Blogging Journal (Month 6)
Published July 2nd, 2008
What a month it has been. I have many things to tell you about, so many in fact that I can’t type fast enough! I’ve accomplished most of last month’s blogging goals: I re-vamped the home page and successfully managed to add a form for readers to subscribe by email. I’m so glad I did this because I’ve picked up quite a few subscribers this way who are like me, and still prefer the convenience of reading about the new posts via email rather than a feed reader. I may personally use my feed reader more often once I subscribe to a few more blogs, but for now I love getting updates via email.
Overall, traffic increased by about 50% in June. This falls a bit short of my goal of doubling every month, but I realized that traffic isn’t everything, since I picked up a substantially higher amount of engaged and quality readers in June. As a result of this, my total subscribership almost doubled, I’m getting significantly more commenting, and even though I’m not earning much yet, my AdSense click-through rate improved noticeably in June. I’m also pleased to announce that a growing percentage of Value For Your Life readers come, tour around, and stay for a while: In fact, 25% of you are staying for longer than 2 minutes and 8% of you are staying for over an hour!
I’m thoroughly enjoying my goal of leaving more comments on my colleague’s blogs, and pick a few every week to tour around and take a closer look at. This is a big job since there are so many great blogs, but there is also a lot of talent so it’s definitely worth checking out!
My goal of finishing the Vegetarian Cooking Series was completed successfully. I love cooking and eating, and the readers I met through this series are just wonderful people. I make all kinds of food, but the goal of this series was to show people how to seamlessly incorporate a vegetarian into their meal planning with no ill effects. I would say mission accomplished!
I didn’t get around to opening a Facebook account yet, but the constant taunts from my mother (who opened an account last month) really do make me feel like perhaps the last person on earth to not be on it–so it goes on the list again for this month. The other thing that got put off was my big contest announcement: The delay had to do with the logistical issue of also wanting to run a personal challenge for myself during the same time period. The result is a combined personal challenge and reader contest all wrapped up into one big ball of fun–stay tuned on Friday for the announcement!
Now for some links:
A big thanks to my top 3 referring sites in June: No Debt Plan, My Good Cents, and Mrs. Micah
My top 3 posts this month were: 55 Ways to Save Pennies, 101 Things I Love About Dogs, and What Being a Surgeon Has Taught Me About Personal Finance. Speaking of which, a big thank you to Sara at On Simplicity who Stumbled a couple of these articles this month, which of course sent a stampede of people my way, but more importantly allowed me to connect with some great readers through their emails and comments! By the way, I have to say that I am thoroughly impressed with my web hosting service, Bluehost, the site was able to handle a few thousand people within a very short amount of time, without even a hiccup–it’s a good thing since I was 500 miles away when it happened! I also love the fact that you can call their tech support people with very little wait–they have been nothing but polite and helpful (and I’m sure I’ve asked some pretty stupid questions!), for the monthly price they offer one of the best packages around (I did my homework), but it’s the customer service and the technical services they offer that blows everyone else out of the water as far as I’m concerned. If you’re looking for a host, or thinking of switching, definitely check them out!
Next month’s goals:
1. Big contest announcement…coming very soon!
2. Actually post a couple of recipes
3. Write a book review
4. Join Facebook
5. Participate in more blog carnivals–they are so much fun!
6. Keep working on writing the best quality articles I can
That’s all for now, hope July treats you well and that everyone’s enjoying their Canada Day and 4th of July celebrations!
Sara on July 3, 2008
Congratulations on hitting so many of your goals! It’s always exciting to hear about successes, and it encourages the rest of us. Thanks for the mention–I’m really glad more readers got to find those awesome posts because of StumbleUpon! They were truly some of the best pieces I read last month.