Last year the site saw well over half a million unique visitors (666,014), compared to just over a quarter million in ’09.

The total number of visits in December 2011 was nearly triple the number of December 2010, with more visitors viewing a higher number of pages per visit.

Engagement is up!

And 2012 looks to be even more promising in terms of growth.

All of the traffic is organic and highly targeted. Top traffic sources are major search engines, social media and personal referrals.

To give you a side by side comparison, here are AWstats screen shots for the single months of December 2010 and December 2011:

December 2010

December 2011

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Social Media Reach

• Facebook Fan Page 2,495 Fans
• Twitter 23,394 Followers
• Google+ 2,193 Friends

These numbers are current as of January 24, 2012. I post manually and individually to each of these social networks, and interact personally there.

In addition to the social media reach, there are almost 10k subscribers between RSS & Email at any given time, with a high per-item click through rate.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Single Post Stats

While overall stats are fun and interesting, I pay special attention to the stats of a single page or post over time. Achieving a top 10 ranking and funneling highly targeted traffic into specific pages is my specialty.

For example, my post about starting a free online business was written more than 3 years ago (August 2008). In 2010 alone, it saw 31,883 visits due to top rankings in Google for multiple long tail keyword phrases. In 2011 it saw 71,594 visits. Yes, more than double the year before. Again, this is a single blog post that was written almost 3 1/2 years ago.

An optimized post here at ClickNewz using a very specific keyword phrase, with a strong call to action in the post, can be worth quite a bit…

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Advertising Options

For a limited time I am going to continue the 2011 advertising rate. You can get side-wide exposure as a ClickNewz Sponsor for only $500/month. I only accept TWO at any given time.

You can secure a sponsorship for the entire year for only $3600 (40% off the monthly ad rate). See the two ClickNewz Sponsor spots in the right sidebar, above and below the “Hot Topics” section, as an example.

Ad Images will need to be 300 pixels wide minimum, with a maximum of 250 pixels high. Send a link to your graphic, the destination URL, and your preferred Alt Text for the image with your advertising request.

Please use the contact form to submit your ad details for consideration. Sponsors are hand selected, and so I will get back with you personally on your request.

Option #2: Featured Editorial / Review

I will write a quality blog post reviewing/discussing your product, book or website for $250. This includes a keyword-optimized post, minimum 500 words, targeted exposure to my active readership, and a permanent inbound link with the anchor text of your choice.

This post will also go out to my mailing list and social media channels.

As I mentioned earlier, one well-optimized blog post can continue to serve you for months – and even years. Here is an example of a sponsored post, to give you an idea what you can expect: Affiliate Article Writers.

Not all requests will be accepted. Again it must be relevant and of interest to my readership. I reserve the right to accept or deny post sponsorships at my discretion.

Please use the contact form to submit your ad for consideration.

Include your URL, preferred anchor text, and the angle/topic you would like covered. Please include as much detail as possible. If your editorial ad request is approved, I will send a reply with payment instructions.

If you are interested in text links only, please contact me through the form for current rates & options. And if you have specific advertising needs or interesting ideas… I’m all ears. Get in touch!

Best,

In December 2009, ClickNewz saw just over 52,000 visits. This December (2010), the number of visits almost doubled. 102,604 visits to be exact. During the year of 2009, ClickNewz saw just over a quarter of a million unique visitors. 2010 brought a 53% increase in unique visitors, and an 82.5% increase in overall traffic.

You can get a nice visual of the substantial growth in traffic this year in this side-by-side annual stats comparison:

2010->

(Note: these screenshots were taken 14 hours before month-end)

All of the traffic is organic, and highly targeted. The top traffic sources are search engines, social media and word-of-mouth referrals.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Social Media Reach

My new Facebook Page, launched just a couple months before year-end, currently has over 1,000 readers and growing daily. Facebook Insights for the last 60 days:

I post manually to Facebook (no auto-posting) and am building a very fun & interactive discussion community there. In addition to updates from ClickNewz we have topical discussions, and I share cool links & resources from around the web.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

My Twitter profile has 16,000+ followers.

More than 62% of my tweets
are conversations or replies.

I’m actually live on Twitter
(not auto-tweeting) and very interactive.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

RSS & Email Subscribers

The image to the right is a screenshot of my FeedBurner stats.

This is a combination of RSS and Email subscribers, but represents only a portion of my mailing list.

I have multiple email lists, including a daily update that goes out every morning at 8am Eastern.

Actual mailing list reach is currently over 18,000 subscribers, which brings total RSS/Email readership up to over 23k and growing.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Single Post Stats

While overall stats are fun and interesting, I pay special attention to the stats of a single page or post over time. Achieving a top 10 ranking and funneling highly targeted traffic into specific pages, is a surefire way to set up long-term income streams.

For example, my post about starting a free online business was written more than 2 years ago (August 2008). In 2010 alone, it saw 31,883 visits due to top rankings in Google for multiple versions of the longtail keyword phrase.

