November 2011 Site Progress Report (subscribers only)

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Welcome to my site progress report for November. 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 October 25 to November 24.

Raw numbers

• 11 published posts (+1 compared to last month)
• 307 comments (including mine, +5.1%)
• 21,612 visits (35.1%)
• 34,365 pageviews (19.9%)
• 2:20 average time on site (-6.2%)
• 1.59 pages/visit (-11.2%)
• 1354 total followers on Twitter (10.6%)
• 642 fans on Facebook (51.1%)
• 421 RSS subscribers (15.0%)
• 625 email subscribers (20.9%)

Most popular posts/pages

1. What Happens When You Try Flirt With 100+ Women In 2 Weeks In Amsterdam? (4,901 views)
2. The Stockdale Paradox (4,723 views, down 25.2% compared to last month)
3. Circle of Influence, Circle of Concern (1,174 views, -19.7%)
4. Showering Without Soap or Shampoo: My 3-Month Experiment (939 views, 102%)
5. About (762 views, 28.7%)

Top traffic sources

1. google/organic (6,082 visits, up 22.8% compared to last month)
2. direct (5,156 visits, 103%)
3. lifehacker.com (1,616 visits, -51.9%)
4. facebook.com (1,582 visits, 53.6%)
5. Twitter (1,038 visits, 60.4%)

Top search terms

1. stockdale paradox (466 visits, down 11.4% compared to last month)
2. disrupting the rabblement (195 visits, -13.0%)
3. niall doherty (155 visits, -29.9%)
4. kids porn (142, 100%)
5. intelligent words (128 visits, -3.0%)

Note: The “kids porn” hits are on account of this post. The questionable folks who arrive at DtR via those keywords stick around for an average of just two seconds.

Goal conversions

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

• Goal 1: Long Visitor (4 mins) – 2,514 conversions, up 12.5% compared to last month
• Goal 2: Rabid Fan (5 pages) – 564 conversions, -0.4%
• Goal 3: Rabid Fan (10 pages) – 135 conversions, -7.5%
• Goal 4: Rabid Fan (20 pages) – 30 conversions, -3.2%
• Goal 5: Manifesto downloads – 169 conversions, -30.7%
• Goal 6: Mailing list sign-up – 163 conversions, 7.2%

What to make of it all

I expected October would be a tough act to follow after I got linked up by lifehacker.com, but November saw further increases in traffic, mostly on account of that post about my flirting experiment in Amsterdam. Unfortunately though, Google Analytics is being a bit shoddy and refuses tell me where most of the traffic to that post came from.

Anyways, overall I’m pretty happy with the numbers. The mailing list continues to build steadily, and the number of DtR Facebook fans has increased nicely the past two months.

A couple of metrics headed in the wrong direction though are time on site, and pages per visit. I hope to have the entire site redesigned by the end of December, so hopefully the changes I have in mind will help with those numbers.

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…

However, I don’t actually have anything of significance to report for November. Even though it proved to be the most successful month this site has had in terms of traffic, it really wasn’t on account of any unusual experiment I was running. Mostly it was just down to people digging a few of my posts and sharing them.

I feel though that I’m now getting to the point where I don’t have to push so hard with the marketing of the blog myself. More and more, you fine readers are taking care of that for me. Muchas gracias for all your support

In case you missed ‘em

Here are the posts I published in the last month:

• You, One Year From Now
• Checking In On Your Big, Ridiculous Goals: Are You Walking Your Talk?
• Becoming Unoffendable
• Fill In The Blanks: Living A Passionate Life Is About ________, Not ________! (guest post)
• What Happens When You Try Flirt With 100+ Women In 2 Weeks In Amsterdam?
• How I Earn And Spend My Money – October 2011 Finance Report
• Finish What You’ve Started (And 21 Other Bits Of Conventional Wisdom You Should Be Wary Of)
• Escaping The Monkey Puzzle: A Few Things You Might Want To Question (guest post)
• Site Progress Report: October 2011
• Winging It
• Answer A Different Question

Feedback welcome

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

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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).

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