Since starting my blog in September 2007 I have been asked how it’s working out, mostly by colleagues without blogs who are keen to see some figures. The answer is it’s too early to say for sure but the number of readers coming to my blog doubles each month heading ever skyward and the number of regular readers is slowly increasing.
Around 100 visitors come to my blog each day and a typical visitor will read on average 2 posts each before departing through one of the links on the blog, usually to another blog or news website.
According to Feedburner I have 12 subscribers. I know who seven of those are; family and colleagues. I have no idea who the other remainder are. I hope they’re not spying on me. Secret admirers, hopefully.
Back in October I started to run Google Adsense on this blog in order to assist with the hosting fees. Despite confident blog growth, Adsense earns me a profitable 70 cents a week (that’s 35p). Google Adsense uses Javascript (code on the webpage) to create the dynamic adverts according to the content of the page. This process slows down the loading of a page, so I will probably remove Google Adsense unless the revenue picks up considerably. I also run Amazon Marketplace referrals, which has generated no revenue. So for those looking to blog for money, look elsewhere for your advertising revenue!
On the subject of Google, I have spent a considerable amount of time applying my knowledge of SEO to this blog. It is the most accessible blog I know of. I’m using Google Sitemaps XML, correct META tags, accurate content, low scripting and image content as well as publishing updates to the various internet blog ping servers. This ensures that all my blog posts are very well indexed and can be easily found by searchers. It supports full XML RSS feeds for both posts and comments. It is even readable on a mobile device. Try it and see 🙂
On the other hand, some of my blog posts have been massively more successful than others. My review of the HTC Kaiser and my tutorial on building an energy efficient and silent compact server have been very well received and linked around the internet. My more political blog posts, particularly commentary on the Construction Industry Scheme have been well read by construction contractors, local authorities, payroll publications and even HM Revenue & Customs. I even won a bottle of champagne for this post!
This blog has also achieved a Google Pagerank of 3/10 in three months since the last pagerank indexing. This is impressive growth, but I have seen better. I am looking to achieve at least a 4/10 Pagerank score this year, and ideally a 5/10 over time. Alexa, a company which works to rate the popularity of internet websites puts my blog at 5,312,890. That is to say, it’s the 5.3 millionth most popular website in the world. I’ve got a long way to go to reach my goal of the top 100,000.
I’d be very grateful if you like any of the articles I’ve written to please submit them to the news aggregators; Digg, Slashdot, Technorati, Facebook, Stumbleupon are all good. Feel free to comment on my articles too!
Now i’m working for an SEO company will share any secrets I do find.
Bit of a grey art though and seemingly rather difficult to achieve without paying for ads. You’ve been blog-rolled btw…
i like reading them because im a nosey fekker!