An optimized post here at ClickNewz using a very specific keyword phrase, with a strong call to action in the post, can be worth quite a bit…

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Advertising Options

For a limited time I am going to offer the 2010 advertising rates. You can get side-wide exposure as a ClickNewz Sponsor for only $500/month. I only accept TWO at any given time, and one spot is already secured for the entire 2011 year.

You can secure the second spot for the entire year for only $3600 (40% off the monthly ad rate). See the ClickNewz Sponsor spot in the right sidebar as an example. Ad Images will need to be 300 pixels wide minimum, with a maximum of 250 pixels high. Please send a link to your graphic, the destination URL, and your preferred Alt Text for the image with your advertising request.

Please use the contact form to submit your ad details for consideration. Sponsors are hand selected, and so I will get back with you personally on your request.

Option #2: 500 Word Blog Post

I will write a quality blog post reviewing/discussing your product, book or website for $250. This includes a keyword-optimized post, minimum 500 words, targeted exposure to my active readership, and a permanent inbound link with the anchor text of your choice.

As I mentioned earlier, one well-optimized blog post can continue to serve you for months – and even years. Here is an example of a sponsored post, to give you an idea what you can expect: Affiliate Article Writers.

Not all requests will be accepted. Again it must be relevant and of interest to my readership. I reserve the right to accept or deny post sponsorships at my discretion.

Please use the contact form to submit your ad request.

Include your URL, preferred anchor text, and the angle/topic you would like covered. Please include as much detail as possible. If your submission is selected, I will send a reply with payment instructions.

I am open to other options as well, so if you have specific needs or interesting ideas… I’m all ears. Simply make me an offer!

Best,

I have decided to do quite a few updates here at ClickNewz while planning my editorial and promotional calendar for the year, and wanted to share a quick checklist of things you can do at your own blog as well.

The first step is to set definitive goals for the year. Know exactly what you want to achieve, with a very clear long-term objective. My blog here at ClickNewz is the core of my online business, and the space from which I share details of everything else that I offer. So my blogging goals are very specific…

Blog Traffic Growth

One of my primary goals is to increase my reach and grow my readership. This includes number of unique visitors per month, as well as the number of email & RSS subscribers. More readers ultimately equals more income and more opportunity.

I came very close to doubling blog traffic in 2009. I did very little blog marketing, so this is simply the result of blogging consistently and getting more engaged with social media – specifically Twitter and Facebook. I am currently seeing close to 30k unique visitors and more than 230k page views per month.

If your blog is newer with much lower traffic volume, a good starting goal for the year is to reach 10,000 unique visitors per month consistently.

In 2010, I plan to do more strategic blog marketing, and increase those numbers dramatically. My goal is to increase unique visitors to 100k/month, with a million pageviews per month by the end of the year. Ambitious, but attainable.

I plan to achieve this by: growing my subscriber base, blogging more frequently, creating more keyword-based content for new targeted search traffic, increasing my social media reach, and networking.

Blog Subscription Growth

Traffic is good, but my ultimate goal is to grow a strong readership. That was my primary focus throughout 2009, and I am very pleased with the results, and the sense of community we have created here at ClickNewz.

That said, RSS & email subscriptions are not growing at the same rate as my traffic. According to FeedBurner I have around 6,500 total subscribers combined, with less than half of those being subscribed to the email list. While subscriptions are rising, they are rising at a slow steady rate that could obviously be improved…

I use Aweber to offer email updates to my readers. Aweber has a feature called Blog Broadcast that allows your readers to receive new blog posts by email.

I choose Aweber as that is what I use to manage all of my mailing lists across my niche sites, and they offer a number of features you can’t get with other blog email notification options. Specifically: you own the list, you can email your subscribers directly, and you can customize the confirmation pages and confirmation emails.

I use FeedBurner to manage my RSS subscriptions as they offer full stats, advanced feed features, and because they integrate with Aweber to give me combined stats.

One of the things I’ll do to increase email subscriptions is offer an incentive to subscribers. You’ll notice that I have two opt-in boxes on post pages, one in the sidebar and one at the end of each post, and neither offer any incentive at all.

In January I’m going to add an exclusive free download for new subscribers, with short compelling copy to encourage readers to subscribe by email.

While new traffic is good, repeat traffic and a loyal readership are ideal for any blog. If you don’t yet offer a mailing list and an opt-in incentive, make it a priority!

Blog Community Growth

A sense of community is a strong sticky point for any blog. As I mentioned earlier, this has always been a goal of mine.

Now that I have a system in place for handling the volume of comments and necessary moderation, I’m prepared to take ClickNewz to the next level.

Having been through a number of growing pains in my 13 years of business, I can tell you firsthand that this is not something you want to jump into blindly. Steady and strategic growth is a good thing.

Outsourcing was a huge goal of mine in 2009, so I now outsource: comment moderation, wordpress upgrades, and blog updates (plugin installations, new feature additions, etc). This frees me up to plan, write, respond to reader comments and get engaged with my target market via social media.

The first thing you want to do is ask for comments. As you wrap up each post, ask your readers what they think or what their experiences have been – or encourage them to ask questions on the topic.

See: 7 Questions to Ask On Your Blog to Get More Reader Engagement

I personally respond to almost every comment. This encourages commenting, both by regular readers and new visitors. Often a comment or question on one blog post will inspire a topic for a new blog post.

