Table of contents for Blog Stats and Earnings 2008
This is a monthly feature at Damien at the Speed of Life where I measure my 3 blogs’ progress toward goals. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category.
CAN stands for:
Circulation: Incoming links.
Analytics: # of visitors
Net: Money made or key takeaways. (Because money isn’t everything.)*
I often use shorthand in referring to my blogs:
PFTFF: Postcards from the Funny Farm
DATSOL: Damien at the Speed of Life
DLP: Dynamite Lesson Plan
Below are my results. I invite your comments on this topic.
PFTFF:
C – 9
A – 6265
N – $165*
DATSOL:
C – 16
A – 261
N – $165*
DLP:
C – 9
A – 505
N – $165*
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*income for all blogs together was $165
My Notes:
November was a really great month for my blogs in some ways and it had a few opportunities to improve. The month marked the beginning of my third year as a blogger and I feel I have learned a lot in the time I’ve been at this. I published this week a list of 50 blogging tips where I got most of them down. One of the most important of those 50 is knowing your stats. That’s why I do these CAN blog self-rating posts. Postcards had a surge in unique visitors due partly to my submitting my own posts to social media. I use socialmarker.com to do this.
I had fewer incoming links mostly due to the fact that I have really slowed down guest blogging. I do a guest spot with the Fuelmyblog Carnival a couple times a month but other than that I just haven’t had the time. I have found that guestblogging is a sure-fire way to get some solid backlinks though.
Goals for December: I’d like to keep everything as it is but a little more in the income department. I will achieve that by writing more sponsored posts at the usual places. I wish I was more innovative about making blog money. I’ve been talking with my friend Justin at Dragonblogger.com about the idea of affiliate advertising. This intrigues me but as yet I don’t know how to do it. I also have to link to my friend Derek’s Blogging for Money post. He has a very “communal,” accessible approach to discussing the topic.
I’ve made a few slight adjustments I want to see if they have an effect:
- Moved adsense ads from the bottom of each post to the top.
- Added Amazon ad strip in the sidebar.
Watch how I do in December!
4 Comments
Congrats on your blog numbers, good luck meeting your December goals.
@Dragon Blogger: Hey thanks Justin. I appreciate your input. It was a slow month for stats but a big month for building sanity ;)
Congrats on the numbers Damien, looks like you’ve had some nice growth in the volume of traffic.
I too have been trying to give more time to affiliate earnings, but have a great deal to learn as it hasn’t been a key source of revenue yet.
If you need some adsense advice just let me know! I got a nice big check from Google last week :)
A lot of it is trial and error – (just think how many times I’ve changed themes and ad layouts!) but I think I’ve finally figured out a system that brings not only consistent earnings but traffic also. (IMBL is charted to top 30,000 hits this month!!!)
Keep up the good work!
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