Damien at the Speed of Life – DATSOL

This is a monthly feature here where I measure my 3 blogs’ progress. My goal with this series is to provide 100% transparency. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category.  First I list the CAN data for each blog.  Then I reflect with a few notes.

Legend:
C = Circulation, or backlinks
A = Analytics, or number of visitors and feed subscribers
N = Net, or the amount of money earned by the blog

1. Postcards from the Funny Farm, a psychology and inspiration blog

Circulation
Google Backlinks: 224
Yahoo! Backlinks: 6,884

Analytics
from 12-01-08 to 12-31-08
Visitors: 11,531
Page Views: 15,536
Feed Subscribers:  110

Net
$68.50

2. Damien at the Speed of Life, my online diary

Circulation
Google Backlinks: 36
Yahoo! Backlinks: 272

Analytics
from 12-01-08 to 12-31-08
Visitors: 603
Page Views: 1,520
Feed Subscribers: 17

Net
$30

3. Dynamite Lesson Plan, a teaching blog
Circulation
Google Backlinks: 224
Yahoo! Backlinks: 6,884

Analytics
from 12-01-08 to 12-31-08
Visitors: 217
Page Views: 503
Feed Subscribers:  14

Net
$25.01

NOTES: December was a great month for traffic.  I had close to 12,000 visitors which is a record by about 5,000 visitors.  So what happened?  Well, my static “Crazy Quotes” page has gained the 5th place on a Google search of those 2 terms.  I have been getting 300-500 hits on that page a day!  This has really helped the normal traffic and boosted the totals immensely.  A special post or page can carry your blog without a need for traffic driving methods.

You may recall last month I decided I was done with empty clicker traffic such as Entrecard.  It hurt me at first but very soon my other methods far surpassed Entrecard.  I just feel that the quality of blogs there is not high and most people who came to my sites just clicked for their points and took off like a bat out of hell.  I chose to work with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks a little more.  You will see attractive buttons in all three sidevars linking to my profiles on the social networks I am working with.  Please add me to your lists!

My net suffered this month because I didn’t bother much with it.  I decided to put my mental health above straining over sponsored posts.  I did make a nice chunk of change without trying hard at all.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note my recent Google PageRank increase on all three blogs.  They used to be 1, 0, 0 and last night after the roll through, they became 2, 2, 2. This will enable me to get more paying posts and potentially more advertisers.  I am a very happy camper as you all know I have been working very hard to bring my PageRank values up.  Still though, I believe the future is going to be based on 100% pure transparency of stats and not on any dictator of value like PageRank.  That’s the reason I will continue to post CAN stats on all my blogs through 2009.

As always, I want to be open to your questions and comments through this series.  The comment box is waiting for you.  You’ve seen my results read my notes, what do you have to say? Is there something I missed you’d like to discuss?  How were your CAN results last month?

I’ve developed some good habits that bring blog traffic and wanted to share them with you today. Pre-1995 thought tells us that people visit a website when they see it advertised or if they find it through a search. The advent of Google and blogs has brought about a different thinking since 1995 and that is this:

People will come to your blog through text-links, blogrolls, social media (I know of at least 150 big players) direct reference in a post or in a review … and many more ways.

A related issue is advertising. We used to think advertisers paid when you had good roadside real estate that a lot of people saw. That is still somewhat true but now there is a whole new internet advertising market that pays to be effectively “linked” and picked up by Google. My dad recently asked me how I make money on my blog. When I told him about the reviews and ads he was surprised that I didn’t get paid only when people clicked on a product like they used to c.1995 when the affiliate stuff was just starting.

Here’s the point of all this folks:

The more links there are to you the more traffic you get.

I care about the content I publish more than most people, but I also recognize that blogging without an audience and SEO to bring people is rather pathetic. I read on the web constantly how people say “I don’t care if people read my blog, I don’t care about traffic.” I think I either don’t get their comment and need to hear more about why they say that or I think they are pretty much idiots. I mean why would you spend the time to publish your words when you didn’t care who read them? The fact is peeps is that all bloggers care about what people think of their words and all bloggers want their analytics and circulation to be as big as possible. If anyone starts telling you their “purist” routine, link them here ;) I’d love to take them on in the comments.

Here’s a few ways I use to get my links read as much as possible. I am always trying new things. That is part of the fun of this for me. In August, for example, I set records partially as a result of using these techniques. Try them out, but remember, your first priority every day you blog is to make sure you have the best content you can muster updated:

In-Series Plugin (WordPress)
This takes about 10-15 minutes to figure out but after that you can use it in seconds to string a table of contents along with a big thought you break into several posts. If on post gets picked up by SU or DIGG, guess what, they all come along … automatic.

Simple Tags
Allows automated tagging. Suggests from your internals as well as from Yahoo! and Tag the Net. These are like bait that can hook folks searching out there for your content.

Alex-King’s Popularity Contest
Update: WPGuy offers solution for this plugin’s error msg.
Use the feature to make a “Top 50″ page. When you maked a post, put some of your best/most popular posts in as text linking. This is called “deep-linking” and it is just as important to your traffic as linking out. BUT do that two. I have a minimum rule usually followed of 3 deeplinks/3 outlinks (usually from my blogroll). It’s been a good strategy for several months and helped traffic immensely. When you draw from these, you are theoretically drawing from what people enjoyed and will enjoy.

Final Link out: If you’re new to my blog or new to blogging, you may not have read this helpful interview I did where I give a lot more tips on how to generate traffic:
My FuelmyBlog Interview

Is your blog read as much as you want?