Get involved with your readers and show them that their thoughts and questions matter by addressing the topics they bring up in response to your content.

Your blog should be an ongoing conversation with your readers.

I use a Subscribe To Comments plugin so that readers will get an email notification of new comments to a particular blog post. This keeps your readers engaged on the topic, and lets them know when they’ve received a response to their comment.

In addition to reader engagement, I like to offer other perks to build on that sense of community. Here at ClickNewz I use the DoFollow Plugin and have recently installed the KeywordLuv Plugin, both of which “give back” for every comment left. These are not plugins that are relevant for every niche or blog, so you want to choose comment plugins that will be of the most interest to your readers.

A new plugin I am having installed is TwitterLinks, which will make it easier for readers to network & connect with each other. This plugin adds the Twitter ID with comments, so that you can easily find & follow people of interest.

• DoFollow Plugin
• Subscribe To Comments
• KeywordLuv Plugin
• TwitterLinks Plugin

It’s important to create that sense of community on your own blog, starting at the beginning with your first few comments or subscribers, but you also have to work ‘the blog network’ in order to grow that community…

Blog Networking

A lot of people blog in a vacuum, trying to be “the lone blogger” – viewing every other blogger in their niche as the enemy and competitor. The truth is, the more blogs there are in your niche the more opportunities you have. And the more you network within that niche blogging community, the more your own blog will grow.

My goals for 2010 include more guest blogging, blog interviews, cross blog conversations and blog commenting. There are numerous benefits:

• Quality Inbound Links
• Targeted Click-Through Traffic
• Exposure to Established Readership
• Indirect Search Engine Rankings

… all of which result in more traffic and more readers.

I’m using the guest blogging guide by Nicole Dean to map out these goals which includes: content idea generator, blog research spreadsheet, sample email to bloggers, and guest blogging editorial spreadsheet. A great resource for only $17!

Blog Content Goals

In addition to planning my content for guests posts and blog networking, I am also creating a 2010 Editorial and Promotional Calendar for my own blog. I used a simple 3-ring binder for this, but you could also use a spreadsheet.

Creating a 2010 Editorial Calendar (for blogs and/or email lists) has been the December Challenge for my Elite Members.

We have come up with a lot of good resources along the way, and I finally settled on using Blog Energizer by Lynette Chandler as my base and starting point.

Lynette offers a free 2010 Blogging Calendar within Blog Energizer that was ideal in helping me map out and plan topics, series and year-long content ideas.

Having content goals, and an editorial calendar, is really going to be helpful for me personally. I have been blogging consistently for more than 5 years now, but still find that I tend to have more of a “fly by the seat of my pants” blogging style – which often results in missed opportunities for topics or promotions.

The 2010 Calendar will give you observances, awareness days/weeks, holidays, etc. This is a great starting point for topic ideas, and for capitalizing on themes people will be searching on at those times.

You can also use these to start blog memes, blog contests, to schedule timely promotions, or to initiate topical interviews or cross blog conversations with established bloggers.

I printed off the calendar (download it here) and put it in my 3-ring binder, along with monthly and weekly planning sheets. Since I already have a lot of things in my Outlook Calendar, I simply printed weekly & monthly pages from there. You might use your Google Calendar or create your own planning sheets.

I started by analyzing my current categories, and popular keyword searches in my niche. Comparing these to the topical calendar, I have been mapping out content ideas for all 12 months of 2010.

I also made a list of regular features to implement at my blog such as: monthly book review, monthly product review, weekly mail video, monthly interview, etc.

Your features will depend on your niche of course, but as an example you might do: Monday Motivator, Tuesday Tutorial, Saturday Slacker, etc. These can be fun, and if consistent your readers will come back every week for their favorite features.

By outlining your content with an editorial and promotional calendar, including posts for your own blog plus potential guest blog posts, you can take advantage of seasonal and timely promotional opportunities and become a more consistent and interesting blogger.

A big part of your content plan should include keyword-optimized content, targeting every possible keyword phrase relevant to your topic or niche. As a start, see these three tutorials that outline exactly how I do that:

• Getting Traffic & Sales
• Writing SEO Content
• Web Page Optimization (Checklist)

Blog Updates

While you’re doing all of this content planning, you should also consider some basic updates that you can do to improve your visitors’ experience at your blog.

Over time your blog can get junked up with plugins, additions, advertisements and sidebar clutter. Now is a good time to sit back and view your blog from a visitors perspective and do a little clean-up work.

Look at things you can remove to make your blog easier to read and quicker to load. Also look at things you can add for better usability.

First, analyze your sidebar. Remove anything that might distract your reader from your main objective: getting them to read or subscribe to your content.

You’ll notice I have very few ads in my sidebar, and no tag cloud. I chose to put the tag cloud on my archives page, as that is where you would typically go to search for specific topics. I also include tags on each post, so that you can find related posts.

Make sure you have a search box in your sidebar. This is one of the most used features here at ClickNewz. Make sure all of your blog content is easy to locate.

It’s probably time to update your About Me page – I know it is for mine!

