My first 4 months with a blog- Site stats review
physiI started this site as I was trying to get a grip on my own finances. I appreciate how financial stress can affect relationships. Today we will go over my site stats over my first 4 months as a blogger.
As a dad, having a sound financial plan allows for less stress and hopefully better relationships with our family. Thus, I started DadsDollarsDebts (originally Dads Dollars and Debts) on October 26th and published 2 posts that date – Fun for Free and Money Can’t buy Sunshine. From there I have published 2 posts every week on a Tuesday and Thursday schedule. I started out slow, picked up some traffic in November (at least a descent amount of page views at 1,500). December and January were relatively flat but still with over 2,000 pageviews. Finally, come February I had almost 5,000 pageviews with over 1,000 users. This is exciting for me as I was not sure I was making much progress.
Of note, most of my bumps in traffic came from mentions on other sites, particularly Physician On Fire Sunday Best Posts.
I opened a Twitter account right away @DadDollarDebt
Over the course of 4 months I have gained 333 followers. While this has not been as fast as some other sites, I am still happy with the progress I have made. I have received various advice regarding how to increase Twitter followings (and thus site visits) such as using robots to sign up to similar twitter users. I chose and still choose to grow my following organically through reaching out to other twitter users, posting interesting and value adding articles, and just being involved in the community. It may take me longer to grow then using a bot, but I think it is worth the effort.
I made a Facebook page @DadsDollarsDebts
Started in December and currently have 5 likes. As an experiment, I spent $13.95 from 1/26 to 3/1/17. I reached a total of 1,281 people but only had 12 link clicks (the cost was $1.16 per page click), therefore I stopped using this advertising method.
I made a Pintrest and Instagram page in February
I have not been active on either and do not believe I have any followers yet.
I started tracking my page hits, etc. on Google Analytics in late November. Prior to that I used SquareSpaces native analytic program. My numbers above are from a combination of both analytics, though I suspect Google is more accurate.
I used Google Adwords in February for less then a week and believe I spent a total of $9. I had few hits with this advertising but may have not given it long enough to work. I may consider using this again in the future.
Over the last 4 months I have tried to improve my writing. English class was never my strength and my writing over the last 10 years has all been academic research papers. Thus, switching to a blog format is quite different. While writing is not my forte, I am hoping for it to improve over time. One book I read to help was Stephen King’s “On Writing”. I found it interesting and it solidified that focusing on the story is key. Hopefully I will look back in a year or two and see that my writing has improved.
Will I add advertisers?
I had Google Ads and Amazon Affiliate links since the early days of this site and they have both produced me a total of $1.50. While not rich from this site, and doubt I ever will, but I keep trying. I would like some Affiliate Advertisers once I hit 1,000- 2,000 pageviews a day and will reach out to some people at that time.
How can I improve traffic?
1) I can continue writing useful content, making it more interesting as I go along.
2) I can continue my presence on various forums. Currently I am on Rockstar Forum, White Coat Investor Forum, and Boggle Heads.
3) I can continue reaching out to others on Twitter and other social media platforms.
4) I can continue reading other sites and participating in their Comments sections. This is likely the most time consuming of the above as it requires reading posts and comments to really try and add value.
5) I can start trying to write some guest posts.
I like the look of these stats. The jumps are hugeeeee which means lots of rooms to grow!
Attacking Pinterest has been utterly disappointing, I’m hoping you would have a better time than me. I feel like the entire website is closed, all the boards are closed. Besides help from the wonderful Othala Fehu above, I have a total of 46 followers and not moving an inch more.
Thanks for the encouragement!
Congrats DadsDollarsDebts! Your page view stats are great! I’m close but not there yet. I think you’re right–commenting on others’ sites is a really good way to add followers but time consuming! It’s how I found your site! 🙂 I also just finished “On Writing.” Great book. Stephen King is prolific-2000 words a day! Wow! Haha! Here’s to steady progress and adding value!
On Writing is a great book! Commenting is time consuming. I wake up before I go to work, read the new posts that magically appear in my in box, comment if I have something of value to say, and then play with my kid before heading to work. This likely takes up an hour of my morning. Then after our son goes to bed, I am back on it. I would say I easily put in at least 1 to 1.5 hours on other sites and forums 4-5 x a week. Cheers and continue on with the steady progress.
Congrats on your success so far!! I find this community to be incredibly supportive and endlessly interesting. It makes connecting with other bloggers an absolute pleasure.
