Saturday is here again and so is the weekly update. Yesterday was the 12th of June, which means I’ve got one month left to reach my goals of either 500 pageviews a day for seven consecutive days or 300 subscribers.
Well, I can tell you I no longer believe I will reach those numbers within a month, but I’ll get close. Somehow I don’t believe I’ll get my domain after all, the guy who has it hasn’t responded to any messages for a while now. It’s almost as if he’s dropped of the face of the earth or something. It won’t stop me however. Here are the numbers of this week:
Average number of pageviews over this week: I was hoping to give you a nice number that was slightly higher than last week. The number of pageviews has been quite steady after all. However, with help of @Victusfate my pageview numbers exploded. He put my Stoic series up on some social media sites. The results are staggering. I woke up Friday hoping to see some 30 pageviews, the counter was already on 158. Mostly through Reddit where my Stoic series ended up on the top of the list of hot topics on philosophy. The average number this week is 147 with a range of 273. Insane…
Number of subscribers to my RSS feed: As you might have noticed I took down the RSS feed counter. The low number was likely costing me subscribers. I’ll post it back up when I go over100. The number right now is 40. My prediction of one or two new subscribers every day didn’t seem to come true. Oh well, lesson learned.
Where the traffic is coming from: More traffic is coming through twitter, some is also coming here through blogcomments on other blogs as well as my blog being mentioned on other blogs. The huge spike on Friday came from Reddit. Although that traffic won’t stick, it’s exposure and will inevitably get my blog out there more.
What I have done this week to get my blog bigger and what I learned: I’ve started looking more into using the social media to promote my blog. I was quick to jump on an opportunity to get a “beta tester” status on Stumble’s new service Su.pr and will be using that to promote my blog from now on. What it does is simple, it creates a short url just like tweetdeck, but at the same time that short url can be tracked and stats will be given for it. (How many clicks, most active time and thus best time to publish them.) The added bonus is that the url wil automatically be submitted to Stumble. All in it will drive more traffic even if just by showing me the most effective time to post. I’ll be experimenting with this over the next few weeks and I’ll let you know.
I’ve added the possibility to subscribe to a feedburner Email subscription on my blog. So far the only person receiving those mails is myself (After all, I need to see what I send out right?) But I’m sure more people will subscribe by mail. I’ve also edited the “Subscribe” page to show these two options.
There is a new button below the RSS feed button on the main page. A way to submit my blog to various social media sites which will hopefully drive more traffic this way.
Last but not least I’ve given my “about” page a small makeover. Mostly cosmetic (I’ve moved my picture), the most significant change is that I have defined my niche more tightly “Lifestyle design and personal development with a Zen twist.” I think this is exactly where I am with this blog. Do you agree?
Great work and congratulations on the growth.
Christaan, you’re doing great here. The subscriber thing is tough. It’s really slow at first. Patience, patience, patience…
Patience is a virtue, except when you have to wait ;)
The blog is actually doing quite well, where at first I was stoked about getting over 50 pageviews a day it’s now “normal” to have at least 70 a day, every day. Somehow though I have this feeling that people reading my weekly updates think “ow that’s a tiny blog, to tiny to follow, if it was a good blog it would have more followers right? Let’s look somewhere else…” Every now and then I see a new name in the comments and seeing as the pageviews keep growing there are constantly new people arriving here.
I’m not giving this blog up in the next few years, I’m in this for the long haul! Ill prove those passers-by wrong and they’ll see a big blog here with lot’s of followers/fans.
And you guys can say you were here in the beginning, thanks for all the (moral) support you guys, I really appreciate it.
Christiaan, keep it up. You are our inspiration. Don’t forget: “Chi va piano, va sano; chi va sano, va lontano.”