August 2011 Site Progress Report (subscribers only)

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Welcome to my site progress report for August. 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.

Here are the numbers for ndoherty.com for July 25 to August 24.

Raw numbers

• 11 published posts (same as last month)
• 273 comments (including mine, -18.0%)
• 11,193 visits (27.7%)
• 22,670 pageviews (35.3%)
• 2:49 average time on site (16.3%)
• 2.03 pages/visit (5.9%)
• 950 total followers on Twitter (17.4%)
• 284 fans on Facebook (15.0%)
• 202 RSS subscribers (45.3%)
• 339 email subscribers (37.8%)

Most popular posts/pages

1. The Stockdale Paradox (1,347 views, up 29.9% compared to last month)
2. Circle of Influence, Circle of Concern (1,168 views, 16.1%)
3. $50 Blogs for Rabble Rousers (1,009 views, 1115.7%)
4. About (607 views, 74.9%)
5. Share Your Biggest, Most Ridiculous Goal (I’ll Go First) (600 views, 82.9%)

Top traffic sources

1. google/organic (4,352 visits, up 22.9% compared to last month)
2. direct (1,964 visits, 18.5%)
3. facebook.com (715 visits, 21.2%)
4. fluentin3months.com (710 visits)
5. ndoherty.biz (547 visits, 1202.4%)

Huge thanks to Benny Lewis over at Fluent In 3 Months for inviting me to guest post about my experience learning Spanish. I highly recommend Benny’s site (and guide) for anyone in need of some effective language learning tips. More on the quality of the traffic he sent my way below.

Top search terms

1. stockdale paradox (632 visits, up 41.7% compared to last month)
2. disrupting the rabblement (153 visits, 12.5%)
3. niall doherty (122 visits, 4.3%)
4. circle of influence (107 visits, 72.6%)
5. how to prioritize your life (103 visits, 4.0%)

Goal conversions

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

• Goal 1: Long Visitor (4 mins) – 1,485 conversions, up 36.0% compared to last month
• Goal 2: Rabid Fan (5 pages) – 542 conversions, 63.4%
• Goal 3: Rabid Fan (10 pages) – 202 conversions, 69.8%
• Goal 4: Rabid Fan (20 pages) – 44 conversions, 22.2%
• Goal 5: Manifesto downloads – 113 conversions, 63.8%
• Goal 6: Mailing list sign-up – 115 conversions (just started tracking this last month)

What to make of it all

As you can imagine, with almost a clean sweep of green numbers above, I’m pretty chuffed with how the site fared last month. Without the help of any crazy traffic spikes, I managed to hit 10,000+ visits for the first time ever, and attract a hundred or so new email subscribers (hi!). Happy days.

Experiments in traffic building

Each month, I want to share with you here a few things I’ve been toying with to try build my audience and increase reader engagement…

Guest posting on Fluent in 3 Months

Guest posting is something I’ve always been slacking on, and this one for Fluent In 3 Months only came about because Benny approached me after seeing my 6 Weeks Spanish video. I tried to make the most of the opportunity and spent a good chunk of time crafting the post, trying to make it as helpful as possible to Benny’s audience. Then I wrote another post for my blog that I felt would resonate with those same people, and published that within a few hours of the Fi3M post going live. The idea was that Fi3M readers would come over to check out my site, and I’d be ready for them with relevant content and a quick overview of what Disrupting the Rabblement is all about.

It all came together perfectly, as the traffic that came through from Fi3M converted much better than any other traffic I received last month. The goal conversion rate from all site traffic measured out to 22.3%, whereas traffic from Fi3M was at 57.6%. Lots of those folks ended up subscribing to my mailing list and/or downloading my manifesto.

The lesson here is that I really need to get off my ass and do more guest posts.

Starting conversations

I can’t recall exactly where I heard him mention this, but Derek Halpern from Social Triggers recently gave me the idea of starting a conversation via the auto-responder for my mailing list. That is, when someone signs up for my list, the first message I send them asks the following question: “What are you struggling with?”

With that, I encourage any new subscribers to email me directly so I can understand what challenges they’re facing. Most folks never take me up on the offer, but I’ve really enjoyed conversing back and forth with the few who do. Not only do they give me some great ideas for future blog posts, but I also get to connect with them on a personal level and offer some direct value.

It will be hard to measure exactly how this helps me grow my audience and form deeper connections with the real people who are tuning into my blog, but I’m pretty sure it makes a positive difference.

Asking folks to promote themselves

Here’s another idea I borrowed from elsewhere online: About a month ago I started following Ana Hoffman on Twitter and saw an automatic DM immediately come through from her. In it, she encouraged me to go ahead and leave a comment on this page of her site, telling her all about myself and what I do online, no strings attached.

I thought that was pretty cool, so I set up the same myself. Now whenever anyone follows me on Twitter, I use this service to automatically follow them back and send out this DM:

Giggidy! Thanks a mil for the follow. Feel free to introduce and promote yourself here: http://t.co/1E2mCho No strings attached

I had some concerns that the auto-DM’s might come across spammy and annoy a bunch of people, but I’m a firm believer in testing my assumptions so I decided to give it a go. So far I’ve received no complaints, my follow count continues to rise nicely, and I’ve been able to connect a little deeper with some very cool people who went ahead and left a comment on that promo page.

(By the way, you’re more than welcome to go ahead and introduce/promote yourself over at that page, too. I’d love to hear from you

Tracking site search

Here’s another idea I implemented last month: tracking site searches. That is, hooking up Google Analytics so it can keep track of what folks type in the search box of my blog.

As a result of this, I’ve found that many people are still landing at ndoherty.com looking for a jQuery plugin called Coda-Slider that I created a few years back. Methinks it would be smart to create a page just for them explaining where they can now find that plugin.

In case you missed ‘em

Here are the posts I published in the last month:

• Why The Hell Would Anyone Be Interested In You?
• When People Piss On Your Dreams
• Site Progress Report: July 2011
• The 3 Most Intelligent Words in the English Language
• Dog Meat, Piracy, and Something About Business
• How I Earn And Spend My Money – July 2011 Finance Report
• How I Failed My First Girlfriend (And What I Learned From The Experience)
• Extreme Minimalism: How to Fit Everything You Own in a 42 Litre Backpack
• My Spanish After 3.5 Months (Video)
• 5 Hidden Benefits of Learning a Second Language
• How to Hitchhike 1,141 Kilometers Through Two Foreign Countries

Feedback welcome

Thanks all for your kind attention. Let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions via the comments below.

more donation options

Disrupting the Rabblement is proudly supported by donations from generous readers just like you, allowing me to finally retire full-time from the stripping industry (I was especially popular with the over 60's crowd).

For those of you legendary folks who wish to make a one-time donation, you can do so above. As a thank you, I may or may not send you an autographed photo from my pole dancing days.