We're 2 weeks almost 3 weeks into the New Year and what with year-end paperwork and new year goals... I almost forgot to report in with the final stats for 2007!
The year ended with the best month to date, totalling more than 14,000 unique visitors. Below is the entire 2007 year at a glance:
Interesting to note in the December stats is that BlogRush has all but fallen off the charts and StumbleUpon is still claiming the top spot as #1 Referrer - yes, sending in more traffic than Google itself!
As for BlogRush, which is a blog marketing widget by John Reese, well - its simply time for it to go. I removed the widget after running it here on Clicknewz for 4 full months. The amount of traffic I received from the widget in that time (very little) is not relative to the amount of screen space the widget takes up on the blog...
I just checked the current stats (Jan 2008) and so far this month BlogRush has sent a total of 15 visitors, which equals less than one visitor a day. I dont feel bad though. Back in November, Darren Rowse reported in at ProBlogger with these statistics:
Performance is still very very low for me when it comes to CTR. Over the 6 weeks since I started with BlogRush I’ve earned over 8 million credits. I have 6.5 million credits still owed to me so links must have been served up on blogs around 1.5 million times. From that I’ve had around 890 people visit my site. I know that BlogRush has had people trying to scam the system, that some of my blog titles probably could be better and that they’re still improving the system - but 900 clicks from 1.5 million impressions is fairly insignificant I’m afraid.
Bye Bye BlogRush 😀
The number of RSS Subscribers and Email Subscribers are still growing steadily, and so that precious screen space will be filled with something more useful to my readers and to the growth of my blog.
December 2007 Stats for the ClickNewz Blog:
Unique Visitors: 14,156
Total Number of Visits: 29,866
Inbound Links (main page): 34,200
Inbound Links (total): 37,900
As I mentioned earlier, Google has always been my top referrer, meaning the one site that sent more unique visitors to my blog than any other. Up until November, that is - when StumbleUpon moved up in the stats and took over.
In December, StumbleUpon sent 7,439 visitors, while Google only sent 5,004. Both of those numbers are up by approximately 35% from the prior month.
Top 5 Referring Websites:
note: this list doesnt include my own website and discussion forum, which are generally always the top referring websites…
- Subvert and Profit
- V7N Forum
- The Warrior Forum
- BANS Members Forum
- MikeIndustries.com Blog
The 5 most popular topics during the month of December were:
- You Are Exactly Where You Want To Be
- BANS Review Part 3: Build A Niche Store
- Passion vs Profit
- How I Make Money Online
- 5-Step Formula for Building Self-Confidence
Top 10 Keyword Phrases:
These are the top keyword phrases used to find ClickNewz in the major search engines that resulted in actual click-through’s (ie visitors).
- clicknewz
- staticblogging.com
- internet marketing blog
- bans review
- lynn terry
- bans reviews
- how to compress mp3
- online marketing blog
- internet marketing blogs
- 4 hour work week review
There are currently 953 posts and 5,811 comments contained within 20 categories...
About Lynn Terry
Wow Lynn.. your visitors for a month have almost tripled since the beginning of the year ..Congrats...
Sandy
So glad to see your success, great work 🙂
Lynn,
Congrats. Those are awesome stats. Especially for a newer blog.
Hey Lynn,
Awesome post and congrats! Looks like you have put in a ton of effort this year to boost your traffic.
Great job,
Shannon
Hi Lynn,
Impressive! You deserve it and your what I call a "Servant Leader." Someone who's a leader and knows how to serve people to lead for themselves. Continued success for and your family.
God Bless,
Maurice
p.s. Could you explain Subvert and Profit in more detail in relation to your success?
I like how the almighty Google is becomming less and less relevant as a traffic source. It's still a heavyweight by all means, but with all the dings it's given webmasters over the past couple years and the self-serving dictating of who links to what and how/why, it's shot itself in the foot so many times pretty soon it won't have a leg to stand on.
Soon people will ask "What is PR?" and the answer will be "Who cares."
Congrats on the stacked stats, Lynn. Good to see the growing traffic AND ever-increasing RSS numbers 😉
Thank you Paul 😀 Great to see you!
I find it incredibly interesting myself, and being the target of a PR wipe-out recently I couldnt agree more lol
I have not promoted ClickNewz very aggressively to date, but keep your eyes peeled... because I plan to blow those stats out of the water this year 😉
Hi Maurice,
Thank you for the kind words 🙂
To be honest, I had never heard of the site until it showed up in my stats... so I am looking into it more myself. You have to sign up for an account to get behind the scenes, so I look forward to seeing what I find there.
Thank you Sandy! Its slow and steady growth, which I am very pleased with. I look forward to doing some more active marketing this year and watching those stats do some spikes 😉
Up to this point, the growth has been a result of unique content plus word-of-mouth - but its great to see that combination working so well!
Congrats on ending the year with a bang!
Thanks for your thoughts on Blog Rush. I've been considering ditching it myself. Time to take a really good close look at the stats and the CTR I'm really getting. Besides, I'm tired of my page never "fully loading" because of that widget.
Thanks to Paul who put your stats into a little more perspective too. I too was the target of a PR wipe-out recently. Needless to say even though I personally know PR means absolutely nothing - I was devastated. Finding out more and more every day that I was clearly not the only one is making me feel so much better.
I'm quite disppointed in Google and tired of the way things are handled through them. I've built the PR of my website over the years naturally and "by the book". Never once did I ever do anything "black" and THAT'S how I was rewarded?!? Phbbt! to you Google! >:P (Wanna know how I really feel? LOL!)
Sorry to hear it Anita - but I can certainly relate as you know. It was very discouraging. While I'll continue to optimize for search traffic, I intend to focus even more on social networking this year.
As for BlogRush, I've already removed it as you can see. I'm pretty disappointed with that, though - it really had a lot of potential it seemed.
I have an embarrassing confession to make. These stats make my head spin. Between unique visitors and SE traffic and blogrush traffic. My feedburner stats barely make sense to me. My Google stats seem like so much voodoo doodoo. Ugh! I'm hopeless with this aspect of my biz! Help!!
Hi Deb,
I use AWstats to review my website statistics, which comes free with cpanel (available with most hosting companies, but I dont believe you have that with GoDaddy). Have you switched over to HostGator yet, or still with them?
It does take a little time to make sense of stats, so dont feel bad. But there are usually help files, or you can easily find tutorials by doing a search on Google for your stats program. If not, just ask at the forum and I'm sure someone can help you out 😉
As for FeedBurner stats, I was just looking at mine over the weekend. Perhaps we can find a good breakdown explanation of how to read stats on Google. If not, I'll work on one myself 😉
Hey, each time you report on your stat I always get more confident that hard works and consistency pays.
I also get a vital truth drilled that I should try to discount or at least should not LOSS sleep over Google PR.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Wow, just now came across this, great stats! Regarding BlogRush, my widget is going, going, gone. Thanks for the tip.