PS – I joined AOL Finance a few weeks ago. I’m not sure what the ROI is yet, but something worth looking into for traffic generation.
Cheers
Caren
Thanks for the share. I will check out the AOL Finance site.
The community is amazing and honestly the best part of this gig.
Thanks for this post, your should add a link to this post [here](http://forums.rockstarfinance.com/t/stats-update/2831) because that is a Rockstar post about us new bloggers and our stats, it also has a helpful reddit link for new bloggers, keep up the hard work!
Good advice. I love Rockstar forum. Will add the link now!
I’m about two months into my blogging experiment or so and you’re destroying me in terms of views! Congrats to you that’s awesome progress. I gotta pick it up!
Thanks! Very kind and supportive words. Look forward to checking out your site!
Thanks. It’s still a baby and am finding it hard to publish frequently. Would love some tips on how you increased traffic so steadily
Keep reading other sites and commenting (like you did here) and get on some forums. Specific to your field- athletes or finance sites. Rockstar Forum is a great place to get advice and connect with people.
Excellent stuff DDD. Like Dollar Habits, very encouraging for newbies like myself. If you find the “secret sauce” to building an audience, let us know. Keep up the good work!
We gotta ask Physician on Fire what his “secret sauce” is because he grew his quick. Thanks for checking out the site!
Harder than it looks eh!
Just concentrate on #1 doing what you enjoy (in case it never pays off) and #2 providing a ton of value to as many people as you can. A little of it will come back to you.
Thanks for the support. Definitely harder then it looks! I am writing what comes to mind and I hope it saddling some value. Have enjoyed your site for a long time and you were a big motivator to get started.
I think we’re in the same boat. I’m also an academic doc with a side blog, though < 4 weeks old.
This writing is way more fun than the work writing, but that's what pays my bills so has to be my priority still.
PoF said he didn't start taking advertisers until he hit 1000 pageviews/day also — he somehow hit that really quickly. He's transparent about what he's done, but he's also got some secret sauce. Maybe just good writing.. 🙂
He has a lot of secret sauce. I asked him and he said the same thing- no advertisers until he hit a 1000 daily views. I just hit 100 (so maybe you are doing better then me). Still it is fun and never gonna pay the bills completely (at least it is unlikely too).
Your site is doing great. Keep up the writing. I am also alt-brown, was in academia (now in private practice of sorts), wrote lots of papers (now blogs), married to an American woman (though half puerto rican). So see we really are in the same boat!
We definitely need to start our own blog network the same way WCI/PoF did. Should we call it the Alt-brown network?
I am NOT anywhere close to PoF in readership, and I am behind you as well. I’ve been at this less than 1 month so far.
At the moment this is a creative outlet and I’m not trying to generate money. To keep me motivated to write, reader interest and even a handful of dollars would be great. Otherwise it may be like exercise and get shuttled out of the way when things get busy.
At the moment I’m just enjoying the writing, however I haven’t taken up a new hobby in a really long time, so it’ll also take work just to keep doing it. I’m still in academia so other ways to pay the bills would be great. 🙂
A few bucks would be great. I think I am at $0.43 on Amazon! Keep motivated. Write as long as you enjoy it. As they say, “don’t quit your day job”…at least not yet! Keep up the good work.
Google adwords tends to not work if you’re just looking for traffic. I tried it a year ago, and it’s quite expensive! Plus most of the visitors don’t turn into regular blog readers.
Thanks for the advice. I think I will be avoiding it for now!
Thank you for a glimpse into your four months of blogging. Congrats on the progress and solid page view and user increases. As a newbie, I found your stats very interesting and inspiring. Keep up the great work. I look forward to watching this site grow.
Thanks for checking out the blog. It is fun to keep track of the stats. Without data, progress is unmeasurable. Thanks for the sipper too and I hope your site grows too. I enjoyed reading a few of the posts.
Thanks for the tips. Your site looks great.
I added Google Analytics. thanks for sharing your experience.
Nice! Data is key….let me know how it goes.
Best of luck in your blogging gig/hobby. I just started out recently too and my stats are similar. Maybe we can trade tips :-). I have only google ads for now, but I’m just trying to focus on content and be consistent. It’s tough to carve out time on a consistent basis with a family but I’m getting there…..into a routine.
Thanks for the well wishes. Same to you! I am going to post some of the things I have learned next week. Coming up with content is definitely the hard part of the process. I figure a person really has to like writing to keep it going. I find most of my writing occurs late at night when everyone else has gone to bed. Looking forward to reading some of your stuff!