Saturday Morning Recap
posted in Ramblings |In keeping with the routine of checking up on assorted stats every Saturday morning while waking up and swilling sweet, sweet coffee, here goes:
Traffic:
Traffic was down a bit from the first week, but with the holidays in effects (which typically kill website traffic in general as people are having off having fun away from the computer and not bored at work) that should be taken with a grain o’ salt. Most people are here because of the poker blog, too, as nothing has been indexed in search engines yet, so I’m not paying a ton of attention to unique users, hits, etc. The first few months of any new site isn’t really indicative of much, traffic-wise, so don’t get too hung up on looking for trends and anything useful.
One nice thing I’m seeing, and a trend that you should look for early on, is whether the search engine spiders are finding and indexing your content. Each search engine sends out automated spiders or bots that constantly crawl through your site, taking a snapshot of each page for the search engine’s index of what’s out there on the Web. The schedule varies from site to site and search engine to search engine, but hopefully within the first few weeks of your site being live you’ll be visited by the search engine spiders for the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN).
These visits from search engine spiders show up in your stats, so when you see that Googlebot has been hitting your site, that’s good news, as it means Google is aware of your site and indexing. What’s important to remember, though, is that it doesn’t mean that your pages are being included in search results yet, so don’t go nuts searching in Google and trying to find them. Remember, Google typically imposes a sandbox filter on new sites, which means that they have to wait a month or two before they get included in results. They’re being visited and indexed, but they’re not included in the search results until the site has been around for awhile.
So it’s good to see visits from spiders in your stats, and I’m already seeing regular visits from the spiders for Google, Yahoo (whose spider is called Inktomi Slurp in some stats packages), and MSN.
I also got a lot of traffic from Reddit last week, as some kind soul bookmarked my Writing Good Content post in their system. One thing I like about the WordPress theme I’m using for this site is that if you’re on an individual post page (not the home page, but clicking through to the individual page that posts are on), it has built in support for people to recommend pages at social bookmarking sites like delicious, Digg, Technorati, Reddit, and more. Those links come baked into the theme and I didn’t have to lift a finger to make that happen. Depending on the type of site you’re working on, you can get some nice traffic from social bookmarking sites such as those above.
Another nice benefit of using WordPress is that it’s integrated with Technorati and automatically makes your content immediately searchable there, so I got a handful of hits from people at Technorati searching on various affiliate topics.
Income:
For the week I made $3.89 at Adsense, and $12.50 at CommissionJunction, for a total of $16.39. Again, not paying much attention to these numbers for the first few months, as they’re not indicative of much.
Content:
While it’s nice to review your traffic stats and income on a weekly basis, it’s also a good idea to check in with your output on the content side, too, as well as running a quick dipstick test to make sure your project as a whole is on track with where you want it to be.
I’m pretty happy with the form things are taking here at Gadooney and it’s been easy (and fun) to get content up on a daily basis. It’s a pace I can maintain pretty much indefinitely, and, to be honest, the stuff I’m posting is also helping me as an affiliate myself. I always cringe at putting myself out there on public display, in any capacity, but good things happen when I force that upon myself. I’m maintaining better habits myself in my own affiliate work and staying more abreast of assorted issues and topics than in the past, for fear of looking foolish about something I might preach about here.
I’m also encouraged by the fact that this site is reasonably unique and reasonably valuable to people looking to make some extra money via affiliate marketing. Sure, there are the uber affiliates discussing the business at sites like ProBlogger and JohnChow.com, but that’s an entirely different world than most people starting out in the affiliate business have access to. Don’t get me wrong, both of those are great, useful sites, but the issues you struggle with when learning the ropes are different than the issues faced when trying to optimally monetize your hugely-popular, heavily-trafficked sites that have been around since ancient times.
I still need to work at being more accessible here, putting a face to things, and finding ways to drag readers into the fray, especially those who end up being successful in launching their own sites. The ultimate success (and profitability) of the site not only hinges on whether I can successfully help virtual strangers make money from the Web, but also in my ability to make those successes patently obvious to any new visitor to the site. I’d assumed originally that it’d be enough to simply show that I can successfully crank out profitable sites, but that’s not optimal. If Manny Ramirez filmed an infomercial offering to teach anyone to hit a curveball for $1,000, you’d see housewives and ninety-seven year old geezers mashing curveballs, not footage of Manny himself hitting curveball after curveball.
As far as being more accessible, I just need to get over my fear that anything personal and off-topic is to be avoided. Sure, a few readers will likely be annoyed, as they’re solely after content that might make them money, but most people enjoy seeing the person behind the blog, as long as it’s interesting (not a list of things I’ve eaten for lunch in the last week, sub-divided by food group, then listed in alphabetical order) and done in moderation. I’m shooting for an open, conversational sort of tone, so there’s no reason to shy away from the personal at times. If anything, it’s likely more profitable, as it’s much easier to take someone’s advice if you feel like you know them, even if it’s just a friendship conducted over the Internet tubes.