robglazebrook.com

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!