For today’s post, I’m trying something new. I’ve noticed that a lot of the other personal finance blogs I read give periodic updates (usually monthly) about how their blog is doing. I always find those posts pretty neat to read, as they serve as a benchmark to see how my own blog compares. Also, I know that a fair number of my regular readers are other bloggers. So I’m going to start posting a monthly blog update. Hopefully you will find this interesting, just like I find other blogger update posts interesting. And for all of my non-blogger readers: don’t worry; this is only a once-a-month post.
July Stats & Information
I saw a lot of traffic growth in July; much more than I anticipated when I started this blog. I’d like to think this means I’m doing a decent job of generating content that people want to read.
Visits: 4,110 (vs. 2,030 in June)
Unique Visitors: 3,641 (vs. 1,581 in June)
Total Pageviews: 15,003 (vs. 4,772 in June)
Pages per visit: 3.65 (vs. 2.35 in June)
Visit Duration: 2:17 (vs. 4:07 in June)
Bounce Rate: 51.02% (vs. 48.82% in June)
In a nutshell, a lot more people read this blog in July than in June as evidenced by increased numbers across the board. One interesting thing was that while average pages viewed per visit increased, the average visit duration decreased. So basically, I think this means that more people are skimming through pages. I’ll just have to work on writing really good posts that people will want to read through completely.
Alexa Ranking: 264,266 (vs. 399,045 in June)
Google Pagerank: 2 (same as June)
MozRank: 3.98 (vs. 2.36 in June)
E-mail Subscriptions: 11
Facebook Likes: 14
Twitter Followers: 18
My blog rankings are making steady progress. My Alexa ranking is continually going down (albeit pretty gradually), my Google Pagerank stayed at 2 after their update last week, and my MozRank increased pretty nicely. Social media is an area I need to work on.
August Goals
I’m going to start setting monthly blog goals. Until now, I’ve most just sat back and watched. As long as my traffic stats trended upward, I was content. As far as traffic stats, such as page views and visitors, I’m going to continue that approach. I think as long as I work at writing good content, this will take care of itself. I would like to see my Alexa ranking drop to 200,000 by the end of August.
As far as social media goes, I’m going to set some modest goals for where I’d like to be at the end of August. If you haven’t already done so, sign up for one (or all three) to help me reach my goal:
- Email Subscriptions: 25
- Facebook Likes: 25
- Twitter Followers: 25
I also have a few other blog-related goals:
- Make 25 comments on other blogs each week
- Comment on 1 new (to me) blog each week
- Tweet out 7 links each week as I encounter really good posts at other blogs
We’ll see how the month goes and whether these goals prove to be too easy or too challenging. For the other bloggers out there, do you set monthly goals for your blog? How do you about setting them?
7 comments
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Modest Money
August 6, 2012 at 6:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Congrats on the awesome improvement in July Justin! You destroyed those June numbers.
I very rarely set any goals for my blog. Usually I just got with the flow and continually make efforts to improve all my stats.
Regarding your time on site stat…don’t worry about that decreasing. That is a natural change when you start getting more search engine traffic instead of mostly just blogger traffic. It can be tough to satisfy search engine traffic since they are usually looking some specific.
Justin
August 8, 2012 at 12:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks Jeremy! It’s neat to actually see the progress. I remember in my first month I had something like 1,200 total page views.
Holly@ClubThrifty
August 6, 2012 at 7:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You are doing awesome!
I am amazed at how my fellow bloggers compile their information like this. I am either very lazy of very disorganized.
Thank you for reminding me to get on top of things!
Have a great day!
Justin
August 8, 2012 at 12:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be honest, Google Analytics does all the tracking; I just copied it over to my post, lol.
My Money Design
August 6, 2012 at 8:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wow, for as young as your blog is, your stats are very similar to mine. Good job! It’s a good idea to post these kinds of things because you’ll think about them more often. And probably do something about them! Have you tried doing any guest posts? I’m noticing a lot of people reporting large shifts in traffic once they do that.
Justin
August 8, 2012 at 1:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I did two guest posts in my early days (one at Get Rich Slowly and one at Modest Money). I need to do more of these, say one per month.
Lance @ Money Life and More
August 6, 2012 at 9:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Seems like you’re doing an awesome job to me! Keep it up!