robglazebrook.com

I’ve posted a bunch of new photos up on Flickr, for those of you who… err, like looking at me, I guess. They’re a couple of weeks old, though, so you’ll have to imagine what I might look like now. And for those that have a bad imagination, here’s a little help: my hair is a couple of millimeters longer, my facial hair is a bit scruffier, and today I’m wearing black instead of blue. Otherwise, the resemblance is downright uncanny.

I only have 18 days until I start teaching my first class! This is exciting and scary simultaneously. Right now it’s mostly scary, because I haven’t finished the course pack for that class yet. And I haven’t even started the pack for the second class. Or planned what I’m going to teach in the second class, for that matter. I think I’ll have to start thinking about that stuff this weekend. :)

So that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend. Well, that and writing stuff for CSSnewbie. And I’m going out with friends on Saturday night. And I’ll have to post a few more comics on ICanHasHope. I keep busy, is the uniting theme here.

It’s days like today that really lead a man to start fantasizing.

I mean, just two days ago, we had sunny skies and 66 degree temperatures. Four hours later, it was 30 degrees, cloudy, and we had 35mph winds. This winter has already been long and cold enough. I tend to like winters overall, but I think I’m ready for the warm temperatures again. And since Iowa doesn’t seem all that willing to do much more than tease me with them, it gets me to fantasizing about trips to warmer climes.

For example, I just used TravelStoreUSA.com to plan a fantasy vacation to Honolulu, Hawaii. I was able to find round-trip tickets for two – leaving from Des Moines no less – and five nights in a hotel just off Waikiki Beach for under $2,000. Total. If Amanda and I weren’t already leaving for Europe in a few short weeks, that fantasy vacation might just have turned into a reality. :)

And if cruises are more your thing, they also seem to have some pretty good cruise specials going on their sister site (CruiseLocators.com), as well.

Personally, anything that got the frost off my toes and stopped my teeth from chattering for a few days straight would be a welcome change. :)

CSSnewbie has been ramped up into productivity mode for a full month now – I started spreading the word on February 1st. So how did the first month go? Pretty well, actually. In fact, I’ll need to come up with a new set of goals for the month of March. Here are some stats:

As the graph above shows, the website tends to grow in waves. Those waves are when I publish an article that gets mentioned on another website. The numbers are pretty hard to see, since there’s such a huge discrepancy, but I started the month with 14 visits on February 1st, and ended it with just over 1,000 on February 29th.

Of course, that last wave blew all the others to kingdom come – but even that first tiny little wave, peaking at 210 visits on February 4th, looked pretty darn good at the time. The last wave is unique in that at the very end of the month, my website was mentioned on a couple of other prominent websites (Smashing magazine being high among them), and I was simultaneously noticed by the social networking site StumbleUpon.

The problem with wave-shaped growth is there’s inevitably a significant falloff after the wave peaks. The saving grace is my traffic tends to settle at a new higher average after each wave: after the 1st wave, my low point was 30 visits in a day; after the second, I fell to 90 visits; and after the third wave, my low point was at 150 visits in a day. If I can keep this pattern up, things will average out in my favor. :)

My feed stats look a little different – the waves affected the number of people subscribing to my site somewhat, but not by the same margins – but the growth is still generally acceptable (that is, positive). I started the month with 4 subscribers on February 1st, and I ended with 117 on February 29th.

However, for whatever reason, my feed numbers tend to drop off pretty significantly on the weekends, and this weekend is no exception – this morning, I had fallen back down to only 100 subscribers. Hopefully, I’ll make up the difference again by next weekend.

So, looking back on the goals I set a few weeks ago, I’ve managed to hit every one a month ahead of schedule! Here were my goals:

• 1,000 unique visitors/month
• 2,000 page views/month
• 100 subscribers

And here’s what I ended up with in my first month:

• 5,124 unique visitors
• 10,036 pageviews
• 117 subscribers

I managed to get five times the number of visitors and page views I was hoping for. Of course, my subscriber goal was only just met… which means I’m doing well at getting people to the site, but not so great at getting them to subscribe.

I have my theories as to why that might be, and I was planning on addressing those concerns with a major redesign, but maybe I should try to find a stopgap measure now. I’m not sure when that redesign will come about: my friend/coworker Jeremy is working on the design for me, but he’s a busy man with other pressing (and paying) obligations. :) It couldn’t hurt to think about an interim solution.

So, taking everything I learned in February into consideration, here are my biggest concerns with the site:

• My traffic fluctuates too greatly. I’d rather see more steady growth than waves that inevitably wane.
• Only 2% of my visitors are subscribers. That contributes directly to my traffic fluctuation.
• The site isn’t yet what you’d call “profitable.” :) I made $6.59 on CSSnewbie last month, which means I earned around 16 cents/hour working on the site.

With all that in mind, here are my new goals for the month of March:

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

In short, I’d like to continue to grow the website, but I want to try and focus more of my efforts on getting subscribers and finding a revenue source that works better than what I have currently. Here’s hoping for a great March!