This is also a good time to go back through your posts and look for opportunities to interlink related content. You should also look at your stats to see which posts are most popular or most read, and make sure you have a good strong call-to-action on those posts.

Do a complete walk-through of your entire blog and make notes of things you can add/remove to improve readability and to strategically lead your visitors to and through your blog…

Blog Boost 2010 Checklist

If you’re smart, you’ve been jotting down notes as you read along with ideas you can use on your own blog.

The most important thing that you can do is know your objective. This gives you an easy filter for blogging decisions. You can simply ask yourself: is this in line with my goal, or does this distract from it?

Just as one example, affiliate bloggers should never use Adsense on their blog. If you sell your own product/service, or you promote other merchants products as an affiliate, Google Adsense distracts from and competes with your sales.

I’ll make it easy for you and give you a quick checklist of things you should consider for your blog as you are mapping out your 2010 blogging goals:

• Set Goals. Know Your Objective!
• Remove anything that is not in line with your objective.
• Make sure your blog is properly optimized.
• Add/Update your Email Opt-in.
• Add/Remove Plugins.
• Clean up Sidebar Clutter.
• Update your About page.
• Increase post frequency.
• Interlink related posts.
• Update popular posts.
• Get fresh Inbound Links to your Pillar Content.
• Research niche keywords for new content.
• Make a list of products to review.
• Create an Editorial Calendar.
• Make a list of blogs for commenting & guest posting.
• Make a list of experts to interview.
• Set up/Update social media profiles and go social!

Happy Blogging!

Best,

p.s. Ready to take your blog to the next level? Subscribe below for more tips & tutorials, and grab a copy of the Problogger Workbook by Darren Rowse!

Disclosure: I earn commissions on recommendations and resources mentioned.

I’m sharing this with you for two reasons. And certainly not to brag, because these stats may not be that impressive to some. Its all relative. But I’m sharing them with you to inspire & motivate you, and also to let you know what’s working really well for me…

I’ll start by confessing that I dont work that hard at blog promotion. I could, given my background in online marketing, but I dont. Call me a lazy blogger if you like (fair enough), but the point is that you can easily achieve the same (or much, much better) results yourself.

The only promotion that I actively did during 2008 is:

• Basic SEO (help)
• Tweeting (help)
• Mailing List (help)

I optimize my posts as I go for specific keyword phrases. I mention my blog posts on Twitter, and have my blog URL in my Twitter bio. And I have a blog broadcast set up through Aweber so that my readers can get updates every week on new posts here at the blog – which is completely automated.

So as you can see I am not out there commenting like mad, doing guests posts, article marketing, actively getting new inbound links, creating 300 squidoo lenses, stumbling or digging my own posts, or any of that stuff. I’m just blogging and tweeting, and letting the rest happen naturally.

Hmm. I should mention that I’m fairly active on MySpace and Facebook, but I dont do any hardcore marketing there either.

All that said, here is the interesting point that I wanted to share with you:

The month of December was my best month yet. Both in terms of traffic, and income. I was 259 shy of having 20,000 unique visitors, and my income that last quarter was more than double what it was in the first quarter of 2008.

That’s interesting enough in itself, but if you remember… I was off on vacation in Australia for two whole weeks during the month of December, and came home just a week before Christmas – followed by New Years. 2 weeks vacation + 2 major holidays, well – it’s not as if I was actively “working” that month.

And therein lies the real inspiration.

I’m even inspired. I am so inspired by what I accomplished (so easily) last year, that I’m motivated to actually work at it this year!

This is how I doubled my income (passively):

It’s simple really. My winning combination is: Affiliate Marketing, SEO & Info Products. I use Affiliate Marketing and also my own products to monetize my blog posts, and then use SEO to make sales passively.

And by Info Products, I’m referring to cheap reports – and often sold elsewhere (not even through my blog) via the Fast Cash Strategy method. These reports have links in them as well, so they earn both on the front end and the back end – generally via affiliate sales.

That Fast Cash Strategy is my own personal method, by the way. I dont sell it publicly (yet) but I do let my readers download the first edition for only $10. You can read more about that here.

Obviously if you dont monetize your blog posts (or web pages), you’re not going to make any money. No amount of unique content and good search engine rankings is going to fix that.

Personally, I have found that Affiliate Marketing and having your own info products (even if they’re just cheap reports) are the two best ways to make money online. And I’ll tell you why: both allow you to earn money passively, even if you’re away from your computer for days – or weeks – at a time.

Obviously your content has to be seen in order for it to convert into sales, which is where the SEO comes in. And for those of you new to the scene, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It basically just means optimizing your pages for specific keyword phrases so that they rank well in the major search engines for those phrases.

Buried Blog Posts, That Still Crank Out Sales.

“Oh, okay – I get it,” you say. “You’re blogging about products and people are buying them. But how is that passive?” It’s not. Blogging on a regular basis takes a bit of a commitment, as you’ve probably discovered by now.

But let’s go back to December’s stats. While I was on vacation I did very little blogging. I had several guest posts, and my own posts were photo & video updates from my trip to Australia.

