October was a challenging month but so well worth it. Visitors are up 27% over September. Search Engines delivering 15% is decent. Actually, I read somewhere that the ideal traffic pie would be equally divided into 33% from each source. So that is something I am going to keep an eye on. Clearly, more search engine traffic is needed. Most “exotic” visitor was from Tanzania.
No income to report for this month but some important changes and the results of those changes are chronicled below. While you may not be in the same boat, if ever you want to make “changes” to an existing blog, my experience may be helpful:
- Changed Domain Name:
Former domain name: Blog Along With Me.
New domain name: Blog Income Life.
The driving force behind this was the realization that Blog Along was not a keyword optimized domain for anything other than blog, which is extremely competitive and already well entrenched in the top 10 of Google’s list. Blog Income as the main keyword for the new domain has a fighting chance to get top positioning with Google, and by default, other search engines. - Change of Platform
Exported from Blogger to Wordpress Direct. The transfer was painless. To think that I had put it off for some time literally trembling at the thought that somehow all would get lost in transit. - Domain/URL Redirect:
http://www.blogalongwithme.com redirected to http://www.blogincomelifie.com
This was a small tactical error. While all the content of the original blog transferred to the new one, the hard fought for backlinks did not. There were over 230. For one scant moment I thought of reversing the redirects. Chose to stay. Chalked it up to experience. Fresh beginning. - Analytics
Forgot to add the analytics code to the new site until October 05. Consequence is that the above chart is for October 06 onwards. Wordpress Direct does gather similar statistics however they seem to include my own visits, so the accuracy is flawed. - Monetization
Banner for ABC’s free PDF installed right way. Half way through the month added an affiliate banner. Am still ambivalent about Adsense; still not here but have noticed that a blogger no less than Alvin Phang continues to use Adsense. Maybe I’ll add it for November and see what happens. More banner ads to be added. - Course Purchases
Have bought several new courses addressing blog improvement and affiliate marketing. Will review in good time.
This has been a useful exercise. While the transfer of the blog from one platform to another was painless it was not without its growing pains – mainly, getting familiar with Wordpress Direct, or more to the point, not all templates are created equal. More on choice of templates in the future.
Traffic Bug is now part of my blogging tool kit. It’s a great little program and has freed up a lot of my time. This little bug is my introduction to automating some of the daily tasks such as post and article submissions to search engines and directories. The escalated growth of backlinks is encouraging and I am confident that the number will soon catch up to and outpace the previous number.
Market Samurai is another valuable program in my tool kit. It is invaluable for research and keeping track of marketing campaigns. The more I use this software the more I realize its value. Cannot recommend it highly enough – everyone, in my opinion should have it. If you are just starting out and dollars are scarce, a ramen noodle diet for a week would be worth it to just be able to buy this program.
What are my goals for November?
- Increase traffic by 20%+ (I’m following Darren Rowse’s formula here)
- Get back on to earning some dollars.
- Spend less time checking my daily stats which is so addictive now that I can see the needle move, either up or down, daily. Maybe the novelty will wear off and I’ll do this just once a day, in the morning.
And speaking of the needle moving – it is amazing how volatile Google’s ranking/positioning can be. I guess until you earn your stripes you are susceptible to swings that take you up or down by several hundred. I was surprised when I checked the statistics for a competitor which had a PR of 2, and now suddenly no PR! It could be a glitch or is this the famous Google Slap?
Happy Blogging!
Valentina
Blogger for Money
… cheese servings were scarce this last month
