It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.  I celebrate Christmas – two of them.  My ancestral heritage is Russian.  The Russian Orthodox Church never switched over from the Julian to the Gregorian, so Christmas falls on January 07!  How cool is that?  This is a month of many celebrations, and whether you celebrate Christmas or something else, I want to begin by wishing each and everyone who comes here, joyous celebrations, goodwill and blessings for you and your loved ones.

It is the first of the month which means a review of the month past for Blog Income Life.   My goals for the month of November were:

1. Increase traffic by 20%+ (I’m following Darren Rowse’s formula here.
2. Get back on to earning some dollars.
3. Spend less time checking my daily stats.

Let’s look at the traffic first:
analytics - nov this is IT

analytics traffic source Nov 09Last month’s visitors = 130
Target: 20% increase = 156
Actual results                = 158

Just squeaked in!  In actual fact it is probably more like 15% growth seeing as last month’s stats did not include the first 5 days of the month!  I know this is anemic compared to many newbies who are getting that and more PER DAY. I am a great fan of Darren Rowse’s (is there anyone who isn’t), and I read with great interest that he focused on growing his blog traffic by 10% – 20% per month.  I am also a great believer in building momentum.  On that note I will be trying something in the new year that is meant to increase the traffic significantly – 200 per day by end of QI of 2010 is the big stretch.

Search engines stats fell from 15.38% to 8.3%.  I ascribe this to my letting up on my focusing on the keyword that I am fighting to get on page one for.  I am of two minds here.  Everything I have learned stresses the importance of optimizing your posts with the main keyword and sprinkling others here and here.   I feel that to do so for every post is somewhat artificial.  Yes, I want more search engine traffic, I also want to write in a non-forced style.  I think that my readers are intelligent enough to be able to tell the difference.  My readers are my guests.  Foremost in my mind is to treat them as welcome guests.  This probably comes with experience – write keyword optimized posts and make it flow in the most natural of ways.

Income:  Alas, none to report from this blog.  As mentioned before my performing blogs are my stable of doggie sites — even Adsense is delivering.  But I did have an awesome day – my first ever $1000 day!  This was in one of my other businesses.  What I loved about this experience is that it is now in my system.  Once experienced it’s in your DNA.   I look forward to many more $1000 days in 2010.

Checking Daily Stats:  Done!  The temptation, especially at the beginning was hard to overcome.  Eventually I just got fed up with myself in wasting time checking stats on my various sites.  I figured that I was wasting at least an hour.  Now, I check the stats in the mornings – it gives me a sense on what I need to concentrate on for the day and make adjustments to the plan I wrote the night before if needed – and leave them alone for the day.  Yes, sometimes I still sneak a peak before the end of day, but that too is declining.

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What is December to look like?  I realize now that focusing on income is premature for this blog.  I am going to concentrate on other factors and as these improve, I believe the income will too.  I will concentrate on that area that I have a greater control over and that is traffic.  I am also working through the Secret Affiliate Weapon course and implementing the steps along the way but then I am not anticipating results until QI of 2010.   So for December:

1. Traffic:  20% increase = 190.  Up the ante to 200
2. Add a subscription/email registration plugin and a “Tweet Me” button too!

Here’s to an Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina
Writing for an Awesome Blog Income Life … and yummy cheese!

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