The key is in having your money posts rank well, so they continuously make sales for you – even if you’re away, or busy blogging about something else.

For example, some of my current Google rankings include: “traffic secrets 2.0 review” #1, “bans review” #3 & #4, “starting a free online business” #1 & #2, “free netflix account” #1, etc. Those are all older blog posts that are still cranking out sales.

And by the way, if your blog posts usually rank well and then tank out of Google completely, you’ll want to see this post: Rank & Tank. It explains how I manage to get – and keep – those good rankings.

Of course, in addition to making money directly my blog has also contributed to the growth and sales on my other websites. It has been a great way to get more newsletter subscribers, forum members and webinar attendees for example.

Blogs are powerful. I hope this inspires you to start blogging, keep blogging, or get more serious about blogging. As I said earlier, it didnt take much for me to achieve these results – and you can easily do the same!

Best,

p.s. This needs to be the year that you start earning 5-figures per month from Affiliate Marketing. Stay tuned, because next I am going to dig into an in-depth review of some of the best Affiliate Marketing guides on the ‘net.

And a quick reminder – there’s less than a week to register for the hands-on workshop in Atlanta where we’ll be there to help you learn it one-on-one

In fact, during the month of June another milestone reached – the stats topped the 15k mark in regards to unique visitors:

• Unique Visitors: 15,048
• Total Number of Visits: 30,229
• Inbound Links (main page): 36,922
• Inbound Links (total): 39,641

Interesting to note this month is that Twitter has become one of the top referrers for traffic to my blog. Pulling a very close second only to my own high-traffic website and discussion forum.

Top 5 Referring Websites:

note: this list doesnt include my own website and discussion forum, which are generally always the top referring websites…

• Twitter
• MikeIndustries.com
• My old Blogger blog
• Thirty Day Challenge Forum
• WAHM Talk Radio

The 5 most popular topics during the month of June were:

• Perceived Value & The Psychology of Pricing 1,950 views
• Should You “ContactThem”? A Tempting Scam… 1,715 views
• Aweber Announces Dramatic Price Increase 1,572 views
• The Current State of Internet Marketing 1,260 views
• Marketer Sets The Price, Buyer Determines Value 1,114 views

Top 10 Keyword Phrases:

These are the top 10 keyword phrases used to find ClickNewz in the major search engines that resulted in actual click-through’s (ie visitors) during the month of June.

-bans site
-clicknewz
-lynn terry
-internet marketing blog
-compress mp3 files
-bans review
-income ranking
-contactthem
-free sales letter templates
-birthday wishes

Best,

I actually started my first blog almost 4 years ago on Blogger.com, but made the switch to WordPress in March of 2006. That was a major turning point, and one of the best blogging decisions I’ve made…

I have spent these last two years blogging consistently, testing out various ways to make money blogging, building a loyal readership, and basically getting a solid feel for the blogosphere. While I havent yet done an all out blog marketing campaign for ClickNewz, it has grown steadily on its own over time.

One of my goals for this year though, is to push ClickNewz to the next level.

With over 1000 blog posts, and over 7000 comments, I’d say this is a pretty good starting point

One thing I have learned, through much testing and tracking, is that the best form of monetization is a combination of affiliate marketing and product sales. While this may not hold true for all blogs, or for all niches, there are some obvious drawbacks to selling text links or doing sponsored blog posts.

I have also learned quite a bit about blog marketing over the last two years, and prefer a combination of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Social Networking to successfully promote a blog. Outside of the search engines, the majority of my traffic comes from discussion forums and other blogs.

For me personally, blogging has been both a great experience and a great experiment. I can say without a doubt that I will be continuing and expect I’ll see many more anniversaries for ClickNewz…

Many thanks to the regular readers, because you truly make this blog what it is. Without you I’d be talking into thin air and it would be quite boring around here! Thank you for the links, for your comments, for the Scratchback Luv and for your feedback and suggestions. YOU ROCK!

Best,

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…

That’s still more than 1,000 over what ClickNewz saw the month before, in September.

The number of RSS Subscribers and Email Subscribers are growing steadily, and regular readers are more active than ever with an overall post-to-comment ratio of about 1-6. That calculation includes posts from almost 2 years of course. The main page currently shows posts with 10 to 20 comments each.

All that to say I’m not overly concerned. But I’m still interested in digging into the stats for November to see what I might find…

November 2007 Stats for the ClickNewz Blog:

• Unique Visitors: 13,882
• Total Number of Visits: 30,006
• Inbound Links (main page): 30,900
• Inbound Links (total): 33,000

Looking more closely at my stats, specifically the traffic breakdown by days, it looks like the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend was responsible for the dip in traffic. November 24-26 were the 3 slowest days of the month, in regards to unique visitors and even the number of pages viewed while on the site.

Of course, I didnt blog on the 23rd & 24th either And new posts from me that week were few and far between. I was busy with pumpkin pie and holiday shopping myself, no doubt!

Interesting to note is that Google sent about the same amount of traffic during November as they did in October… but StumbleUpon.com sent 54% more traffic this month than the one before.

