Did you hear that whishing sound?  That was January, the first month of a new decade rushing by!  How is your year so far?  Are you on pace for your goals? Personal, career and blog?

First day of a new month.  That means  a review of the month that was.  This has been a busy month and a lot got done.  One of the main objectives for 2010 is to grow traffic on Blog Income.    Traffic increase is goal one for 1Q.  I go for a monthly increase of 10% – 20%.  When the numbers are scant to begin that is not exactly a stretch.  I have chosen this rate of increase for two reasons:

1. I read in one of Darren Rowse’s posts that that is how he began.  I like to follow in the footsteps of success.
2. I am creating a mindset and therefore a pattern for results.  As traffic increases the 10% – 20% will be tougher, but by then it will be a pattern that my brain is set for and will inform my actions accordingly.

So, how did January stack up?  I am pleased to say that it was a good start to a good year.

Jan graph

jan pie chart Jan site usage

#1.  Google Analytics Traffic up by 78.22% = reached 360 visits

#2.  .One of my goals for this year was to be on page 1 of Google for the keywords “blog income.”  I can now cross that one off.  This was a June 30 goal.  I gave myself that much time because I was so far down in position and found that it had wide and wild swings – now that may happen again, but it seems to have settled in on page one for several days now.  Here is an excerpt from my post of  September 28 which explains why I chose “blog income” as the keyword phrase that I wanted to dominate.

ms chartBlog Income is already a crowded playing field as I expected it to be.  Needless to say Blog Income was not available as a domain so I added the word “life”. The two key deciding factors were the two figures:

SEOT = 91
SEOC = 39,200

I learned at 30 Day Challenge to go for a niche (read that keywords) that has more than 80 SEOT and 30,000 SEOC (OK… this one is higher).  I have been peppering my posts with other keywords and now have to decide which is the next one that I want to get on page one for. (Blogger to WordPress full article.  Whichever one it is it will be far more competitive than Blog Income.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MONTH

-         Played host to Mike Paetzold for a week as he published 5 guest posts here on his “Blog Tour”

-         Played guest blogger at Dave Doolin’s Website In A Weekend with four posts on MasterMinds

-         Published 18 posts

Sam over at Financial Samurai has thrown down the gauntlet (or whatever it is that samurais wear) for his community to get their blog to an Alexa of below 200K by June 30.    I started the year with an Alexa of 504,964 and ended January with 409,922.  I know it gets tougher and tougher as you approach the 200K mark, but I am confident that 200K will be toppled … of course, there are some awesome bloggers in that community that will be brandishing their “katana”  with impunity to get to that benchmark!  I have no katana, which is a samurai sword … maybe I should become a ninja (oh yes, isn’t there a course on Ninja Online Tactics … did not buy that one)

WHAT’S UP FOR FEBRUARY?

Staying focused:  Traffic increase by 20% =  432 so I’ll make that 450.  It’s a short month … amazing what a difference 3 days can make …nevertheless, the stretch is 500 plus.

I also need to work on my SE.  A few months ago I zigged in the backend – the admin area, and lost links etc.  and my SE plummeted to below 1% – gulp!  Now when I look at the actual number that come in via SE, it is not far behind what it used to be.  My referral stats have really gone up.  I read somewhere that a perfect pie chart is equal parts of 1/3.  Being as that the world is not perfect … I don’t think I’ll be seeing that any time soon, nor is it a big item with me.

I have noticed that as I keep pushing myself, my concentration is improving as is my output, not just here on this blog, but in my other businesses as well.  This is a neat game.  I like it.

Enroute to reaching that number I am sure there will be other highlights that I will be able to share with you at month end.  I wish the same for you.  In the meantime please visit often – the door is always open here and your comments are most welcome.

To Your Blog Income Success!

Valentina

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