Bloggers Journal

One month ago today, I decided to make a real effort and start blogging.  Whilst in this time I have taken some banter from friends and family, I am pleased that I have managed to achieve something.  I know in myself that this website, or my niche site, a Couple’s Guide to Disney, will be able to help my readers, or someone searching through Google for some advice on anything I write about.

This is a common trend I have noted on the blogs that I read.  I think it is a really good idea, as it helps you keep a track of your progress, as well as providing transparency for your readers.  One of the most important things I think that any writer should be, is transparent.  I, like so many, want to help others with their ambitions.  Being transparent will reassure people of your genuine intentions.

So here goes, I hope you enjoy what I have written.  Here are some of my highlights from this past month

Alexa Rank

I have read on a number of articles that Alexa rank is not always a good measure of your sites performance.  I’m unsure what to believe, however the one thing I am confident of, is that it is a good tool for measuring relative performance.  When I started out my blog, my Alexa rank was somewhere around 17 million.  This sounds horrific!  However, I enjoy a good challenge, and so I set about changing this.  I recently checked my rank, after a month of running this site, and my rank is now 3,489,132.  I’m pretty pleased with this.  About 10 days (or so) ago, I also started to rank on country specific ranks.  So my current USA rank is 530,192.

Comments

When I started this blog, I was a little nervous about getting comments from users.  I don’t think I was going against the norm of being nervous.  But anyway, I have received some fantastic comments from some of my readers.  I think I have some regular readers too, based on some regular comments.  This is encouraging, and reassuring that I am writing content that is useful.

At the end of this first month, there are 45 comments.  I know about half are mine, as I feel it is good practise to respond to your comments – a thank you, if you will, for your readers taking their time to respond.  I’ll just add a personal thank you here, thanks folks!

Posts

This month I wrote, or published at least, 23 posts.  This works out at about two every three days.  I’m pretty pleased with this, as it can be tricky sometimes juggling a full time job with a hobby that needs time.  I want to boost this over the next few months, but I’m happy with this for now.

Analytics

Here are my analytics results:

• 287 Visits
• 153 Unique visitors
• 1,240 Page Views
• 4.32 Average Page Views
• 7min 52s Average Time on Site
• 37.28% Bounce Rate
• 48.08% New Visitors

My visitors spanned 5 continents – North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania.  The top 5 visitor countries are:

• United Kingdom
• USA
• India
• France
• Australia

Advertising

I only added AdSense recently and haven’t earned anything from it.  Previously I had AdBrite and Bidvertiser, and earned nothing here.  My Amazon affiliate has received plenty of clicks, but no commission.

Whilst earning money is no longer my main aim, it is something I want to succeed, so it makes good sense to mention it here.

Closing Comments

I think I have had a reasonably successful month.  I want to build on this for next month.  I have commented on a number of blogs, the list is at the bottom in my Blog Rolls.  I’d like to give a quick shout out to Joe from WebsiteBegin.com, Alex Whalley and Brandon Connell for their comments on my site, as well as their advice on their own blogs – cheers guys!