How is this blog going after 6 months? How much traffic/money does it bring in?

New to my blog? You may want to think about subscribing to be notified of new posts. Thanks for visiting!

Now that I've decided to pursue writing seriously, it's worth taking a look at how this blog has been doing in the six months since I started it. How much traffic does it get? How much money does it earn? I'll get into specifics shortly, but first here's some background.

I started this blog as an experiment to achieve 3 goals:

1. To see if I can sustain a regular writing habit
2. To learn the technical aspects of blogging
3. To see if anyone is interested in what I have to say

How did the experiment go?

Well, it turns out I can sustain a regular writing habit. It was difficult at first because blogging wasn't part of the rhythm of my day, but I forced myself to spend some time doing it each day and gradually it became habitual. I then started to think in terms of what would be good to blog about while reading and doing other things. I don't blog every day, but I do most days. I have not gone longer than a week between posts since I started and those larger gaps were due to travelling or time off.

I have learnt a great deal about the technical side of blogging since I started. I am a savvy tech user to begin with and my job is teaching people to use technology so there wasn't much doubt that I would pick it up fairly quickly, but I have been amazed by how much there is to know and consider when blogging. I knew basically nothing when I started but I now know a great deal about Wordpress, themes, plugins, CSS, PHP, RSS, blog design considerations and posting techniques, advertising and of course search engine optimisation (SEO). There is plenty more I need to know and in tech things move fast, but I'm confident now I could get someone else up to speed in blogging within a matter of weeks, not months.

It also seems people are interested in what I write about. Not everyone is interested in everything I post, but people seem to appreciate the non-mainstream nature of my post choices and the philosophical tone I use. It seems to be thinking people who enjoy reading my blog. In truth this was the least important of my goals and perhaps that has shown. I have not been very consistent in my choices of topic or style of writing. I haven't really approach the blog from an editorial standpoint, instead just posting whatever seems interesting at the time. Nevertheless I have received excellent feedback from those who have been reading so I'm happy with the result.

Speaking of results, how about those specifics I mentioned earlier?

This is a graph of my traffic as tracked by Google Analytics from February 23rd - July 29th 2008. As you can see it fluctuates quite a bit. I get more traffic on the days that I post, which probably isn't surprising. The highest peak you can see was 34 visitors. What did I do that day? I made a post that referenced an article on a popular blog called Roughly Drafted. The article on Roughly Drafted showed that someone had made reference to it and curious readers clicked through to find out what it was about. Analysing the flow of traffic is fascinating, even for such small numbers at these.

In the whole period from February until now the site has had 1,314 visitors, on average 8.32 per day. This pie chart shows where they've been coming from. Direct traffic is from people who actually typed my site address into the browser and who are therefore most likely people I know personally since no-one else would think to type that in. Referring sites are links on other parts of the web, in this case mostly Facebook and Twitter. I notice I get more traffic when I announce my new blog posts on these services, so I have set things up so that this happens automatically.

I am surprised by the amount of search engine traffic I have been receiving. Most of it comes from people searching for my name, but I do get several visits from people typing in phrases related to my posts. The most obscure of these is probably the person who searched for 'brendan nelson clarendon state school' who then clicked through to a post I had written about Brendan Nelson writing a blog. I mentioned in passing that he was visiting a school. It probably wasn't what the person searching was looking for, but I know they spent 1 minute and 57 seconds on that page and then clicked onto another part of my site so I assume they were interested nonetheless.

This FeedBurner graphic shows the number of people who have subscribed to my blog. These are regular readers who want to be informed each time there is a new post. This number fluctuates each day depending on who has been checking their RSS updates and I only started using FeedBurner to track statistics about a week ago so this number probably isn't too meaningful right now but I have a live version in my sidebar so hopefully you will see it improve over time.

Finally, what about ads? I am using the Google AdSense service for my blog. Put simply, advertisers submit their ads to Google, who decide where they should best be displayed so they appear next to relevant content. I have made certain spots on my site available to have advertising in and Google fills these spots automatically. If someone clicks an ad, the advertiser is charged, I receive a small commission and Google pockets the rest. Some ads are paid for on a per-click basis and others based on the number of times they are seen, depending on the advertiser's preference.

I put ads on my site in March. So far they have earned me the proud sum of $6.29. It's not much for five months of blogging, but when you look closer it's not bad. $6.29 has come from 31 clicks - that's about 20 cents per click. 31 clicks from 1,314 visits is around a 2% 'clickthrough' rate. I am getting about 8 visits a day at the moment, which in web terms is statistically zero. It's all about traffic. More traffic generates more revenue, both from extra clicks and because Google puts more lucrative ads on higher traffic sites. Due to the way the web works, more traffic also generates more traffic in a positive feedback loop. There's a point of critical mass that is reached and then traffic more or less feeds itself.

Looking back at my experiment, traffic wasn't one of my goals. But now I've ticked off my earlier goals and completed my experiment, it's time for some new ones. This time I will share them and make it a public experiment. My blogging goals for rest of this year are:

1. Establish and maintain a clear focus and purpose
2. Build a loyal base of subscribers
3. Raise my profile and reputation

I try not to have more than three goals at a time because it becomes too difficult to focus, and you'll notice that making money isn't in the list. The reason for this, aside from it being naive to believe I can make a decent writing income from a standing start, is that the most important thing is to build something of value. This experiment is to see if I can build something of value to a group of people beyond my friends and associates. If I can do that, then there will be opportunities to be rewarded. If not, I hardly think I deserve to be rewarded, do you?

In the next post I will discuss how I intend to work towards these goals. If you're interested in following this story as it unfolds, you might consider subscribing to my RSS feed. Don't know what RSS is? Read this.