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!

There are reasons I should not be left alone in front of a computer. One is due to my super mad hax0r skillz… I’m like that kid in the “Hackers” movie that got banned from using a computer until he was 18, except I haven’t ever made out with Angelina Jolie (…yet). Another is my tendency to pile more work for myself on top of my already tottering tower of busy-ness.

To that (second) end, I’d like to announce yet another awesome web project! That’s right, from the people that brought you CSSnewbie, please welcome I Can Has Hope!

If that name doesn’t cause a lightbulb to turn on over your head, please check out ICanHasCheezburger first. If that website makes you laugh, then you’re good to go. Please proceed happily to ICanHasHope.

So what’s the idea? It’s pretty simple. Take the simple, snarky, and sometimes witty humor of ICanHasCheezburger, and bash it against a mess of political commentary. Or, as I’m dubbing it, LOLitical Commentary.

And then to make things better, I’m going to donate 50% of whatever I make through advertising on the site to Barack Obama’s campaign, up to the legally allowed $2,300 in the primary election and $2,300 in the general election. After that, I’m going to find a deserving charity and donate proceeds to it instead. Or perhaps I’ll rotate through the charities, so a lot of people get the chance for a little bit of Hope.

And that’s the basic premise: Hope through Humor. If you like that idea, then please visit the site, share it on your own websites, link to it on Facebook… the whole shebang. This idea has the chance to do a lot of good. And if you’re into that sort of thing, I’d also ask that you submit some photos/captions of your own. I would really prefer if this site weren’t All About Me.

And while we’re on the Obama track, if you’ve considered donating to his campaign and just haven’t gotten around to it yet, now would be an awesome time to get it. As the graphic to the right states, Obama is just a few thousand donors away from becoming the first candidate in history to have over one MILLION individuals donate to his campaign. He’s hoping to hit the million-mark by March 4th, when Ohio and Texas go to the polls, as a very visible sign of his appeal to the masses. I’m already one of those near-million, but I’m hoping ICanHasHope gives me the means to help his campaign even more. :)

I have decided that I want CSSnewbie to be successful. I’ve also decided that, if I just sit around and wait for that to happen on its own, pretty much exactly nothing will happen. As such, I’m taking the fantastic advice contained within Tina Su’s guest post on ProBlogger. And the first step she suggests it to set goals, so that’s what I’m doing.

I’ve been fiddling with these goals for a while now, but I think I have them about where I want them. And I figured I’d publish them here, because if they’re made public, that might act as an added incentive to keep me motivated and on-course. If I fail spectacularly, I do so publicly. :)

So here are my short-term goals for CSSnewbie. By March 31, 2008, I would like to have:

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

So what do all those pretty numbers mean? Well, the first one is easy: I want 1,000 unique pairs of eyeballs to see my website every month. That’s ambitious, and I’m a little concerned about reaching that goal, but what’s the point of trying so darn hard if I’m not going to be ambitious, right? And the second goal means that I would like each person to stick around long enough to see two pages, for a total of at least 2,000 page views. And the third goal means that, of those 1,000 unique visitors, I’d be honored if 10% of them would subscribe to my site so they can get regular updates on what I write.

So how am I going to reach this goal? Well, here’s the basic plan. I will:

• Update at least three times every week, to give people a reason to come back.
• Be an active participant in the CSS community by reading other blogs and leaving useful comments.
• Submit interesting articles I write to social media sites such as Digg, Ma.gnolia, and StumbleUpon.
• Link to interesting articles on related websites to help grow the community as a whole.
• Mention the website to every single person I know.

And that final goal is where you-all could help out. If you’re interested in things related to web design, check out the site. If you think my content has merit, consider linking to it from your own websites. Help me spread the word. I’d be most appreciative. :)