Run to Win

[Blaine Moore]

Blog Name: Run to Win

Blog URL: http://news.RunToWin.com

Blog Description: Sports information and training advice from a New England persepective...in other words, I talk about how to get in and stay in shape while sprinkling my own thoughts and opinions on the local sports scenes. And by local I mean sometimes global.

Blog Benefits: The largest reader benefits come from my workout tips and how to articles. I have a myriad of different items from how to prepare for a marathon to how to tie your shoes.

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.

Personal goals from blogging: I'd like to be able to make a consistent $1200 USD per month in advertising and affiliate income from this blog, and I also want to use it as a launch pad for information products I create in the future that are related to running and working out. The biggest thing right now, though, is not so much the mortgage payment as getting the nice emails from folks thanking them for an article that I wrote.

Personal Details
Name: Blaine Moore
Sex: Male
Age: 26
Location: Maine, USA

My first field report is going to have to wait, since I am going on vacation next week and will not work on anything but keeping things running while I'm gone between now and when I get back.

[Trucios]

Blaine; Your blog looks awesome! I especially like the feature you provide to cheer you as you run. I think the whole idea of live communication during this event is fantastic. I am not a runner. However, my wife is. I will pass on your blog info to her.
Also, your blog format looks very advanced. Who hosts your blog? I like it.
Good luck. LT

[Blaine Moore]

Blaine; Your blog looks awesome! I especially like the feature you provide to cheer you as you run. I think the whole idea of live communication during this event is fantastic. I am not a runner. However, my wife is. I will pass on your blog info to her.
Also, your blog format looks very advanced. Who hosts your blog? I like it.
Good luck. LT
[/b]

I host it myself using Wordpress. I am thinking of changing the theme a bit, there are a few things that I don't like, but it is functional and a low priority. There's a link in my footer to the original theme developer; I've modified it pretty heavily (especially behind the scenes). Thanks for passing on the word!

Here's my first field report, now that I am back from vacation.

Field Report Title: New York City Marathon

Blog Name: Run to Win
Blog URL: http://news.runtowin.com
Name: Blaine Moore

Explanation: I just ran the NYC marathon this past weekend. As an experiment, (and due to being busy/lazy) I did not get any content for the day of the race or the day after the race. The Tuesday after the race I did not have any content until late in the evening.

Normally, when I have no new content, my traffic is about half as much as normal.

This time, during the race, I wrote the name of the website on my arm in permanent marker. I did not get an opportunity to check until I got home Tuesday night, but my traffic after that was about twice my average traffic and was a pretty big jump on Sunday and Monday. I haven't had a chance to look into whether it was all local or not, but I do know that I got briefly on television in the local coverage (w/i a few hundred miles of NYC) when my buddy and I passed Lance Armstrong early in the race.

My guess is that most of the people visiting were other competitors and random bystanders that remembered the website name. In retrospect, I should have written it on both arms and either along my shoulder blades or else pinned to the back of my jersey.

It was still a nice surprise when I got home, though. I was not really expecting traffic to go up and was just hoping to keep it even. I'll add more details when I have had a bit more of an opportunity to analyze my logs, but I'm still trying to catch up on everything after taking a week off.

[Yaro]

Great idea - but you should have really run with it (no pun intended) - t-shirt, baseball cap, pants - everything - all the people running with you are your target market so while your arm is a good start you could have gone crazy with it and probably reached more people.

[Blaine Moore]

Great idea - but you should have really run with it (no pun intended) - t-shirt, baseball cap, pants - everything - all the people running with you are your target market so while your arm is a good start you could have gone crazy with it and probably reached more people.
[/b]

Probably. On the other hand, though, I try to run with as little as possible because it is a long race and chafing can be pretty bad. I forgot to put band aids on my nipples, for example; not a lot of fun.

It was an experiment, and I will certainly use the tactic at other large races that I do. At some point I will get a racing singlet made up that has Run to Win on it, and might silk screen it onto the back of some of my current ones. I never race in a t-shirt, though, and will only race in pants if it is windy, wet, and down near 0 fahrenheit.

[mrClen]

glad to see another sport blog, your themes so cool in the eye. more power and best of luck.


Albert

[andrew wee]

nice template, blaine,
i like how it stands out from being very 'blog' looking.

good use of graphic elements to break up the text.

nice!

[Blaine Moore]

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:

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.

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.