Blog Statistics Update May – June 2013
Despite our falling traffic, we have had a good month on the blog. I write this blog for the comments, and some of the posts I’ve written have had a very good discussion/debate, particularly:
Guest Posting
I had two guest posts this month:
- Side Hustle Series: I’m a Human Guinea Pig at Budgets Are Sexy
- Your Credit Card Prescription at Money Life and More
We also had a wonderful guest post from Cash Rebel: Losing My Graduate School Funding.
Analytics Data from May 16 to June 15, 2013
People who listen to us, as of June 15, 2013:
RSS subscribers: 165 (+7)
Twitter followers: 431 (+44)
Facebook fans: 35 (+1)
Rankings:
Alexa: 135,231 (+4,182)
Google PR: 3 (no change)
MozRanks: 5.11 and 4.97 (+0.11 and +0.10)
Some Google Analytics statistics:
Another month of dropping traffic! I feel like we’ve been set back 6 months. It’s the search traffic that has fallen off precipitously – by half over the last few months. I’m not really sure what to do about that! As of now I’m not interested in SEO.
Popular Posts
Most viewed posts:
1) Early Retirement Isn’t for Us
2) What Do You Consider a Good Salary?
3) Average Clothes Spending and Pattern
4) How to Move Out on a Shoestring Budget
5) Losing My Graduate School Funding
Most Commented Posts:
Attend Weddings But Don’t Go into Debt
Trying Hard to Not Time the Market
Hand in Hand: Lean In and Getting to 50/50
Pulling Back the Veil on Our Daily Money Management
Earnings
I’m considering adding a section here to keep track of how much money we’re earning from the blog each month. Hint: it’s very little! But I’m not sure how to report the income, really. For example, in one month I’ll see that someone signs up with Republic Wireless using my referral link but it’s not until the next month that my account actually gets credited. Aside from RW referrals, our biggest source of income is Google Adsense, but as we haven’t hit $100 yet we haven’t actually taken a payout (that shows you how slow it’s going!). I suppose I should wait until we take the payouts/credits to report that kind of stuff here, but that means the section will be pretty sparse for a while! But I’m excited because this last week we had our first affiliate sale and then we got another one the next day! The payout is very small, of course, but it’s nice to see after weeks of zeros.
Search Terms from Real People
An easy question: “should young adults live with their parents until they get married?”
In my culture, no. In others, perhaps yes.
A great question I can’t answer: “what does wealthy means spiritually”
It’s not a question but I’ll still answer: “we cant agree on joint or seperate accounts”
Don’t get married!
I don’t know what this word means: “housenknecht diagram”
Do you report your blog earnings? What are the advantages and disadvantages? How often do you guest post or host guest posts (from bloggers)?
Filed under: blogging, month in review · Tags: dropping traffic, earnings, guest posting
Blog Statistics Update June-July 2013
Blog Statistics Update February – March 2013
Blog Statistics Update September – October 2013
Blog Statistics Update June – July 201210 Responses to "Blog Statistics Update May – June 2013"
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Re: falling traffic
I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but a good portion of the time when I’m trying to read a post, it just gives an error that the post is not found, no matter if I’m clicking from the front page or the comments or someone’s blogroll.
In fact, I’m a little surprised I was able to open up this post!
nicoleandmaggie recently posted..When will we leave a sharply worded comment on your post?
Thanks for letting us know. I wasn’t aware of this issue, so I’ll try to figure out what’s going on. I’m wondering if this could have something to do with the caching plugin that we are using. Do you remember when this started (has it always happened?), or exactly what the error was?
It hasn’t always happened, maybe the past week or two, maybe the past month (it has been very busy at work this summer so the weeks kind of meld together). Usually I’m eventually able to open up the post either later that day or the next day, though not always the next time I check on it.
The error is something like post not found or post doesn’t exist and then it gives me a list of recent posts, including the one I’m trying to open, but clicking on that link just brings me back to the post not found page.
nicoleandmaggie recently posted..Money can’t buy me love
Thanks so much for your help! I have seen that page on occasion when our server has gone down but no more frequently recently than before. Kyle is trying to figure out what could be the problem.
I don’t report earnings from blogging specifically (which would be $0 right now anyway) but I lump all money outside Leslie’s job and my own job into an “extra income”.
Right now I haven’t hosted any guest posts or guest posted myself, but I’m totally open to the idea. I love being able to hear other people’s voices on blogs and have considered making a guest post a weekly thing on my own blog in the future. As for me guest posting, I guess I haven’t looked into it too much to know how to get started. How easy was it for you to start guest posting on other blogs?
Kyle @ Debt Free Diaries recently posted..The Best Time to Make Mistakes – And What to Do When You Make One
The first guest post or two I did were actually swaps organized within the Yakezie network, but I haven’t seen anyone offering to organize those recently. Mostly I look for bloggers I have somewhat of a relationship with who announce that they are looking for some guest posts because of travel or a busy season, and if I have an idea that seems to fit with their blog I will email them to pitch it. This is what happened with Cash Rebel but in reverse – he and I have developed a relationship through comments and emails and when he said on his blog that he wanted to start guest posting I said I would host one (as did a few others). My post for Budgets Are Sexy was one that I had an idea about for a long time, over a year, and after I felt EPF had grown enough to be able to use the traffic I pitched it to his series of guest posts on side hustles. That was easy because I knew he had that ongoing series. What I haven’t done yet – and this is my next step – is to pitch to someone who doesn’t have an open call and who I have less of a relationship with (generally bigger bloggers who don’t comment on other blogs or don’t respond to every comment on their blogs).
I think a guest post a week would be too often for EPF. My goal is to host one no more than once per month. I don’t want my voice or the storyline of our finances to get too diluted. I had about a guest post a week for 3-4 weeks back when I was preparing for my preliminary exam and while I was happy to have the break from writing and responding to comments that was too frequent as I only post 3x/week.
It’s kind of funny how much traffic I get from these posts. Some of them have really not generated much traffic at all, even though I thought the post fit in very well with that blogger’s niche and would be appealing to his audience. The one guest post I did that consistently drives traffic for the long-term was for an up-and-coming blogger. Now that her blog is kind of huge I get a nice amount of traffic daily, though that’s from bot, not readers.
Last year, I was reporting how much money I had earned even if I hadn’t received it yet, but this year, I’m only listing money that is actually sitting in my back account. I feel that is more realistic. If a Christmas bonus was announced in April, I wouldn’t put that money in my budget then, but wait until it actually was given to me.
Edward Antrobus recently posted..The Blue Collar Money Manifesto
Yes, I agree that is more realistic. I guess I’ll only have infrequent updates, though, since we won’t take payouts often.
I’ve been doing quarterly updates (next one is Monday) as part of my $3k challenge. I also have the advantage that the freelance side of my online income has been picking up so that I actually have something to report each time. 🙂
Edward Antrobus recently posted..How Much Money Do You Need for Retirement?
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