Site Progress Report – April 2011

Hola, amigos. I’ll be in Dublin by the time you read this, flying off to Spain on Tuesday. But before I do…

These monthly site progress reports are a way to keep myself motivated and accountable. I’m hoping I can build my audience significantly over time and share what works for me.

If you’re not interested in website traffic or building an audience online, you may want to skip these posts. No worries. I usually post them on weekends so they don’t much get in the way of my regular articles.

Here are the numbers for ndoherty.com for March 25 to April 24.

Raw numbers

  • 15 published posts (+6 compared to last month)
  • 124 comments (including mine, +40)
  • 9,636 visits (+3,275)
  • 20,013 pageviews (+5,454)
  • 1:55 average time on site (-0:27)
  • 2.08 pages/visit (- 0.2)
  • 563 total followers on Twitter (+78)
  • 339 total rss/e-mail subscribers (-11)

Most popular posts/pages

  1. My biggest secret (3,286 views, +3,105 compared to last month)
  2. The Stockdale Paradox (1,610 views, -3)
  3. The Disrupting the Rabblement manifesto: How to think for yourself, live your dreams, and piss off some zombies (751 views, +298)
  4. Circle of Influence, Circle of Concern (911 views, +94)
  5. Prioritize your life (451 views, +248)

Top traffic sources

  1. google/organic (3,019 visits, +134 compared to last month)
  2. direct (2,348 visits, +1,212)
  3. twitter.com (843 visits, +670)
  4. stumbleupon.com (472 visits, +390)
  5. facebook.com (465 visits, +69)

Top search terms

  1. stockdale paradox (526 visits, -68 compared to last month)
  2. niall doherty (164 visits, +7)
  3. the stockdale paradox (90 visits, +56)
  4. how to prioritize your life (78 visits, +30)
  5. niall doherty vegan (77 visits, +77)

Goal conversions

See Karol Gadja’s excellent post on Think Traffic for an explanation of this stuff.

  • Goal 1: Long Visitor (4 mins) – 964 conversions, +242 compared to last month
  • Goal 2: Rabid Fan (5 pages) – 491 conversions, +91
  • Goal 3: Rabid Fan (10 pages) – 237 conversions, +26
  • Goal 4: Rabid Fan (20 pages) – 48 conversions, +19

What to make of it all

After dipping back down in March, the last month has seen traffic jump back up to February levels. Actually, the past month was even better than February, at least in terms of visits and page views, making April my best traffic month yet. Much of that boost can be attributed to one source: Leo from Zen Habits linked up my biggest secret post on Tumblr and Twitter. Thanks, Leo!

While that boost was nice and everything, I’m not very satisfied with the numbers overall, especially considering how frequently I posted. Most disappointing is the slight dip in rss/e-mail subscribers, which is one of the most important metrics for audience growth. I’ll need to work on a few ways to increase that number significantly in the coming months.

On a more positive note, I just compared the numbers for this April to those from April 2010, and I see traffic is up 450 percent, which is nice. If it keeps growing at that rate each year, I should be just fine :-)

In case you missed ‘em

Here are the posts I published in the last month:

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to check out my work here. We all have a limited supply of attention, so I very much appreciate that you’ve trusted me with some of yours. I sincerely hope that what you get from this site is worth your investment.

I also appreciate all the feedback I get from readers and respond to every e-mail and comment I receive, so please keep those coming. You can get at me via the contact page, or leave a comment on any post.

Unknown April 30, 2011 6 Comments

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6 Responses to “Site Progress Report – April 2011”

  1. Anthony Reply May 1, 2011 at 6:07 pm

    I’m a total numbers and stats geek, This shit I love. I’d rather read Google analytics than watch a soap opera any day!

    Keep up the good work mate, you’ve just got another Facebook fan :) Enjoy España!

  2. Robert Hickman Reply May 2, 2011 at 1:50 pm

    Interesting results, getting linked to by a big name just seems to produce a massive traffic spike, but verry few conversions.

    I’m still having a lot of trouble growing traffic to my own blog, maybe converting mental ‘disorders’ into an advantage is just too obscure a topic. Maybe why there are no ‘big blogs’ in this area.

    • Niall Doherty Reply May 2, 2011 at 2:24 pm

      You could be the first, Robert ;-)

      I say keep at it. I’ve only gone “all in” with my blog since December, and I want to give it at least a year before I start drawing any serious conclusions. I believe there’s a pain period you need to go through before you can really make it; most people aren’t willing to endure that and drop out too soon.

  3. Riley Harrison Reply May 2, 2011 at 11:54 pm

    Hi Niall,

    Off to Ireland eh. Well I’m an American but the picture on my website is Kathy (my wife) and I standing on the Hill of Tara. I love to travel and Ireland is one of my favorites. I hope when you are in Spain you get to see some Gaudi architecture – it’s mind blowing. Good luck on your adventures.

    Riley

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