Blog Stats for May 2008

Well it’s that time again, another month has gone by and we’re slowly approaching the summer season. As I look quickly over my blog stats I’ve noticed they are not as high as the previous month. Why are they not as high? Probably due to the various posts that have been posted this month, not as many traffic drivers than the previous month but I’m not terrible upset for the month of May’s traffic.

Now I like using Google’s analytics because it seems to be fairly easy to search for various statistics and it allows me to build quick reports against criteria I choose. One thing I have been looking at more recently is the ability to display reports against two date ranges; this allows me to see how my current month stacks up against the previous month which allows me to see where it is I can try improving upon.

Why do I even care about my monthly stats?

I care because I like to see what people are primarily visiting my blog for. According to my stats the traffic I receive is search engine traffic which makes sense because my larger visited blog posts are the ones that make the news. An example of a search engine traffic post would be the more recent Maple Ridge Truck Chase which drove traffic to my site from Google. The only thing I have seen because of that was a temporary spike in traffic, similar to the Digg effect but not as effective keeping an increase in traffic. I just think it is fun to see a spike in visiting traffic time to time.

May 2008 Stats:

• 4,585 Page Views (-13.69%)
• 2,932 Visits (-15.03%)
• 78.82% Bounce Rate (+1.73%)

It is a shame to see a decrease in traffic but it isn’t as bad as you might think. Last month I had two large posts that got a lot of temporary traffic (New for Lululemon – The Mansy and Kal Tire: How They Can Screw You Over) where as this month there was only one large traffic blog post (the one I mentioned above).

RSS Feed Subscriptions

My RSS Subscribers are steady on the increase and that is what I like to see. If you have not already done so I would recommend adding my full RSS feed to your daily readings. Who knows it might even allow to too be entered into a contest to win some free stuff!

Blog Income for May 2008

Yes even though I am not blogging for the money but I do like to report on the various items I have tried to see what would work better for a blog site like mine. And in the month of May I have signed up for a new Affiliate (Market Leverage) and enabled Kontera again and currently trying both of them out to see how they perform.

• Google Adsense for May: $3.89 (-40.5%)
• Kontera: $2.82 (0%)
• Market Leverage: $0.00 (0%)
• Private Ad Sales: $115 (700%)

Total Income for May 2008: $121.71

Alright so that is pretty nice to see, I mean private ad sales are always good for sites that are slowly building steady traffic and I’ll definitely give Kontera and Market Leverage more of a chance as I figure them out a bit better. I mean Kontera is pretty easy, it looks at keywords in your content and converts them into hyperlinks that are (hopefully) similar to the content being served.

Market Leverage is really new to me and is of the CPA (cost per action) variety and I am still trying to figure them out a bit since I am not used to that sort of marketing. I am looking for more web based campaigns that are geared more towards my majority of traffic. The people at Market Leverage are very helpful as I stumble around trying out this different affiliate.

Now I don’t normally say at the end of my blog reports that I have particular items on my blog I wish to work on or my goals for the upcoming month but I do believe my blog posting has been a bit more consistent from previous months and I do know I want to work on coming up with new blog post ideas and finding that elusive niche that other people seem to have on their blog but in the meantime I do enjoy posting about whatever comes my way and it seems you my readers also do too.

Thanks go out to all those who read my blog and offer comments and suggestions! I do appreciate them.