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What can you do today or right now that will affect change on your blog or site? Can you get 5 links back to your blog today? Can you gain 1 RSS reader or get an extra 100 visitors? Sure you can.
Remember, proven basics come before unproven success. It is easy to dream big, but the best way to reach those dreams is one step at a time. I remember thinking it was hard to get any extra visitors to my blog in a day. Now it is only a couple clicks and a post away. Set high and challenging goals for the long term and small accessible goals for the short term. Once the foundation is laid, the bricks and mortar will fall into place quite easily.
Well the numbers are in and for the most part a lot better than I expected. March was the first full month this blog has been up and running as well as my first full month running a blog ever.
These were my goals for the month of March as they are posted on my side bar. I felt that the goals were very ambitious and worth shooting for.
Page Views : 30,000
Number of Posts : 31+
RSS Subscribers : 100
How did the numbers play out?
Instead of posting just the numbers, I am going to post pictures, because we all know that pictures speak louder than words.
Posts:
I had over one post per day this month, meaning I met my March goal of 31+ posts. My top post for number of visits is the post: 10 reasons you should quit your job.
Technorati Rank and Authority, plus 30 favs:
RSS subscribers: (The last day of March, it was actually 84 but I did not take a screen shot till after I lost a couple)
Unigue Visitors:
Alexa.com Stats:
Results:
First off, I would like to say that reaching 30K visitors was awesome in my opinion, and then to blow right past it to over 51k was amazing. StumbleUpon, Entrecard and Sitehoppinwere very kind to me for providing visitors. What amazes me the most was the traffic from Sitehoppin, which added another 3kunique visitors to my stats in the last few days of March. If you haven’t already figured out that Sitehoppin is delivering good traffic, then you need to go over there and get a Beer Stock right now. What surprised me the most between the traffic from Entrecard and that of Sitehoppin was the bounce rate percentage. Entrecard has been giving my blog a bounce rate of about 87%, whereas Sitehopping is about 45%. That is almost half the bounce rate as Entrecard. The difference between the bounce rate of these two sites is quite a bit and worth noting.
As you might of noticed, I did fall a little short of my RSS subscriber goal, I think that this is fine and that I still did quite well. My new goal for subscribers for the month of April is going to be 160. I am sure it won’t be quite as easy this month as the last because of the ability to offer that many Entrecard credits to people. With all of that said, the winner of the March RSS subscriber award for 3,000 credits is Jeff with watchandtrain.com
Congrats, Jeff. If others would like to subscribe to my RSS feed, I will give 500Entrecard credits to the first 5 people (send me a message).
April Goals:
Unique Visitors: 75,000
RSS: 160
Alexa: under 90,000
Technorati Rank: 100,000
Technorati Authority: 200
Posts: 30+
Overall very good in my opinion and I am looking forward to continued success in the blogging world.
What a quick week it has been. Things continue to go really well, including stats for this page. I have reached my goal of 30,000 unique visitors for the month of March, with 9 days to spare. That is an average of 1,400 unique visitors a day. When I posted those stats on my site and told everyone of my goal, I had no idea if I was going to make it or not. I did know that I was going to try and do what I could to reach my goal. It is very important to have goals. Making them public is always a great motivation factor as well.
Here is the link to my stats. February’s traffic was pretty small compared to this month. I officially started this blog on Feb. 19, meaning I only had a couple of days to market it that month. In March, I have spent a total of $30 towards advertising on my site. I have more time than money at this point, so most of the advertising was accomplished with a lot of time invested. I am aiming to flip this around ;). Now only a couple more people to go for my goal of 100 RSS subscribers. Not bad for one month.
Going backpacking.
Lindsay, Ace (our mutt) and I are taking a trip toTheodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota. By the time you are reading this we should be on the road. We have made it a tradition to go backpacking over Easter weekend to a different park. Each year it is an adventure. Last year we lasted one night in 1-degree weather. Brrr. The year before we ran out of water and borrowed some from somebody’s hose faucet (they were not home). Who knows what adventures lay ahead for us this weekend. I will be sure to share photos and memories when I get back.
Podcast and Video Logs.
I am still working on and planning to share podcast and video logs for the readers of The Unconventional Marketing Blog. I have the process all figured out and will probably get some out by this week. Maybe there will be a backpacking special. I don’t know, we’ll have to see.
Contests.
It seems like a lot of contests are showing up all over, and I can’t blame people. I love winning free things and like participating in different contests. Tyblog.com is starting a new contest and it is shaping up to be a whopper of one at that. If you are interested in contributing to the contest or want more information about what he needs, go here.
Yesterday marked the 1-month anniversary of my blog. Much like dating, for the first few months you keep track of everything, that first kiss, movies, music and of course the one-month anniversary. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, The Unconventional Marketing Blog is one month old. I have to say, it has been quite a month for both this blog and my girlfriend’s blog, ThatMutt.com. Before I start sounding like a beauty queen giving a speech, I thought I would point out some of the stats and what the future holds.
1st Month stats for JoshWhitford.com:
Day: 31 of blogging
Posts: 41
Comments: 161
Alexa: 205,705
Technorati Favs: 25
Technorati Authority: 41
Technorati Rank: 194,258
RSS subscribers: 75 (just 25 short of my March goal)
Unique Visitors: 31,739
Page Views: 76,017
Wow, just wow, is all I can say. My unique-visitor goal for the month of March was 30,000, and I am currently 3,000 short of that goal. Since I have been averaging over 1,500 visitors for the last few days, I have a feeling I will be reaching this goal much sooner than later. If you combine both my blog and ThatMutt.com for unique visitors, we get a total of 78,509. I am considering bumping my March goal up to 45,000 unique visitors.
Note: I have only spent $20 on advertising in the last month.
Each day so far has been quite a new experience and a lot of fun. This truly beats my old job by leaps and bounds. I actually look forward to getting up in the morning and starting to work. I started with Google Adsense, which I quickly removed due to the inability to control the ads. Project Wonderful (enough said there). Then I moved onto the Amazon.com version of Kontera text-linked ads as a test between our two sites. Kontera won out, but I am choosing to keep the ads off of my site. The only ads I am currently running are the ad strips at the top of the page and the Never Blue Ads referral banner on the left sidebar. I want to keep the focus of my site on the content of the site and not the ads. In time, ads will probably find their correct place on my site, but for now I want everyone to enjoy the blog as clutter free as possible.
What is my long-term goal for myself and this blog? I haven’t spelled out exactly what I have been planning to do with my blog on purpose. My long-term goal is to help other bloggers reach whatever goal it is that they seek. I have always been a good problem solver and enjoy taking on new tasks and challenges. In the near future, I want to establish myself as a person who is able to help you solve any marketing issues you might be having. I am building up a network of like-minded bloggers in order to benefit each other and help others. I have extremely high hopes and expectations for this blog over the next month as well as for ThatMutt.com.
I also have a few things in the works, including a free ebook, podcasts and vlogs. I am ironing out the wrinkles in a few of the processes and am eagerly waiting to share them with you. If you want to stay up to date on the happenings of The Unconventional Marketing Blog, I recommend subscribing to my RSS feed. Please leave any questions or comments you might have.
Can you gain 1 RSS reader or get an extra 100 visitors? Sure you can.
