Blogrlab Results - the Brutal Facts
by blogrdoc4/4/2008
“Leadership does not begin just with vision. It begins with getting people to confront the brutal facts and to act on the implications. ” Jim Collins, From Good to Great
(Note that these are the results for year to date.)
Experiment 0 (this blog)
Traffic: approx. 40 uniques/day (as reported by cpanel)
Net income: I’m excited to say that my revenue for this blog is in the quadruple digits. The only problem, however, is that this description of the income includes decimal points and, also - there is a negative sign.
-$40.00 (ouch)
Total amazon.com income: Again, this is another extremely exciting number I have to report to you. This time in the triple digits (including decimal points)
$0.17 (double ouch)
Experiment 1 (Starbucks Tech Support)
Net income: $591
Experiments 2, 3 - not yet in monetization stage.
Discussion of results
In light of these results, applying the concept of conservation of time/energy and concepts of correlations, you will definitely begin to see some changes on this blog. Perhaps the only reason that I will continue to post at all is that there is an upward trend of my traffic.
One of the biggest revelations that I learned from analyzing my traffic is that traffic will precipitously drop off if content gets stale. The biggest knob I found in maintaining sustained “elevated” levels of traffic was to post frequently. This hypothesis is further supported by one particular case study which I will blog later about. Unfortunately, frequent posting is not sustainable solution for someone not doing this full time. Moreover, seeing how I just received my biggest raise ever from my employer (which dwarfs experiment 1 results), I will definitely not be pouring more time into this blog. I must deal with the brutal facts.
As a final note, aside from just bad content, I suspect that there are 2 other primary reasons for the dismal results for experiment 0 (this blog).
- Blog is still too young. Arguably also not in monetization stage.
- Not leveraging social media
Clearly there is a lot of room for improvement. Any suggestions?
Popularity: 48% [?]
8 Responses to “Blogrlab Results - the Brutal Facts”
By Alik on Apr 6, 2008 | Reply
Happy to hear about the raise! ;)
Suggestion - think readability. Do your eyes like your own blog (both on website and reader)? What blogs are nice too your eyes? Imitate it.
You may have a great content but if it is hard to consume from readability stand it will be hard to promote it on social media channels
It is not to say your blogs readability bad - it improved significantly over time, keep on improving it.
I personally do not read blogs - i scan it. If i like the title i look at first liner, if i like it i scan it diagonally looking for subtitles, if i still like it i might read first liner of each subtitle. I take small bites all over and if it is tasty i might finish it to the last crumb…
Have a look at Brian’s http://www.copyblogger.com/ - he is da master.
By blogrdoc on Apr 6, 2008 | Reply
@Alik,
Yeah… I just thought it was great when I got the raise because I really have been putting in a lot less hours at work. Talk about doing more with less!
I know what you mean about readability. This is one area that I’m going to try to improve. I’m accustom to writing technical documentation.
I think I’m going to go back to trying the abstracts or ’summaries’. I know its sort of corny, but I think it might work.
I started myself on an rss diet. I went from 20+ to 5. Now I’m at 9, but I might make room for copyblogger :)
By Sam Crockett on Apr 7, 2008 | Reply
I wouldn’t worry too much about your blog’s low monetization. Like you said, it’s still young.
I agree with Alik, improving readability should be a priority. As for reading or scanning, for me it just depends on the site. If it’s a blog I’m familiar with or have a relationship with I’m more likely to read it. On the other hand if it’s a blog I’ve just come across I scan the content looking for something worthwhile.
So one thing you might want to consider is adding a “Most Popular” or “Best Posts” section to your sidebar. That is often one of the first things I’ll look for when coming to a new blog.
As for the rss diet. I’ve gone back and forth with that. I’ve had hundreds of feeds. Then cut myself down to the best two of each genre. Then only weeks later 20-30 new feeds have mysteriously found themselves in my reader.
By blogrdoc on Apr 7, 2008 | Reply
@Sam:thanks for the advice. That’s *two* endorsements for improving readability. To me, that’s a strong signal. Will follow up.
As a general comment to all readers, I hope I didn’t sound too negative in my post about feeling disheartened about the progress of this blog. It’s just my personality. The bottomline is that I do think blogging is fun and it is obviously a great way to network.
By alik | Practice This on Apr 7, 2008 | Reply
For me it is more than fun. Blogging teach me many things, it helps me to grow.
By blogrdoc on Apr 8, 2008 | Reply
@alik: very true. One of these days, I’ll blog about the ‘Results’ in terms of new habits/techniques I’ve picked up since starting this blog.
By bluey on Apr 25, 2008 | Reply
Hello blogrdoc, I just stumbled on your blog for the first time and I’m now a subscriber - keep up the good work! I’m doing something much the same myself - dipping my toes into a bunch of small-scale projects just to see what works. Blogging isn’t one of them for me (yet, anyway) but I like to read about someone doing a similar experiment thing :)
By blogrdoc on Apr 26, 2008 | Reply
@bluey: great to have you aboard! you are wise to not jump into blogging. one of my conclusions is that it is a low return activity for quite a period of time. it definitely is *not* easy.