robglazebrook.com

Amanda and I play Powerball every once in a while. We’re not excessive about it or anything: we have rules in place. For example, we never play unless the jackpot is over $80 million (for reasons that would take a whole second post to explain), and we only spend $5 on any one drawing: I pick two, she picks two, and we let the computer pick the final numbers.

So far, we’re not doing so hot. On the last drawing for $162 million, for example, we matched one number. Total. There are 30 numbers on our ticket, and we matched one. Those are pretty impressive odds, really… they’re just going in the wrong direction.

But man, when we do win big, things will be interesting. I’m going to have a huge-arse computer with four monitors: two to keep track of my investments, one for surfing the web, and one for playing videogames All. Day. Long. Also, I’m going to finally get myself a scooter. And instead of making regular-type phone calls, I’m going to have a giant high-def video communication system for my life-sized telepresence. And I’ll probably have an iPhone on the side for days I don’t feel like putting on pants.

A supercomputer, a LifeSize telecommunications system, and a scooter. A guy can dream, right?

Three months up and running already! How did things fare? Well, some metrics fell far short of my expectations, while others far exceeded my hopes. What does this tell me? I have no idea how to guestimate growth. :)

My visits saw a lot of hills and valleys over the month, as is normal I suppose. I had a nice jump right before I left on vacation thanks, once again, to StumbleUpon. SU also helped a bit at the end of the month, as well, although two mentions in Smashing Magazine also helped that one out a bit. I’m hoping the Smashing traffic will give me a nice boost over the next couple of days.

Also, for the first time this month, the greatest single source for me in terms of traffic was organic Google search results. Google sent me, on average, around 90 unsolicited visitors every day last month. That’s a great thing, because I didn’t have to really “work” for those views: they came to me, instead of me to them. Hopefully that number will continue to grow.

My subscriber stats saw more fantastic growth – in fact, I managed to nearly double my subscriber rate again last month! (Heh, do you like how I say “I managed,” as if I really had much to do with it at all?) I ended March with 295 subscribers, and ended April with 586. If I continue at this rate of growth, the entire world will be reading my website in two years! :)

So my goals for last month were such:

• Unique Visitors: 25% growth (~17,000)
• Page Views: 25% growth (~30,000)
• Subscribers: 50% growth (~450)
• Revenue: 100% growth (~$7.50)

And how’d we do?

• Unique Visitors: ~1% loss (13,494) (essentially no growth)
• Page Views: ~2% growth (25,563) (essentially no growth)
• Subscribers: ~99% growth (586) (exceed expectations!)
• Revenue: ~2709% growth ($96.08) (REALLY exceeded expectations!)

So obviously the real surprise story here is the revenue growth. What changed? Quite a bit (obviously).

Last month I was relying on two revenue streams: Google ads and affiliate ads. I had experimented with Google ad placement, moving it further down the page and adding affiliate ads where the Google stuff used to be. That was pretty much a big fat fail: Google brought me in $3.42 (half of the previous month) and the affiliates brought in bupkis.

This month I made a few changes. I moved the Google ads to a more prominent position (along the left side of the page), first and foremost. And then I managed to add two new revenue-generating streams: banner ads, which I’m selling myself through the site (no commission), and text links, which I’m selling through Text-Link-Ads (50% commission). I had been trying to sell banner ads in March, as well, but hadn’t been successful. This month, two advertisers approached me about ads, and I was able to work something out with them. Also, I snagged a text-link via TLA, which brought in a little something.

So what are my goals for this month? Well, I’ve decided I’m not going to set any hard-and-fast goals anymore. They were a great motivator at first, but I think I’m ready to look beyond specific numbers now and start looking at the big picture: how can I improve the site overall, thus benefiting all metrics? As such, here are my general goals:

• Continue to grow my subscriber count. Subscribers are a great source of steady readership, and are people I no longer have to “work” for. They don’t have to go looking for my site.
• Grow revenue, if possible. The more revenue the site generates, the more I can justify the time I have spent (and continue to spend) working on it. That will obviously mean more ads (or charging more for the ones I have), and there has to be a line somewhere when the ads become excessive. I don’t want CSSnewbie to look like JohnChow.com, for example. But a few more ads aren’t going to hurt anybody… ;)
• Redesign CSSnewbie.com. I’m working with someone at the moment to get a new design for the site hashed out, and hopefully that’ll be finalized in the next couple of months. The current design for CSSnewbie isn’t terrible, but neither was it carefully planned by a trained graphic designer. Instead, I threw it together one long weekend when I was looking for something to do. I think a new design would inspire trust and confidence in my articles – a well-designed site generates an aura of professionalism regardless of the quality of the content. And with quality content in addition to a great design, you’ve got a winning site on your hands.

