Freedom Education: 1st Blog Traffic Diary

[smartile]

Blog Name: Freedom Education, Mind Power for Your Personal Growth

Owner: Stephen Martile

See my about page to learn more.

I forgot that February was a short month. Here is my blog traffic diary for February 2009. My numbers have more than doubled since last month.

February Uniques = 3,777 (1,497 for Jan, 09)
February Pageviews = 17,385 (7,205 for Jan, 09)

Desired Monthly Uniques = 15,000
Desired Monthly Pageviews = 60,000

Here are the traffic sources for February:

57% Referring Sites
14% Search Engines
29% Direct Traffic

Quantum Leap in Uniques

The main reason I had such a great month for unique visitors was because of a guest post I had published at Zenhabits.net. Leo is the owner of this productivity site. You can check out the article here: How to Create the Abundance Mindset | Zen Habits

I had 1,407 unique visitors from ZenHabits alone. This link from Leo has proved to be really powerful. Two weeks after I received that link from Leo's Zenhabits' my daily search engine traffic doubled from 20 to 40 unique visitors per day.

Top Traffic Sources

1. Direct = 1,705
2. Zenhabits.net = 1,407
3. Google = 733

Guest Articles

I would have to say that guest articles are the way to go. You'll get a double wammy if you are successful publishing guest articles. Firstly, you receive the instant rush of traffic from the guest website or blog. Secondly, your search engine traffic will increase bringing you more targeted leads. It doesn't cost you a cent and you get traffic. Fantastic approach to building traffic. Yaro is dead-on when he says that content is your currency.

Newsletter

I would say I'm pretty happy with the Newsletter susbcribers for February. This is the highest month I've had so far at 495 subscribers. I think I had 500 subscribers in my first 6 months of bloggin. To be able to do that in a single month is awesome.

That works out to approximately 18 subscriber/day. Desired 20/day.

Focus for March

- continue to write pillar content 4-5 articles per week
- continue to publish guest articles to popular blogs and Newsletters
- I seem to enjoy the process of creating video and audio more often than written content, so I'll focus on those mediums for the month of March.

[smartile]

Blog Name: Freedom Education, Mind Power for Your Personal Growth

Owner: Stephen Martile

See my about page to learn more.

Here are my traffic numbers for March. There down from last month mainly because my traffic from referring sites has dropped. This makes sense since my marketing efforts haven't been as strong as they have been in the past.

March Uniques = 2,298 (3,777 for Feb, 09)
March Pageviews = 10,041 (17,385 for Feb, 09)

Desired Monthly Uniques = 15,000
Desired Monthly Pageviews = 60,000

Here are the traffic sources for February:

46% Referring Sites
24% Search Engines
30% Direct Traffic

My uniques are down for March because I have had a decrease in referral links. Search engine and direct traffic are close to the previous month.

Top Traffic Sources

1. Direct = 1,199
2. Google = 773
3. Selfgrowth.com = 271

Search Engines

Search engine traffic has been steadily increasing each month. This is a good thing and I can see that most of the search engine visitors are new to my blog for the month of March. This source of traffic is looking up.

Newsletter

I had 198 new subscribers to my Newsletter in March. That's about 6 per day. Desired 20/day.

Focus for April

- kick up my marketing a notch with 4 guest blogging articles
- explore newsletters for guest article marketing
- create pillar 4 pillar articles per week
- explore Facebook for new opportunities to market my blog

[smartile]

Blog Name: Freedom Education

Owner: Stephen Martile

Here are my traffic numbers for April.

April Uniques = 4,296 (2,298 for Mar, 09)
April Pageviews = 17,688 (10,041 for Mar, 09)

Desired Monthly Uniques = 15,000
Desired Monthly Pageviews = 60,000

Here are the traffic sources for February:

44% Referring Sites
17% Search Engines
39% Direct Traffic

Top Traffic Sources

1. Direct = 2,685
2. Google = 974
3. Selfgrowth.com = 329

Newsletter (Desired 50/day)

I had 203 new subscribers to my Newsletter in April. That's close to 7 new people per day.

Focus for May

- explore newsletters for guest article marketing
- create pillar 4 pillar articles per week
- explore Facebook for new opportunities to market my blog

[TheSuccessfulBiz]

Great blog. I think you are a on a roll. I don't see what help we can be giving you. I'll asking you how you did it! I hope that you spend some time here teaching us.

Jae

[inservo]

Hi Stephen,

your blog diary is very inspiring for me. I have read through it in a rush and what you share with us is a treasure for me.

