Blog Income Life

That which gets measured gets improved.

Regular readers of Blog Income know that  I am a stickler for tracking, reviewing, correcting and continuing.  It’s a leftover habit from my corporate days.  In business it’s the surest way of knowing where you are, what has been working and what has not, and making changes to ensure that your yearly target is achieved.   As mentioned more than once I start the day with the metrics for both the previous day and month to date.  Each month is reviewed and published.

Although I have always done a thorough review of  my business at every quarter throughout the year I have never published a quarterly review.  It’a a standard business practice.    I thought this was a timely opportunity to  post my review of Blog Income and open the window to how I  will approach Quarter Two.   I encourage you to do the same with your internet marketing business.

What should you be looking at?  Here is what I looked at:

1. Goal for 2010
2. Compare January 01 to March 31.
3. Are you on track
4. What is working
5. What is not working
6. What changes can you make –
7. What additional tools might be helpful
8. Does  year end goal need revising?

Based on the above, what is the picture like for 2010.

Blog Income 2010 Goal:  Increase Traffic.
Increasing traffic is by far my top goal.  There are other metrics I want to achieve but I feel that most will fall in place with increased traffic.  My first inclination was to put a way out there figure and then just go for it.  Sometimes that works for people.  But I have a paradigm – put out the big figures and the big dreams, but make the steps to reach them both attainable and a bit of a stretch.   Darren Rowse of Problogger wrote in one of his posts that when he began some 10 years ago, all he was aiming for in terms of progress was an increase in traffic of between 10% and 20% month to month.

Here are my graphs for the period January 01 – March 10.

Jan 01 Stats Published December Review and additional metrics I keep:

Item: January 01, 2010 /Q1: Jan 01 – Mar 31
Visits:  208 = average 6.7 per day/1268 = average 14 per day
Alexa :504,964/ 243,547
Google Page Rank : PR1 /PR 2 (just updated Apr 03)
Position:  Google Broad: 130/14
Google Phrase : 7(Jan 31 stat)/ 4
Yahoo Broad :33/ 5
Yahoo Phrase : 5/ 5
Posts to Date:  129/173
Comments To Date: 298 (Jan 31 stat)/396

Note:  positions may vary depending on country from which search is being made

My answers to the above questions:

1. GOAL: – 10% – 20% increase month by month.
   
2. Am I on track?
   YES
   March however was static vs February and had I had at least the 10% growth the results would have been only  marginally better.  Why did this happen?  There were two days when the site was completely down.  If the site was up an additional 28 visits could be added, but that would still been short of 10% growth over the previous month.
3. What is working?
   - Google Page Rank up from PR1 to PR 2
   - Alexa ranking improved by a whopping  261,417
   - Search Engine traffic which inexplicably dropped to below 1% in December is picking up.
   - comments are trending well
   - Position for the term Blog Income holding well on page 1 for phrase, ie., “Blog Income” in both Google and Yahoo,  while as the broad, i.e., without  quotes, is page 2 with Google and page 1 with Yahoo.  The broad phrase has appeared on page 1 with Google on several occasions but there is a lot of jostling going on for page 1 spot.
   
   
4. What is not working?
   At 44 additional posts in 90 days, that is .48 posts per day.  I was going for 5 posts per week which is .71 posts per day which would have ended with an additional 64 posts instead of only 44.  March had fewest posts.  Had the schedule been maintained it is safe to assume that traffic would have been higher.
   
   
5. What changes can be made?
   a.  Shorten length of posts, increase frequency of publishing to 5 or more per week
   b.  Invite guest bloggers.

6.  What additional Tools/activities?
a.  Submit articles to other bloggers as a guest blogger (this drives traffic to your own site)
b.  Increase article marketing

7.  Does year end goal need revising?
When results are on track, stay the course; when results are way below, revise & downshift if needed; when results are way above, revise & upshift.
Prognosis:  Stay the course.

Top Posts:

People do want to know more about you .  The “About Valentina” page is the most visited page.  In addition the following posts drew the most traffic:

Meet My Friend – Author Wendy Atkinson
Twitter and All That Social Media Stuff
The Mitts That Were Seen Around the World

SECOND QUARTER GOALS:

1.  visits = 2000+ = average visit more than 22 per day
2.  Alexa = under 200K (am participating in challenge and need to hit the 200K mark – shooting for 150K mark)
3.  Google: PR3 (this will probably be more difficult than reaching PR2)
4.  Google Broad Phrase page 1 for Blog Income
5.  Secure positions for another term/phrase I am going for (currently only given by Yahoo phrase at 59) – will let you know this new phrase when I reach my target.
6.  New theme for Blog Income

Here’s to an awesome blog income life!

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