A Review of My First Year of Blogging

1. 2,436,117 page views for an average of approximately 6,200/day.

2. 262 posts generated 6,961 comments and 1,937 trackbacks. That’s 25 comments/post and 7 trackbacks/post.

3. 21,000 people receive RSS feeds via Feedburner and 1,457 receive emails via FeedBlitz.

4. Total advertising revenue: approximately $3,350 = $1.39 cpm. (This assumes that I can get Google to pay me. I’ve tried several times during the year to get my snail mail PIN so that I can get paid, but I’ve never received it. I don’t mind Google getting the float...)

   Update: the product manager of Adsense, Rob Kniaz, read this in my blog and got my account squared away. This happened in approximately fourteen hours from the time I first posted mentioned the problem on a national holiday. Life is good...

5. Most linked-to posting (953): The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint.

6. Can’t-understand-why-more people-(11)-haven’t-linked-to posting: Ten Questions With Aziza Mohmmand. What a shame because this is the purest story of entrepreneurship that I covered.

7. Ending Technorati ranking: #45. Highest ranking during the year: #35 or so. One interpretation of this self-judged lack of success is that the blogosphere prefers news and gossip to essays although my buddy Seth Godin disproves this theory.

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8. Primary blogging tools: MarsEdit (Dear Ranchero hands, MarsEdit needs the ability to schedule postings), ImageScale, and iStockphoto.

9. Most disappointing realization: After a week, most postings are “gone.” Perhaps people’s expectations of blogs are so low that they don’t consider them reference sources. Hence, I have to write another book. My challenge is that I have three tasks: answering email, blogging, and writing a book, and I can only do two. :-)

10. Speaking of books: my request for ideas generated approximately 125 suggestions. Thanks, guys! I’m leaning towards writing a book called How to Change the World: A Practical Book for Impractical People. I just have to figure out how to make it a curve-jump ahead of, as opposed to repackaging of, The Art of the Start. If you’d like to help, please click here for a wiki for this idea. The password is “kickbutt.”

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Comments

[Jingalink]

Nice efforts. Glad to see someone doing good.

Anyone else?

[forrest]

lol!! even with traffic less than you i am earning quite a lot at http://lethaljokes.blogspot.com

this is due to placement of my ads. if i was getting traffic like u r getting i would have been earning 10 times u r earning.

[Angel Grancharov]

Hi I too much wanted to ask your opinion about my blog http://angeligdb.wordpress.com/ if you he liked, I shall pleased, thank you!

[RayC22]

It surprised me when you and comments left tells that people (generally) don't read thought old post. Perhaps, I am in the minority, but I even went through the trouble to you your very first post to see how you've evolved. In fact, I have and will be quoting you again in my upcoming blog (should be up by Saturday, 8/10/07), hope you don't mind. If you do, send me a note and I'll remove it.

[mara]

encouraging figures for fellow bloggers :)

[Allan Johnston]

Really love the challenging of peoples thinking that you push. There are so many so called experts out there, now when I hear the word expert I look someplace other. Your thinking, I feel is beyond cutting but bleeding edge.

[Robert]

stinks that one of the most popular bloggers today only made 3,300 in add revenue. i suppose thats not why you, or any of us blog. but hey, pays a few bills!

[Earn Money Online Tips]

I appreciate with Jon. Thank You for becoming frank about your traffic and earnings

Regards
Joynal Abedin
www.EarnMoneyOnlineTips.COm

[justin anderson]

Monatizing a blog is one of the most important things that need to be done.

In my opinion, relying on google adsense totally to make money from a blog is not a good idea.

Putting an advertising info page on your site, giving advertising opportunities for advertisers to choose from can be much more proiftable than cutting and pasting a google adsense code on your site. If your site has a good google PR and traffic, you can charge $10 CPM, for a banner ad, charge a monthly flat fee for sponsor links, and do paid reviews of products and services related to your visitors.

having 10 sponsor links at $20-50 a month (depending on traffic quantity) can earn you $200-$500 per month. that right there is more than he made for the entire year with adsense.

