Category Archives: Traffic

Who Do You Compete With?

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When I first started this blog, it was just a place for me to write things that I couldn’t write anywhere else. It was a place for me to talk about all that I have learned over the last three years. But when Mark added the Top 100 list at 45n5.com, I started to create goals for this blog beyond expanding the blog by at least one more unique visitor each month.

I wanted to get into the top one hundred, and then the top fifty, and then the top thirty. Today, I am sitting in the top twenty. I can’t see myself rising much higher, but I enjoyed having goals and a strange sense of competition.

I didn’t let the fact that I was competing really change the blog, but it lit a fire under me to get more done on this site than I might have otherwise been able to.

I worked on building vast amounts of content, pushed my networking skills as hard as possible to get inbound links, spent some money on having WordPress themes developed so I could release them for even more attention, and worked on building up my traffic so that I could continue to rise up the ranks.

I watched as my competitors blogs faded as they lost interest. I waited as Google re-assessed their PageRank system, assigning new higher ranks to me, and less high ranks to many of my competitors. I added the Alexa toolbar on my web browser to attempt to give me one more vote to push my rank just that little bit higher, and wrote about Alexa on a few occasions in hopes of drawing in their user base to increase my rank even more.

I worked hard on trying to build a community while also focusing on improving the ranks that would help me achieve my goals. I didn’t take any big short cuts, and my continued growth is in part because I continued on while others gave up.

Having a person to compete with can really help those of us that have problems with inspiration or issues sticking to a single task for a long period of time. You don’t have to be the best, but you should want to do better than a fair number of your peers and thus competitors.

Who are you competing with, and why? Or if you are a person that doesn’t enjoy competition, how do you inspire yourself to continue moving forward? Let me know in the comments below.

Originally posted on July 9, 2008 @ 2:19 pm

Dropping Alexa and Technorati Ranks

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Despite my ever increasing traffic, my Alexa and Technorati ranks seem to be taking a nosedive. The only real change I have made to this site that can account for that is the decrease in my social media promotion. I find it strange that not promoting my stuff all over the Internet has created such an issue. I didn’t think most social media users also were Alexa users, and I didn’t attribute my inbound links to the posts I promote on social media.

This, to me, reinforces the fact that social media is a key component to a blogs success or failure as I was also getting many more advertisement requests on this site when my rankings were getting better and better, as advertisers no doubt assumed that they would continue to rise and as such they were getting an amazing deal.

I still believe there is great value in this site, its content, its archives, and its audience, but I have to admit that I am going to be gearing up for another social media push in hopes to getting this blog back on track with both Alexa and Technorati so that my rank on 45n5.com/top100 remains fairly high.

Originally posted on March 27, 2008 @ 11:52 am

Forgetting to Check Secondary Stats

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Something completely out of character for me has happened: I went without checking my secondary stats for this site for over two weeks. What that means is that I didn’t check my Alexa rank, Technorati rank, nor my Feedburner stats for over two weeks now. For someone that usually checks them every day, sometimes twice a day (yes, I know most don’t update that often), that is definitely strange, and for me, there was a side effect to not checking these things: my posting level went down.

Sure, it was the holiday season and all, but it isn’t like I didn’t have Internet access. Not only that, but I had plenty to post about, and now after checking my stats, I see that the lack of posting has created a sharp dip downwards, making me feel a little like I have put myself behind the eight ball, and should spend a fair bit of time producing content over the coming days.

For me, how I am doing with a blog helps spur me into action. I want to see continuous growth, even if that growth is only one more unique visitor in a month, for me, that is a success.

So, for some people, moving away from checking their stats has been said to improve productivity by freeing up more time to write, but for me, and probably many others, not checking your stats can decrease your drive to produce, so don’t forget to look at how you are doing every once and a while, and remember that even one more person over a previous month is growth.

Originally posted on January 4, 2008 @ 5:54 pm

Small Traffic Boost From Digg

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Yesterday, this blog was fortunate enough to get to the front page of Digg. Thankfully, I had everything all ready to go and the site weathered the minor Digg storm just fine.

The story was Understanding Search Engine Penalties, and it has received over 300 votes.

The traffic was pretty great, didn’t really receive many links or anything, the comments on Digg, were less than nice, and even some of the ones I received here were pretty negative.

All in all, it worked out nicely in my favour, and brought in enough traffic that eXtra for Every Publisher has in ten days beaten the previous high traffic month, December 2007, by over 6,000 unique visitors.

My traffic so far this month stands at:
Unique Visitors – 29,693
Page Views – 83,933

I am very happy, and I can’t wait to see if there are any reasonably long term effects from getting on the front page of Digg, and for once, not getting buried. Blogs, especially like this one, rarely see the front page of Digg, and so that definitely made me feel a little special.

A huge thanks to all the people that voted the story up, and enjoyed the article and Celebrity Cowboy for being so great and letting me analyze their site.

Originally posted on January 10, 2008 @ 8:17 pm

Traffic Boom to Start January

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I am always amazed at how slow the advertising requests trickle in as I continue to build up this site. In the last four and a quarter days, this site has already had 7000 unique visitors, and over 18,000 page views. At two dollars per thousand advertisement impressions, a rate that is low by todays standards, I could be asking for over $36 just for the last four days, and my traffic should only continue to swell as I put my nose to the grindstone in building up this blog.

If you haven’t taken a look at the advertising options on this site, January is a perfect time, as I have slashed advertising prices in half. Check out my previous advertising special post for pricing details. My most expensive advertising position this month is $30 US, a great bargain.

For those of you that have contributed to the insane growth I continue to see, I owe you all a huge debt of thanks, and I am happy that you are enjoying the posts I publish. If these last few days are any indication, I think 2008 might go against what I have previously said (Blogging in 2008: Time to Worry?), and knock my socks off.

Originally posted on January 5, 2008 @ 6:59 am