My C.A.N. results on all three blogs in August 2008 are detailed below. Some things could have gone better, but that is an “as always” thing. More things went right than ever before. I am very happy about these results across all three blogs.

Check out how I did in August 2008.

As always, I welcome questions in the comment section. Please feel free to leave a comment or question.

An explanation of the C.A.N. blog rating system can be found here. I maintain 3 blogs. This post combines all their results in one place.

Postcards from the Funny Farm

1. Circulation: 10 incoming links(below). Goal was 4. Percentage= 250%

2. Analytics: 3376 uniques. Goal was 5000. Percentage= 68% :(

3. Net: $410. Goal was $250. Percentage=164%

4. Overall Rating: 268/300= 89%

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Damien at the Speed of Life
1. Circulation: 1 incoming link. Goal was 1. (Thank you Katelynjane!) Percentage=100%
Blogging on a Postcard
2. Analytics: 787 visitors for the month. Goal was 600. :) Percentage= 131%
3. Net: $40. Goal was $20. Percentage= 150%
4. Overall Rating: 300/300= 100% :)

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Dynamite Lesson Plan
1. Circulation: 1 incoming link. Goal was 1. Percentage= 100%
2. Analytics: 634 visitors for the month. Goal was 300. :) Percentage= 211%
3. Net: $0. Goal was $0. Percentage= 100%

4. Overall Rating: 300/300= 100%

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Subscribe to this blog via and Watch how I do in September, as-I-do-it!

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Okay, now for the important stuff: Goals for next month!

1. Circulation: Well, last month I had a low goal of one because I just started the online diary. Matters got more interesting (difficult) when I bought and transferred a domain. This blog is now www.damienriley.com (in case you didn’t know – do change your bookmarks. There is no need to change your RSS feed). Okay, enough blabbering. I am going to go big here and try to get 10 incoming links. Probably 5-6 guestblogs so if anyone out there is interested, hook me up … I always hook up back ;)
2. I knocked this one out of the park. I have learned that you guys are interested in my online diary! Social media helped me get the word out and a couple ezines interviewed me which brought in a lot of traffic. I have a daily “surfing system” in place that I think is going to double my analytics in September but I am not going to go too crazy just yet. It was 780 last month and my goal was 600. How about I double the difference and add it to the 780: 1140 unique visitors for the month.
3. Net: $50

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Postcards from the Funny Farm

1. Circulation: I had over 10 incoming links last month and it was relatively easy. With the 2 newer blogs I really have to knock on doors to get those links but Postcards seems to generate them automatically. For that reason, I am going to challenge myself by doing guest blogs and links from other sites. I’m stepping up the circulation goal to 20 in September. Here goes nothin’!

2. Analytics: I missed my visitors goal by 32% last month. That’s when you have to get real and set a more realistic goal. I always have a feeling PFTFF will go huge any day now. I imagine it being up there with some of the big hitters. Alas, it hasn’t happened yet. For now, I will scale back the goal to a cool 4000 visitors in September.

3. Net: I beat my net goal by over $160. With a few other income opportunities through various means, I think I will go yet higher in September. Nonetheless, I don’t wan’t to get caught up in the “hard” money when I should be focusing on content and passively making the “easy” money. There will be a time to push up into the 700’s and higher but in September, we are not quite there yet. So, my net goal for September will be $400.

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Dynamite Lesson Plan
1. Circulation: This month I think I can get some interest in what I do at DLP. I am going to try and get friends to do that. I am also going to try and find avenues where my posts are read more and possibly “quoted” ergot “linkback” ed. Despite the blog only being one month old, I’m shooting for a bold 3 incoming links. Help me out if you read something worth linking to! ;)
2. Analytics: My goal was 300 and I beat it. This is a tough blog to get people to, moreso than my other two. However, I am going to try and find some educational forums and linkback. I will also use the normal traffic building services you find in my sidebar. Still, my goal is a conservative 500 visitors in September.
3. Net: $40

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Subscribe to this blog via and Watch how I do in September, as-I-do-it!

I write these posts monthly to inform and entertain my readers about the progress of this blog.

I base my goals and progress on 3 criteria:

Circulation, Analytics, and Net

August Goals are:
Circulation: 1 incoming link in the form of a guest blog.
Analytics: 600 visitors for the month.
Net: $10 not possible since paid post companies require at least 20 posts within the last 90 days.  Will work on getting this met and applying in August as my NET goal.

Watch how I do in August.

I have to remind myself the people who sell at my door are humans. They seem like the lowest form of life sometimes. Maybe it’s because of my experiences. I wrote months ago at my psychology blog about the Kirby salesman that refused to leave. There have been countless others. One problem is that they are bad salesman. I just had one tonight who would leave. I was in my spa when i came to the door. he was 18-20 thereabouts and I told him right away we didn’t want an alarm. But he took that as a challenge. Who trains the salesmen of the world and why aren’t they teaching them that no thank you means no money will be changing hands. What’s your take on salesmen at the door?

This morning I woke up in the usual way but what followed were three amazing blessings I would never have expected:

1. I called 4 of my students’ parents about their talking in class and all 4 were really helpful!
2. I got a compliment from a fellow teacher who was observing my class for an hour today (I have been having some real challenges with this group — 3 more days woo hoo!)
3. AND THE BIGGIE: I found out our teachers union finalized a deal with the district that gives us a 5% pay increase retro to last August (2007). That means September’s paycheck will be fat like Buddha (no offense meant to Buddhists, just a similie for color).

I’m excited about broadcasting my inner neuroses and other to the world through this online diary. I hope you will subscribe. See ya soon.