Google has always been my top referrer in regards to unique visitors. I cant say that anymore though… Stumble Upon has officially knocked Google down a notch! Cool

In addition to search traffic, BlogRush sent 39 new visitors (less than half the number they sent last month) and there were over 14,000 hits from other web pages…

Top 5 Referring Websites:

note: this list doesnt include my own website and discussion forum, which are generally always the top referring websites…

• The Warrior Forum
• Sphinn.com Nice comments!
• V7N Forum
• Deal Dot Com
• Michael Green’s How-To Forum

Anyone notice that forums send targeted traffic?

The 5 most popular topics during the month of November were:

• Stressed Out? 3 Simple Ways To Relieve Stress When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed 1,854 views
• How I Make Money Online 1,024 views
• Writing Reports For Profit 1,013 views
• How To Earn $20,000 in 20 Days 989 views
• ClickBank Affiliate Tip: Direct Link To Checkout 844 views

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).

• lynn terry
• internet marketing blog
• clicknewz
• cyber monday savings
• internet marketing blogs
• toy list 2007
• webinar
• compress mp3 files
• 20/20 challenge
• 4 hour work week review

There are currently 915 posts and 5,193 comments contained within 20 categories.

If you dont feel like doing the math since the last stats update, that’s 33 new posts and 516 new comments. I’ll close by repeating my comment from last month about my goals for 2008:

I will be promoting ClickNewz more agressively during 2008, now that it is securely established. My initial goals are to double Email & Feed subscribers to 1,000 each, and to double the number of Unique Visitors to a steady 25,000/month. I expect I can accomplish that easily in 4-6 weeks, and will journal the strategies and the progress. Keep an eye out for that in early January!

Best,

No major worries from me, as I consider it “vanity green”, and the statistics for ClickNewz continue to rise steadily. Last month (October 2007) saw a 12% increase in unique vistors, and a 31% increase in overall visits…

October 2007 Stats for the ClickNewz Blog:

• Unique Visitors: 14,064
• Total Number of Visits: 34,111
• Inbound Links (main page): 32,500
• Inbound Links (total): 35,400

The number of Feed Subscribers and Email Subscribers are about equal, fluctuating between 400-500 (each).

I noticed my Inbound Link stats jumped back up to normal. They were way down in September and I wasnt sure if it was a temporary fluke or a permanent update to link tracking. Seems all is well now.

The 5 most popular topics during the month of October were:

• Day 19 of the 20-day Challenge (Part 2)
• 20k In 20 Days
• Writing Reports for $$
• How I Make Money Online (An Inside Look)
• Understanding Resale Rights

Google and StumbleUpon continue to be my top referrers for new traffic, and Windows Live is beating Yahoo by almost double. BlogRush sent 86 new visitors to ClickNewz during October too. While a smaller number in the grand scheme of things, that’s 86 blog readers – which is just the kind of visitors I would want to attract.

Top 5 Referring Websites:

note: this list doesnt include my own website and discussion forum, which are generally always the top referring websites…

• The Warrior Forum
• Michael Green’s How-To Forum
• Aweber’s Blog
• Deal Dot Com
• The 4-Hour Workweek Forum

Viewing the websites that are referring visitors is probably my favorite part of analyzing statistics. It will alert you to blog posts and forum posts and other website links where people are talking about you and/or linking to your site. Google Alerts is great for this too, but I do like to see the amount of traffic certain ‘mentions’ send each month.

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).

• lynn terry
• internet marketing blog
• how to capture a screen shot
• us postal rates
• free sales letter templates
• create a flyer for free
• blogger vs wordpress
• logitech rebates
• watch movies online free
• online marketing blog

There are currently 882 posts and 4,677 comments contained within 20 categories.

I have just created a new category for the ClickNewz stats so that you can easily browse back through the months, as I have been tracking the stats since the first month. Its been fun to watch the blog grow and test various ways to increase traffic and income levels.

I will be promoting ClickNewz more agressively during 2008, now that it is securely established. My initial goals are to double Email & Feed subscribers to 1,000 each, and to double the number of Unique Visitors to a steady 25,000/month. I expect I can accomplish that easily in 4-6 weeks, and will journal the strategies and the progress. Keep an eye out for that in early January!

Best,

I often publish my stats here on ClickNewz, more to share trends and record progress than anything – they certainly dont award bragging rights, as this blog has only been live for approximately a year and a half. I’ve focused more on writing content, and growing as a blogger, than on trying to become an a-list blogger.

As you can see in the graph to the right, traffic to ClickNewz.com continues to rise steadily. Some of the things that I watch for in my stats include overall growth patterns, traffic sources, changes in inbound links, popularity of topics/posts, the success of specific keyword phrases, etc.

September 2007 Stats for the ClickNewz Blog:

• Inbound Links (main page): 3,085
• Inbound Links (total): 9,927
• Unique Visitors: 12,531
• Total Number of Visits: 26,067

The first thing that jumps out at me is that my inbound links have dropped dramatically. I’m not sure if this is a change to Yahoo’s site explorer tool or if I’ve actually lost 10,000+ backlinks somewhere along the way. I’d be willing to bet on the former… but that’s something to check into (noted).

