robglazebrook.com

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. ;)

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!

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!

So it occurs to me that I should probably explain all of the “links for” whatever posts.

In the past, my website has had three frequently updated areas (and I’m using the term “frequently” pretty loosely here): the main blog area, the miniblog, and the links of interest. This worked acceptably well and all, but it wasn’t ideal. For one, I don’t think most people really noticed when I made a miniblog post, and almost nobody noticed when I added a new link. The miniblog was always tucked away in the sidebar, and the links were even further down in the sidebar, below the fold on most monitors. Secondly, the miniblog posts and links were essentially the same thing: websites I found interesting and wanted to link to, but didn’t feel I could write an entire blog post about it. My rationale for which links to tuck where was that generally geeky stuff got stashed in the links, while more mainstream stuff got a miniblog post. Of course, there’s a lot of gray area between those two categories, and that caused no end of frustration on my end. End.

My way of fixing these things is to introduce the “links” posts, and it has a lot of benefits. All I have to do is bookmark websites I’m interested in using del.icio.us (which is already how I was creating the links list on my last website), and write a bit of a description. Del.icio.us then automatically logs into my blog at the same time each day and creates a post summarizing my bookmarking activity in the last 24 hours.

Also, now I don’t have to worry about whether or not people are going to notice that ever-so-important YouTube video of dogs licking themselves I felt compelled to link to after a night of drinking… it’s all right there in the main blog area. And the benefit for you, the Faithful Reader, is you can see at a glance whether I’ve updated or not recently. Inn’t that something?

There are still a few bugs to be worked out, I know: the posts aren’t organized the way I’d like, and the date is off by a day (I have it posting at 10pm CDT, which is 3am the following day in GMT, which is the time the system seems insistent on using). I’m hoping to get those figured out in the future. But for now… happy surfing!

As promised, I’ve got a few big announcements to make today. Here they go:

Big announcement #1: Changing webhosts.

I’ve been hosting with Linksky since some time in 2002, whenever it was that I finally got fed up with Iowa State’s stipped-down servers. However, that’s about to change. CollegeBuddy Quinn and I are going in together on a (mt) Media Temple account. I have no major gripes with Linksky… I just feel like I’ve outgrown them. I need more databases, and faster servers. I have ambitions, you know.

How this affects me: I’m going to have a lot of work to do.

How this affects you: hardly at all, really. Just thought I’d let you know.

Big announcement #2: Rootarcana go bye-bye.

As part of this change, I’ve come to the decision that it’s time to drop the Rootarcana name. Rootarcana rocked as a name when I came up with it, five or six years ago. Since then, it has grown progressively less cool with each passing year. For the last few years, I’ve had a crises of conscience every time it came up for renewal, and I always ended up renewing because I didn’t have time to get anything else together. This time, no excuses. I’m dropping rootarcana.

However, I’m not dropping the blogging thing. Not at all. Instead, my Blog Of The Future will be hosted on robglazebrook.com.

How this affects me: I’ll no longer have to explain what the hell my domain name means to every well-meaning techie out there.

How this affects you: If you have me bookmarked, you’ll have to update that. If you have me set as your home page, that’ll need to change. If you’re subscribed to my RSS feed… well, you get the idea. Changes will need to be made. I’ll let you know when that happens.

Big announcement #3: New design time.

A new webhost and a new domain means it’s time for a new design. This has been a stumbling block for me in the past: I don’t have a lot of time to invest in my personal website just now, which means no new design, which means no moving to a new host, et cetera. This time I’m planning on just sucking it up and using Someone Else’s Design for a couple of months until I have time to make my own. There are plenty of good designs out there for the taking… I’ll just have to silence that designer-side of me that will inevitably scream, “but… this isn’t exactly what I wanted!” I’ll live, I’m sure.

How this affects me: See above whining.

How this affects you: The site will look different for the first time in a couple of years. Of course, it’ll be a new site, so maybe it won’t bother you at all.

Big announcement #4: Amanda is pregnant!

Just kidding. You should’ve seen the look on your face, though.

How this affects me: I don’t need to find a new apartment in a new state just yet.

How this affects you: Think of all those calories you burned in that adrenaline rush!

Big announcement #5: Switching blogging software.

I’ve been using Movable Type for years now. However, I’ve become disenchanted with their software, and am looking to move away. I’ve decided to move to Wordpress instead. Why? Because I do a fair bit of Wordpress design at work, so it’s what I’m good with at the moment. Two years ago, I probably would have went with Drupal because I was doing so much ISUComm and Habitat for Humanity work. So it goes.

How this affects me: I have to figure out how to convert nearly five years of posts and comments from one platform to another. It won’t be easy. It would have been even tougher had I not lost all my posts from 2000 - 2002 or so, I guess.

How this affects you: Things in old posts will probably look hinky. These things happen.

That’s all for now! Questions and comments are appreciated (if you can get Movable Type’s damn comment thinger to work).