So those are my goals! I’m not focusing on page views this month. If they grow, great. If they don’t, oh well. So long as I’m putting out sufficiently quality content such to attract new subscribers and advertisers to the site, I don’t feel the need to see a huge explosion in page views.

And of course, now that I’ve said that, page views will probably be the only metric to see significant growth this month. ;)

My, my… but April has been a busy month! Two weeks of spending most every waking moment either teaching or preparing for vacation, followed by two weeks of vacation, has left me with not very much time for blogging, I guess.

I thought I should probably write something really quick to let all those curious know that Amanda and I both survived our trip to Europe with dozens of stories, hundreds of photos, innumerable memories and no new scars. In short, it was a rousing success (but not necessarily an arousing success, which is what I accidentally typed the first time (unless you’re really turned on by success stories)).

Paris was beautiful. We spent hours wandering the Louvre and the Musee D’Orsay. We wandered the streets during the afternoons and evenings, stopping at little cafés and browsing outdoor markets. We drank wine by the pitcher full (because it was cheaper than the bottle full) and ate some really stinkin’ good food. We saw the Eiffel Tower at night, twice, and took a boat ride down the Seine River. We spent a couple of hours just staring in awe at the majesty of Notre Dame.

Amsterdam was differently, but equally, cool. I’m in love with the city and have decided I’ll have to live there someday. Everyone was extremely friendly, and most everyone spoke English (which was a good thing, because our Dutch wasn’t exactly top notch). Most people ride bicycles everywhere, which has inspired me to start riding a bike again for the first time in well over a decade. It was early spring in The Netherlands, so we took a day trip to the Keukenhoff gardens to see the tens of thousands of bulbs in bloom. We also spent a long afternoon wandering the Rijksmuseum, which had a fantastic collection of Dutch art – I had no idea that the Dutch masters were so fantastic! We spent the evenings hanging out with our friends Anne and Luke at various drinking establishments. I discovered that I like fries doused in mayonnaise and peanut sauce (satay), which they call “fries at war.”

Munich was a beerily wonderful city. We stayed in a great location, just off a huge walking plaza that covered the entire center of the city. We spent a good portion of our time in Munich walking around, enjoying the sites, and then stopping in at various beer halls to take in the real local fare and scenery. We had a great time one night at the city’s biggest beer hall – the Hofbrauhaus. We sat at a traditional German long table (where you just sit down next to perfect strangers and make friends) and met a great group from South Africa, a couple from Ireland, and a couple of guys from Chicago.

And now, we’re back home. However, we’re trying to preserve the best of what we learned from our Europe trip. We brought back a few bottles of French wine to enjoy over the next month or so, and Monday night, I tried my hand at making traditional French baguette-style bread: success! Delicious, delicious success. My grandpa has loaned me his bike (an awesome-looking, old-school single speed Schwinn) so I can ease my way back into riding. Sunday morning, Amanda and I rode our bikes to the grocery store to do some shopping instead of driving. It was about five hilly miles round trip, and half of that with a bag full of groceries strapped to our backs, but we made it. I think it would have been easier had we not woken up early and taken the pooch on a two-mile jog that morning. :)

I know this was a brief update, but it will have to do for now. We have to take the cats to a vet appointment momentarily, and then we’re meeting friends out for drinks. It’s a hard life. I’ll try to get pictures up at some point this week.

This may come as a shock to some of you, considering the (permanent) age of my mother, but my grandfather is an old guy. In fact, his nickname has been “The Old Guy” for as long as I can remember. He’s right around 72 years old so far, and all indicators point to the fact that he won’t be getting any younger any time soon.