Google Adsense is the lazy mans way to make advertising dollars.

[Ernesto]

La verdad es que coincido con un comentario anterior, porque reviso la página y no veo adsense... ¿cómo ganas?, yo pienso que con el alto número de visitas deberías tener un gran ingreso (tal vez me equivoco).
Mis felicitaciones desde home based bussines un saludo para todos.
Ernesto Olavarria
www.geolay.com

[Tim Archer]

Those are some pretty darn good stats you have thre! I recently started blogging and found this post on my searches for "technorati". I'm trying to figure out what exactly their rating system means, and what does a higher score actually get you?

In any case, I vote that you write the book and continue writing blog posts! Give up on the answering email...

[JP Richards]

Guy

I would love it, if you could explain why you "After a week, most postings are “gone.”?

And why "consider them" poor "reference sources."?

It's a phenomena, I'd like to change.

[Italo]

very good!

[Italo]

Very intersting! Good blog

[Pirahna]

Keep it up mister.

[derrick]

can i have the figure of blogger in world from 2005 till 2006..how u gonna change the world by using blog?

[James Evergreen]

As far as ad revenue goes, it is something where one small tweak can make all the difference. It also matters what type of ads are showing based on the type of content you have. My peace blog makes much less than my travel sites.

It also is forecasted that print ads are now way overpriced and online ads are way underpriced so the online ads shold continue to increase in value.

Beyond ads, I'm not sure if you have had much luck selling books or services through your site with affiliate programs.

[Hock]

Guy,

I'm surprised with your AdSense earnings. I
thought they would be much higher based on the popularity of your blog. But you probably don't need the money anyway!

P.S. I heard you speak many years ago at Vision New England's conference in Boston.

[Muskie]

The first thing I did when I read this posting was try to do the math to figure out if 10% of your readers leave comments and/or trackbacks. That is the number from "Citizen Marketers". I did the math but it would really be best to have unique visitors and then a lot of people read by RSS and those are likely your most regular readers, it is a tough number to work out.

The other point with all the people worried about Guy's AdSense income, I'm pretty sure cash wasn't the motivation for blogging, but you are missing other sources of income in this blog. In addition to AdSense Guy is an Amazon Associate so when he recommends a book such as "Citizen Marketers" and someone buys it through Amazon he can reap some reward. Guy also links to his own books, sales of which likely generate him money. He is also has added Federated Media and Job Postings to his sidebar which presumably generate some income.

Now it is interesting that Guy divulged his traffic and even his AdSense numbers but the full income from his blog is greater than his earnings from AdSense, but that isn't the biggest benefit. It is all about building the brand.

Plus I remember this blog about three or more titles ago and there was less advertising in the beginning.

I read by RSS feed so I don't even see most of the ads and had to check his latest sidebar to expand this comment.

As for posts dying he has a Top Ten Posts and a recent comments section, but they are well below the fold and below some of the ads. Perhaps he could do more linking to his previous posts inline or even at the bottom of a posting. Although there might be some plugin that does this, it is really better to hand pick your links and link text.

The title is the most important text of an entire post. Guy's blog is popular, but if he chose better post titles he might get more hits on his older material. Maybe apply the rule of five from PowerPoint presentations, try five word titles max, also ensure the targeted keywords appear in the title. Guy has some good blog posting titles, but there is always room for improvement.

Although the content is the most important for the end reader the title may well be more important from a search engine optimization point of few. A flippant or humours title is fun to read and fun to write, but search engines don't get fun, or puns, or sarcasm, or alliteration etc. etc.

That said this is one of the best blogs on the Net, it doesn't need any drastic changes, and I'm sure Guy is more than pleased with the success he has had in his first year, it is well deserved and well earned. 262 posts many of them deemed link-worthy by many fellow bloggers is perhaps the best measure of quality though Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba say the best measure of quality is number of subscribers.