Also interesting was a substantial traffic spike on September 24th. That was the day the Subscribe to Comments plugin was installed, so I’m assuming it was a combination of that plus the new BlogRush widget resulting in the jump in visits.

The 5 most popular blog posts during the month of September were:

• Watch Movies Online, Free Through Netflix
• Happy Birthday To One Of My Reasons For Working From Home…
• Writing Reports for Money
• Free Blog Marketing Widget
• How To Earn $20,000 in 20 Days – Guaranteed!

Top 5 Referring Websites:

• The Warrior Forum
• V7N Discussion Forum
• BlogRush
• MySpace Bulletins
• Michel Fortin’s Copywriting Blog

This doesnt include referrals from my own domains, though my primary site (sswt) and discussion forum are actually the top referrers. Also, StumbleUpon has moved from being listed as a referrer in Awstats, to being listed as an engine. They are currently ranking #2, just below Google, in terms of visitors sent.

Top 8 Keyword Phrases:

1. us postal rates – #4 on MSN
2. free online movies – ?
3. internet marketing blog – #2 on Google, #6 on Yahoo
4. lynn terry – #3 on Google, #2 on Yahoo
5. watch movies online free – ?
6. watch movies for free – ?
7. watch movies online – ?
8. logitech rebates – #12 on Google (#3 with quotes)

A total of 2,559 different keyphrases were used to find ClickNewz in the major search engines during the month of September. A fair number of those are variations of “watch movies online” though a quick search didnt show which engine is sending that traffic…

There are currently 817 posts and 3,917 comments contained within 18 categories.

Not incredibly impressive, but overall showing steady growth and definitely meeting my own personal goals as a blog. I’ll be back to working on link building and social networking once the busy holiday season passes, but until then I’ll just keep writing…

Tags: september, blog stats, unique visitors, awstats, stats junkie

Still, the stats are good for ClickNewz – and showing more than double the unique visitors than they were 6 months ago.

June 2007 Stats for the ClickNewz Blog:

• Inbound Links (main page): 22,555
• Inbound Links (total): 29,645
• Unique Visitors in June: 12,233
• Total Number of Visits: 24,836

For comparison, here are the May Stats:

• Inbound Links (main page): 21,701
• Inbound Links (total): 26,768
• Unique Visitors in May 2007: 12,997
• Total Number of Visits: 30,395

The 5 most popular blog posts during the month of June were:
Traffic Tips for New Sites
5 Hot Topics at SSWT This Week
$20 Bonus at eWealth Forum
Turning Off Blog Comments
4-Hour Workweek Review

Top 8 Referring Websites:

• SSWT Discussion Forum 459
• StumbleUpon 181
• eWealth Affiliate Forum 102
• V7N Webmaster Forum 44
• Amazing Cloaker Blog 35
• Original ClickNewz Blog 33
• Income.com Blog by John Reese 29
• Mila Sidman’s Blog 23

Top 8 Keyword Phrases:
1. us postal rate(s) – 146
2. internet marketing blog(s) – 74
3. lynn terry – 50
4. timothy ferriss – 22
5. clicknewz – 22
6. marketing blog – 10
7. free sales letter templates – 8
8. link exchange email – 7

A total of 3,450 different keyphrases were used to find ClickNewz in the major search engines during the month of June.

There are currently 697 posts and 3,017 comments.

Tags: june, blog stats, unique visitors, awstats, stats junkie

May Stats for the ClickNewz Blog:

• Inbound Links (main page): 21,701
• Inbound Links (total): 26,768
• Unique Visitors in May 2007: 12,997
• Total Number of Visits: 30,395

For Comparison, here are the April ’07 Stats:

• Inbound Links (main page): 22,702
• Inbound Links (total): 25,915
• Unique Visitors in April 2007: 12,624
• Total Number of Visits: 31,700

The 5 most popular blog posts during the month of May were:
About Lynn Terry
Affiliate Case Study
Social Networking
Evidence of Mad Guru Disease
Monetizing Blog Archives

Top 8 Referring Websites:

Top 8 Keyword Phrases:

• us postal rates
• internet marketing blog
• mothers day gifts
• free sales letter templates
• online marketing blog
• how to start a blog
• plr product reviews
• lynn terry

There are currently 650 posts and 2,782 comments.

Tags: may, blog stats, unique visitors, awstats, stats junkie

Since the numbers fluctuate (and I am in the process of ‘fixing it’), here is a screen shot of how it looks currently:

When I switched to the Presscut Theme a little over a month ago, I neglected to update my Feed URL and make sure that it was pointing to my FeedBurner Feed URL. Costly mistake, as the feed is the most accessed URL on this domain (with over 20,000 hits last month) – and I have no way of knowing exactly how many readers are subscribed to it…

Why do you need to know how many
readers are subscribed to your feed?

The number of people that subscribe to your feed is just one of a number of statistics any blogger should be tracking. On the most basic level, you should know the number of feed subscribers for the same reason you want to know the number of unique visitors that land on your blog via a browser.

Tracking your overall growth and the habits of your readers helps you to continuously improve as a publisher.

And of course – If you sell any type of advertising, or ever plan to, these statistics are necessary in attracting advertisers and to determine ad rates.