Especially that you write, what worked out and what not.

It also approves to me that this is not a get rick quick scheme but still works if you simply follow rules that worked already.

Thanks again for sharing.

[smartile]

Originally Posted by inservo

Hi Stephen,

your blog diary is very inspiring for me. I have read through it in a rush and what you share with us is a treasure for me.

Especially that you write, what worked out and what not.

It also approves to me that this is not a get rick quick scheme but still works if you simply follow rules that worked already.

Thanks again for sharing.

Hey cheers inservo and Jae!

I think this blog diary has been keeping me honest. Every month when I come back here I see these patterns; just like you said inservo, what works and what doesn't work.

Best of all is that I'm starting to see a consistent cash-flow of a few hundred dollars each month so I know the process is working

to your inspiration,

[FFA]

great stuffs

[smartile]

Blog Name: Freedom Education

Owner: Stephen Martile

Here we go! These are my traffic numbers for May:

May Uniques = 4,492 (4,296 for April, 09)
May Pageviews = 18,318 (17,688 for April, 09)

Desired Monthly Uniques = 15,000
Desired Monthly Pageviews = 60,000

Here are the traffic sources for May:

52% Referring Sites
16% Search Engines
32% Direct Traffic

Top Traffic Sources

1. Direct = 2,201
2. Zenhabits.net = 1,253
3. Google = 979

Newsletter (Desired 50/day)

I had 562 new subscribers to my Newsletter in May. That's roughly 18 per day. May was a great month and it's not because it was my birthday on May 23

Focus for June

- publish two product reviews
- focus on blog commenting and guest article contributions for two specific blogs
- explore methods of driving traffic with Youtube

[smartile]

I just published my review of Yaro Starak's program Blog Mastermind. Blog Mastermind is a program that teaches you how to make money from your blog.

I've followed this program over the past 7 months and went from earning $30 per month to just over $1,000 last month.

If you want to learn more go to the review here: Blog Mastermind Review: How to Earn $5,000 + Per Month From Your Blog | Freedom Education

Cheers,

[smartile]

Blog Name: Freedom Education

Owner: Stephen Martile

Another traffic diary for June. This is the 1 year anniversary of my blog (happy birthday!)

Here are my traffic numbers for June:

Uniques = 2,948 (4,492 for May, 09)
Pageviews = 10,612 (18,318 for May, 09)

Desired Monthly Uniques = 15,000
Desired Monthly Pageviews = 60,000

Here are the traffic sources for May:

43% Referring Sites
29% Search Engines
28% Direct Traffic

Top Traffic Sources

1. Direct = 1,357
3. Google = 1,197
2. Zenhabits.net = 273

Organic Traffic

Even though my traffic is down this month, I'm still really happy with the results because overall my search engine traffic has gone up from 979 in May to 1,197 in June. This a great sign that my blog is getting more exposure in the search engines which is something I've been focusing on for the past couple months. Organic search engine traffic is the best long term strategy(in my opinion) to go because for a lack of a better word it puts your traffic on autopilot.

I've learned quite a bit about SEO in the past two months. I've probably got at least a dozen posts on the first page of Google - some of them are for keywords that are highly searched and others not so much

My best advice to any blogger looking for organic traffic is to make sure they use tools like WordTracker to title their blog posts with the proper key words and then use tools like All In One SEO pack to set the proper tags for each post. That will make a big difference. Besides that, you want to start attracting links and comments for the blog posts you create.

For a more detailed look at SEO for blogs, see Yaro's Blog Mastermind.

I also have this resources which was valuable: DIY Website Promotion | How to Create and Submit Websites to Search Engines like Google | Free Site Submission | Website Ranking | Do It Yourself

Newsletter (Desired 50/day)

I had 243 new subscribers to my Newsletter in June. That's roughly 8 per day.

One Year Anniversary Thoughts

You can make money blogging. I share my results here: Blog Mastermind Review. Right now I'm still earning a part-time income but I can plainly see how a blog and Internet business with a mailing list can make a full time income.

I think that belief (of making money online) eluded me for a very long time, but now I'm a real believer. I can see the genius in it and most importantly I believe that I can earn real money on the Internet.

You don't even want to know how many times I thought of quitting my blog. This blog diary has been a huge help for me. It's kept me focused and it's allowed me to look back at review past results and see what worked, versus what didn't.

It also helps to see that there has been progress - and you can never know if there is progress unless you measure or track your results. This blog diary is a great way to do that.

All the best,