I'm a proud subscriber and put Guy in my blogroll even before he started encouraging people to. ;-)

[Toby Getsch]

Your daily traffic is about my 6 month's worth. Nice work! I think the biggest reason for that is work experience and exposure. It's more interesting to read your posts because you've got insight in different ways and can incorporate that into simple reads. That's why I subscribe.

[Patrick Havens]

As one who has only stumbled upon your posts at random times a few things I could suggest about your article.

It's been mentioned before but disappearing posts can be "fixed" a couple of ways. One is to have related posts linked. With wordpress it's very easy to have that. Another would be have an Archives page. You have a Top Ten postings, which I assume are posts that have the top ten amount of comments. But how about adding your Top 10 Favorite articles. Also I get a lot of action from Google sending people searching for particular articles. So I'd have a guy look at your keywords, and perhaps either have customer keywords for each post, or at least make sure the blog posts are tagged in some way. I use categories as tags of sorts, and it works out pretty well on the search front as well as someone who is interested could find related stories that way... but that's sort of built into Wordpress so it's easy. It also helps the search engines find and list each of the articles.

As for amount you earn on adsense... I don't see any ads in this article and truthfully on the front page. So it may be a case of placement. Not seen means not clicked. You don't need to clutter an interface, but make it blend in some and be part of the template helps. I get hirer CPM (don't make as much though) and though I try to keep it out of the way, I make sure it fits. And if you are doing this for fun, then sure throw it off to the side, and ignore it. But I suggest having it as part of the template, not as an addition.

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Patrick,

Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions. Appreciate you sending me these!

Guy

[alek]

I'd suggest one thing missing from your year-end review is how much "fun" and/or personal enjoyment you got out of blogging.

Yea, hard thing to quantify, but my guess is this is a significant reason you do it besides the $$$/exposure.

[Beren]

Hi Guy,

It would be interesting for you to work with Joel Comm (aka Dr AdSense) to see if he thinks he can help lift your AdSense revenue. Obviously, you would need to report on wether AdSense is a waste of time!!

Another point is that people who read your blog are probably smart enough to skip the ads. . .

Beren
(my AdSense tips are at AdSenseInsanity.com)

[Guy Mc Paul]

Hello Guy,
I think that your analysis is – in so far as cost/revenues are concerned - incomplete and somewhat too simplified. I deem that you should take into consideration this blogging activity into a wider perspective i.e. altogether with you other activities: principally writing books as well as being a speaker/evangelist, IT consultant etc. Your great success as a professional is the result of the combination of all these activities and therefore it is pointless to enucleate only the costs and revenues of the blogging in order to check its convenience. Moreover, instead, you should ponder that likely also – obviously not exclusively - thank to the efforts you put in blogging you might probably sell more books, or being invited to give more speeches or getting some new professional assignments or corporate appointments. For example in your tiny “cost/revenues” statement among the revenues you should probably put “advertising savings”, since your blogging activity most certainly markets you better that an outrageously expensive marketing/image consulting company…
Even though I presume that your eclectic personality would be able to perform and obtain great results in any other adventure, I would not terminate you blog. Besides not everything ought to be done for the sake of money – you are getting so much feedback, and that is in my opinion the greatest revenue.
However, ultimately, I personally believe that life is a matter of priorities and choices.
All the best,
Guy Mc Paul

[C. Enrique Ortiz]

Guy, write for the love of writing, write to teach, educate, and help others. The rest will fall into place.

CPM is not the true measure of your blog success; I'm sure you are doing blogging for money, covering hosting expenses (my goal on my blog) is should be sufficient. But look at the count of visitors and technorati rank; that is great! We all love you and what you write; keep it up...

Oh, if you don't have this, try it: 1) keep a list that is easily accessible (on the sidebar) of the top referenced articles, and 2) a second similar list but of what YOU believe are the most important pieces.

BTW, I just voted above for "Whenever the muse strikes"... I'm looking forward to your next book.

ceo