, there weren't many people on the forum yet and I kinda forgot about it until I wrote my annual retrospective a week or so ago and thought that it would be a good idea to update it.
When I originally wrote this post last week, it was about 5 times longer. You can read an edited and more useful version of the other 80% of the post over on Yaro's Blog (as I don't have my own business blog at this point):
What Did Blogging Teach You In 2007? » Internet Business Blog - by Yaro Starak
(Thanks to Sol for that first comment and mentioning it here, by the way:
http://www.blogtrafficschool.com/for...ro-s-blog.html - I appreciate that!)
With that out of the way, I recommend that you read my 2007 retrospective to get some specifics about how my site has grown, and I recommend that you write your own. The link to my retrospective (both last year's and this year's) is at the bottom of the article on Yaro's site (linked above.)
Let's start with my traffic goals from last year:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blaine Moore
Current traffic: Approximately 700-800 uniques per month, about twice that in pageviews, depending on which statistics package you read. About 35-50 RSS readers but it fluctuates daily.
Traffic goals: I'd like to get up to 3,000 uniques per month and a better than 2 pageviews per visit in the next 1-2 years. I am not very worried about the number of RSS readers but would like to see at least a few hundred.
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My current traffic is around 7500 visitors, around 6600 unique visitors, and around 15000 page views per month. My page views per visitor fluctuates between 1.8 and 2.2, and it does not seem that that changes very much no matter what I've been writing. It rarely goes down, though, which is good. I am getting around 140-160 RSS/email subscribers reported from FeedBurner. I would say that that is some good progress.
A neat trick that I discovered while investigating this was to see my FeedBurner subscription numbers since I signed up. I couldn't find a way in their interface to look past the last 30 days, but if you download an excel or CSV file then you can get your complete history.
I have tried to replicate the success that I had with the New York City marathon, but I haven't been very intelligent about it. When I ran the Boston Marathon, I had my arms covered so I didn't bother with the website name (the race was almost canceled due to a Nor'Easter) - when I ran the Marine Corps Marathon I forgot to write on my arms. I did have a bib on my back that showed it, and I did get some traffic. Just not the sort of numbers that NY brought. I didn't bother trying to promote my site when I ran the Pisgah 50k mountain race, since there was a total of about 2 dozen spectators (including the aid station volunteers) out in the forest that day, and I spent about 3 hours of the race running alone once I got past the first 15 miles or so.
I have had some small successes in local races, though, and have quite a local following. I sponsored a 19-week racing series in my home town, and I have been covering some of the local events and getting great pillar articles about writing what I learned at them. It is pretty cool when somebody walks up to you and asks if you are you, since they recognize your picture from your website and they follow it daily. (I had that happen to me when I ran the Marine Corps Marathon as well, so it isn't just locals.)
Next year, I need to get singlets and hats made up with my site on them. I wouldn't be able to wear them in team races, but I can pass out business cards there. I have until the end of March before my next marathon, which will be after I have opened the doors to my new business (Run to Win, LLC) so I will have to be sure to get some of this stuff rolling before then.