Feed Advertising is becoming more and more popular too, as a separate source of revenue for publishers than on-site ads. It would pay to make any necessary changes now to keep your blog in a good position for future opportunities.

Why use FeedBurner?

• They have tons of cool tools & features, most of which are FREE
• It creates a user-friendly RSS experience, instead of a code-filled page that makes your visitors eyes bug out and click the back button
• They provide you with usage statistics that are invaluable to you as a content publisher

Just go to www.feedburner.com and sign up for an account. If you arent already using their services, you should be!

The Double Feed Dilemma

You sign up for FeedBurner, they ‘burn your feed’ and give you a new Feed URL… and you paste the code into your blog and begin promoting it. But guess what? Not everyone that visits your blog is going to click that icon and subscribe via FeedBurner.

Many people will just use your website address (www.clicknewz.com, for example) instead of your feed address to add your blog to their Feed Reader of choice. Most Feed Readers automatically detect the blogs Feed URL and make the process easy for their users.

The problem? They are detecting your original feed – the one that comes built-in to your WordPress or other blog platform. In my case this is www.clicknewz.com/feed/ instead of the FeedBurner URL which is http://feeds.feedburner.com/wp-clicknewz .

Now you have people subscribed to your feed using two separate Feed URLs… making your FeedBurner statistics innacurate (uh – like mine).

The first thing you should do is scan your template for any references to the Feed or RSS. You may find links in the header, the sidebar or the footer. Change these to your FeedBurner URL. Of course, you still have the problem of various readers automatically detecting your original Feed URL…

A little redirect is in order. Instead of outlining the whole process here, I’ll point you to the write-up for the fix at: The Feed Redirect Fix (that’s the FeedBurner Forum). All said and done, you are setting up a redirect for your original feed to point to your FeedBurner feed.

NOTE: Scratch that – you’ll pull your hair out. Just use the FeedSmith Plugin

THEN you will have accurate stats, which is the ultimate goal

If all of this is so important…

I know – why did I neglect my feed fix, right?

(long pause – I am trying to think of a good excuse…)

If you ever notice me doing something totally screwy, or neglecting something so obviously important, feel free to send me an email (or even leave me a public comment) and give me the well-deserved kick. Or even a nice “heads-up” note will do …

Best,

P.S. I do have “the fix” in place now, so the stats are finally accurate. I know… “Yay, Lynn!” – Now, go check on yours

Tags: feedburner, feed stats, blog stats, rss subscribers, blog readers, blog subscribers, blog optimization, feed optimization,

Last month saw a 37% increase in Unique Visitors, which toalled almost 2,000 more unique visitors than previous months (see March 2007 stats).

As you can see in the graph to the right, the increase in traffic is even greater this month. In fact, I shared the stats last week when they finally broke 5 digits – totalling over 10,000 unique visitors this month. By the end of April, the stats were showing a 75% increase in Unique Visitors over the month of March…

April Stats for the ClickNewz Blog:

• Inbound Links (main page): 22,702
• Inbound Links (total): 25,915
• Unique Visitors in April 2007: 12,624
• Total Number of Visits: 31,700

For Comparison, here are the March ’07 Stats:

• Inbound Links (main page): 22,968
• Inbound Links (total): 31,391
• Unique Visitors in March 2007: 7,221
• Total Number of Visits: 21,368

The most popular pages during the month of April, or the most viewed, were: Writing Reports, Traffic Tips for New Sites, and How to Monetize Website Traffic.

Top 8 Referring Websites:

Top 8 Keyword Phrases:

• internet marketing blog
• content composer
• gary halbert passed away
• online marketer of the year
• wireless satellite tv
• april 15 tax deadline
• online marketing blog
• lynn terry

There is a substantial increase in the number of hits from googlebot and msnbot, with yahoo staying about the same. As a result, traffic from Google alone more than tripled this month.

Since there are approximately the same number of posts for both March and April, and no major increase in referrers (outside of the addition of StumbleUpon), the only logical conclusion is that the new template has worked some kind of magic.

I installed the Presscut Theme around March 30th. Perhaps it is ‘more optimized’ than my original template, or maybe it is just the change itself that attracted the search bots. I’m honestly not sure.

But that is where the additional traffic is coming from: mainly Google, with Yahoo traffic more than doubling as well.

There are currently 569 posts and 2,371 comments…

Tags: april, blog stats, unique visitors, awstats, stats junkie

I was going to wait until the end of the month to share this tidbit with you… but today was the day, and I just couldnt wait! All month I have been keeping an eye on the traffic stats for this blog (ClickNewz.com) and noticing a substantial increase in the number of unique visitors.

There are usually just over 5,000 unique visitors per month. Last month, March 2007, there was a nice little increase to 7,221 unique visitors. But this month, we’ll be breaking that 5-digit barrier…

In fact, it happened today! Current stats show 10,061 unique visitors so far for the month of April. Very exciting considering the number of unique visitors has almost doubled in the last couple of months!

Just wanted to share the good news with you

Best,

Tags: blog stats, traffic stats, unique visitors, clicknewz