So, let me just be blunt here. If you find my posts about the statistics for this blog boring, you’re not going to find this post very interesting.
However, I am writing this blog for a reason, and that reason was to learn about the medium. I’m a big believer in learning about technology through experimentation, and this blog was originally meant to be a 30-day test.
Of course, that was about 7 months ago. Look where we are now.
Anyway, today happened to be the biggest day, from a page view standpoint, in the history of this blog. 1953 page views in one day, nearly half of them going to a single post. The post was my first one on the mint errors for the new dollar coins, from March 2nd, about 5 days before the major news coverage began.
Makes the rest of my days look puny, although I’ve been hovering around 300-500 page views per day this past month. Amazing when I think about the first month, when I thought 10 page views was a big day. Right now, my run rate is likely 250,000 page views a year. Not a small number.
More and more people seem to be reading me through RSS Feed Readers, programs or websites that let you get my posts directly, rather than visiting the website. I was surprised to see that roughly 100 people seem to be reading my posts that way.
If you are interested, here is the breakdown of the types of readers people are using. An awful lot are using websites, but there are some common names in there. A lot of people using Google.
Not surprisingly, my top posts are now skewed towards coins. Here is yesterday’s top 10 posts:
Until recently, however, my top traffic driver was still the Harry Potter posts, with American Idol, Battlestar Galactica, and Coins all bringing in significant visits as well. Personal Finance has been a steady performer for me, and the most requested. However, it’s not generating the page views. Here are the top posts from the last 30 days.
Finally, my favorite little insight, the search engine terms that people are using to find my blog. It looks like I no longer get much traffic from people looking for Seema Shah… they seem to find her own blog directly now. Yesterday was all about the dollar coins. Look at the search terms.
Over the last 7 days, it has been a little more balanced.
Right now, I’m finding that I don’t have enough time to post on all the topics I’d like to. I’m going to likely have to start focusing a bit more on certain topics, like personal finance, and indulge a little less in the “news of the day”.
Easier said than done.
I hope this information is somewhat interesting for the other newbie bloggers out there.
Great post. I just started blogging myself, starting about two weeks ago. I have been seeing an average of about 60 views a day, however my latest post has caused my blog to skyrocket to over 1,100 views just today and it’s still climbing.
I find that if I want to keep traffic flowing, I need to post at least one article a day. It would be interesting to compare stats and posting activity and see how it affects traffic.
LOL
*envy envy*
I’m still in the ten-posts-a-day start-up mode…!
Do you find that there’s a dip at weekends?
If I post at least once a day I think the traffic is steady. Right now it’s hard to tell. My graffiti post has gone on to be a huge hit and is now the top post on WordPress and is featured on the homepage. The post registered 15,000 hits during yesterday alone. Check it out:
http://fraudwasteabuse.wordpress.com/2007/03/08/amazing-graffiti-covered-building-5-pointz-in-new-york-city/
In a way it’s kind of depressing. My graffiti post was so unique that it is going to be near impossible to ever generate that kind of traffic on my blog again after the frenzy dies down.
I definitely think the key is to post regularly; at least two or three times a week. I try to get out at least one a day. Sometimes I’ll just post a paragraph or a link to another story if I’m not feeling creative.
Promoting your blog also does wonders. Sites like Digg.com and reddit.com can really bring in the hits to your blog.
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