April Round up – Traffic and Income
I can’t quite believe it’s been half a year already with this the 6th Traffic and Income report! The blog has been progressing nicely and the hard work I have put in so far will pay off eventually.
Although most of my time so far has been spent creating great content for this blog, I have come to realise that to build more traffic I need to outreach more and provide great content for other people.
So this is something I have been concentrating on! Every month I publish my traffic and Income report so you guys can see how i’m progressing and hopefully it will help to inspire you with your own ventures!
What Have I been Doing In April
I started the month by posting 2 new posts to the blog and then I realised that I needed to ‘get out there’, so I decided to write an epic post on building a membership site. It took me about 22 hours and consisted of 5000 words!
When I finished the post I contacted Matthew Woodward and asked him if he would like to use it as a guest post on his blog!
He quickly added the post to his blog and that left me feeling with a great sense of achievement! Having your post published on Matthews blog is not easy as he only accepts top quality stuff!
Why would I spend 22 hours writing a post just to give it away? – I needed to build brand awareness and reputation. By having my content published on other influential blogs in this niche is the best way of doing this.
I still have a long way to go but Im planning on guest posting on a number of other related blogs in the future! It builds brand, awareness, traffic, opt ins, and authority backlinks which will help with rankings!
Went To Cape Verde
As usual I took a week away, and this time I visited Cape Verde, the Island of Boa Vista just off the coast of Africa! The weather was really hot and it was a very relaxing week! I had no access to the internet so it was a little strange not checking emails, Twitter etc….
But this was the view from my sun lounger 🙂
I did however do a good bit of reading whilst away:
For about the 3rd time in 2 years I read ‘Golden Apples’ by Bill Cullen. It’s a really inspirational book and I love to refresh my memory once in a while:
I also read ‘Virtual Freedom‘ a book about hiring and working with Virtual Staff. The book is very indepth and I learned a lot from it, but I did get a little board half way through. It’s not one of them books that you need to read from start to finish!
New posts published this month
I have published a total of 4 posts, including 1 post on Matthew Woodward’s blog.
http://doseoyourself.com/money-in-the-list/ – This post generated quite a bit of interest. Here I explain how I built one of my lists to 36,000 members which brought in over $172,000 last year alone!!
http://doseoyourself.com/tutorial-seo-spyglass-harmful-links/ – SEO Spyglass launched a new feature in their software which Identified harmful back links to your site, so I did a tutorial on that
http://doseoyourself.com/april-2014-top-10-articles-published/ – As usual I produced my list of the top 10 posts published during the month. There are some crackers right here!!
http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/start-profitable-membership-site-step-step/ – Here is the gust post I wrote on building a membership site. It’s very detailed and took me a long time to write!!
Started To build a Blogger Outreach List
I came across an interesting post last month by Brian Dean which was actually published on BoostBlogTraffic.com and It kind of give me the kick up the back side that I needed!
As I mentioned at the start, I have realised that to grow my blog I need to other influential bloggers to share my stuff, and to do this I would have to get my guest posts accepted. Problem is, it’s not always that simple to get your guest posts accepted.
You have to build relationships first, and this is something I have been doing this month!
I created a excel sheet and I listed all of the other top bloggers in my niche. I included details such as their name, website, contact, DA, PA, Twitter followers etc…
I have built up a report of around 40 bloggers so far, and my aim is to build relationships with all of them and eventually have a guest post accepted or a link back/share to my blog!
This is something I will continue to work on and I am confident that it will be well worth my effort in the near future. So far I have already landed 2 guest posts and a few links!
Spent More Time on Twitter
Although I have had a Twitter account from the beginning, I have not really paid to much attention to it, but having seen that all of the top bloggers are quite active on Twitter on a daily basis I decided I should perhaps put more effort into it.
I created a Buffer account which allows me to schedule Tweets which was a great help. I also started to interact with other bloggers in the hope that they would share my content.
My work paid off as I saw biggest increase in Twitter followers since I started the blog. I more than doubled my followers which was great, but Im still not convinced that Twitter is a good source for traffic
However I am convinced that Twitter is a good source for interacting with other influential bloggers and building reputation!
Traffic
Last month we saw around 3,235 visits. This month I am expecting around the same mark or maybe higher due to my guest post!!
Traffic is up on last month thanks to my Guest Post on Matthew Woodwards blog. Â I really need to push over the 5k mark soon!!
Where Did The Traffic Come From
As usual, BHW brought in the most traffic but it was down significantly this month due to my lack of posts on the forum! We did see a big increase from Matts blog after my guest post!
Yet again my Google organic traffic has increased again which is a great sign. As long as this number increases every month I will be happy 🙂
My Twitter traffic also increased after my efforts to increase my interaction!
Most Popular Pages
My new post on about ‘The Money is In The List’ grabbed top spot this month closely followed by ‘How to get any site to the top of Google’
Email Sign Ups and Social Media
Something that is very important to me and thats the number of people subscribing to my blog!!
Email = 138 (+44)
Twitter = 77 (+46)
Google+ = 76 (+25)
A nice increase again this month, especially Twitter followers!!
Earnings
HMA = $35
SEO Power-suite = $38
BlueHost = $65
Consultancy = $210
Expenses
WpEngine = -$29
Total Profit = $319
Metrics
Round Up
Another very busy month creating content. Traffic and earnings up slightly but Im not too bothered about the earnings just yet!
Managed to get my post published on Matts blog and also grew my Twitter following by posting more Tweets and interacting. My forum interaction was down this month and that had an affect on traffic!
I was also busy building my Blogger outreach list and building realtionships.
Oh yeh! and I managed to get a week away in Cape Verde 🙂
Plans For Next Month
I plan on getting another guest post out there on a high authority blog!! I also plan on continuing my efforts on building good relationships with fellow bloggers!
I will also add a pop up opt in form to the blog to see if that increases my opt in figures!!
I really must try to get involved in the forums a bit more and hopefully I’ll have time to publish a couple more posts for you guys. I’d also like to see my Google organic traffic reach 500+ for next month!!
Oh, and I’m off to Spain for a few days with the girlfriend (who happens to be 5 months pregnant by the way)
Hey Jason – looks like you are on the right track. I really agree with your focus. I think networking and specifically guest posting is THE number one way to make things happen. The key is to target high traffic, niche related blogs (this is something people don’t really get, they just guest post on their friends or other blogs at their level – then they see no traffic come over and think guest posting sucks).
I just submitted a guest post for consideration on ConversionXL for example. This blog is way out of my league, but I think it’s the level to strive for. Create great content and then if they say no, put it on your own blog or shop it around a bit more.
Great post on matt’s btw, I bookmarked it and congrats to you and the GF!
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Jason Chesters Reply:
May 2nd, 2014 at 6:56 am
Thanks Dave! Yes, aiming high is the way to go. If the top blogs reject your guest posts then you drop down until somebody does accept! Have you tried submitting any articles to YouMoz or SEJ?
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i haven’t yet because really they just got on my radar the other day. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t try with some of my other posts that I think would have been good fits.
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Just added you to my feedly. Keep it up Jason!
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