In addition, The Old Guy has also had a few health problems. He’s been diagnosed with emphysema, he’s had a couple of strokes, and he’s also suffered a couple of heart attacks. So far, nothing’s taken him out, and my fingers are crossed most sternly that nothing will take him out for a long while yet. I’m fond of him, and all. :)

Which is why it’s probably a good idea for me to check out InsideCardiacArrest.com. I don’t have a lot of background knowledge on major health problems like Irregular Heartbeat — I have Yet Another Cold/Flu Bug (YAC/FB) at the moment, but I’m pretty sure that’s not on par with sudden cardiac arrest.

And the InsideCardiacArrest website has some pretty useful information: for the first time in my 26 years, I finally understand what a fibrillation is, why it’s bad, and why one might be interested in defibrillizing one’s heart. I always knew it was a bad thing, but I never had a good mental image of the problem — thus, I inevitably ended up picturing little worm-like “fibrills” that had to be killed via electric shock. And while my “fibrillation” nugget of knowledge might not help me next time my grandfather has an “episode” (like Will & Grace, only with more hospital visits), it will certainly come in handy the next big family dinner, when everyone’s ailments come out to be examined by all.

So CSSnewbie has been up and running for two full months now. Time to take another step back and see how the website fared.

My views peaked early in the month (thanks, StumbleUpon!) and fell from there. I was never able to get quite back up to where I was before. The StumbleUpon people really loved my “Intelligent Navigation” article, and I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on it. There were a few other peaks in there, topping out at around 1,000 viewers/day, as a result of being mentioned on a couple of other websites (such as Noupe, Etc, Smashing Magazine, CSS Globe, and CSS Drive). My low point was Easter Sunday (go figure) with just under 100 viewers.

My Feedburner (feed reader) stats saw more of a steady increase than the rapid ups and downs of my page views. I started the month with just over 100 readers, and ended with just shy of 300. In general, I’m happy with this level of growth, though of course I’d love to see it continue to increase at the same pace!

So looking back, these were my goals for March:

• 7,500 unique visitors (50% growth)
• 15,000 page views (50% growth)
• 250 subscribers (114% growth)
• $20 revenue (200% growth)

And how did I fare? There’s good and bad in the results:

• 13,724 unique visitors (~170% growth from last month)
• 25,093 page views (~150% growth)
• 295 subscribers (~195% growth)
• $3.42 revenue (nearly 50% loss)

So visitors, page views, and subscribers all exceeded my expectations, while revenue plummeted (if you can call a drop of $3.27 a plummet). What gives? I decided to do an experiment with my ads early on in the month. I added a “sponsors” section to the sidebar, where I was hoping to list businesses willing to advertise on the site in return for a fixed monthly fee – this is one of the most common ways a site like mine generates revenue.

But until I found a sponsor, I decided to fill those spaces with affiliate links. The cool thing about those links is I could make a lot of money… but only if someone actually buys something on the other end. So while I had quite a few click-throughs on those ads, nobody actually bought anything. And I haven’t yet found a sponsor to take the place of those affiliate ads (probably because I’m being selective and my site is still young). And to make room for the “sponsor” section, I pushed my Google Ads down the page, so they didn’t get as many clicks. The result: lower revenue. The experiment failed. :)

So what’s the next step? To try again! I’ll contact a few more companies about sponsorship opportunities (and if you know of anyone who might be interested, I’m currently only asking $25/month for a 125×125 ad featured on every page in the site… that’s about a $1 CPM, which is pretty reasonable according to this article). In the meantime, I’ll probably reduce the number of affiliate links to move the Google ads further up the page. I’m also considering other places I could place AdSense ads in the short term. And I’m considering offering text-only links in the sidebar, managed by another company (which would take a nasty 50% royalty on every sale, but it’s a starting point).

In terms of site growth, I’m going to be a little more conservative in my goal-setting this month. Not because I think the site is done growing by any stretch, but because I’m going to be on vacation for the middle half of the month, and won’t be around to actively promote it. I’m hoping growth will be slow and steady, but I’m not expecting leaps and/or bounds (unless other people help!).

So here are my goals for April:

• Unique Visitors: 25% growth (~17,000)
• Page Views: 25% growth (~30,000)
• Subscribers: 50% growth (~450)
• Revenue: 100% growth (~$7.50)

And really, those goals may be more ambitious than I know… that first StumbleUpon surge really boosted my stats, and I can’t guarantee a repeat of that. So all I can do for now is work hard, try new things, and hope for the best!