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If you follow this blog, you know that turning this blog into a sustainable, growing income stream is a huge priority for me.  I document my progress each month with a monthly blog update.  The blog updates typically include traffic growth as well as income for the month.

Traffic & Readership

I like to break my traffic down into three categories: visits, page views and eye ball time.  Since page views per visit can depend on a look and feel and how a blog is organized, the eye ball time is probably the most accurate number when comparing blog to blog.  Let’s look at each…

Visits

October 2009: 6,387 visits
November 2009:  6,996 visits (9.53% increase)

Page Views

October 2009: 19,155 total page views
November 2009: 20,500 total page views (7.02% increase)

While my page views per visit decreased, you will see in the next section that the length of each visit actually increased which I view as more important than the actual page views.  This can be a function of the structure of your site; for example, if your home page lists the full text of several posts, readers might just stay on a single page and read multiple articles.

Eye Ball Time

October 2009: 1:44 per visit = 664,248 total seconds = 184.51 hours
November 2009: 1:57 per visit = 818,532 total seconds = 227.37 hours (23.23% increase)

This is an encouraging sign.  This means that not only are more people coming to my site but these people are sticking around longer than before.  A good sign of a growing blog.

New Articles Published

October 2009: 56 Articles / 436 Total Articles
November 2009: 39 Articles / 475 Total Articles / 8.2% Increase in # of Articles

This data doesn’t tell us too much except that it might be interesting to see how the traffic increase compares to the increase in content.

Search Traffic

October 2009: 3,570 visits / 55.89% of overall traffic
November 2009: 4,075 visits (14.14% increase)/ 58.25% of overall traffic

As the above numbers show, search traffic increased faster than the overall traffic increases of the site.  We will continue to monitor this and see where it trends in the months ahead.  Search traffic growth is important because it brings in new traffic that can turn into long term readers and also, search traffic accounts for almost all pay per click advertising revenue.

Level of Engagement

October 2009: 836 total comments / 1.91 Comments per post
November 2009: 882 total comments / 1.86 Comments per post (2.7% decrease)

In addition to desiring search traffic growth, we want to see the level of engagement rise. This helps us see how involved the readership is and the level of participation that readers have. This doesn’t necessarily equate to increased revenues but it does equate to an increase in presence, branding, and overall quality of the site.

Please note that I used Google Analytics for the above data.  I tend to think Site Meter is more accurate, but I couldn’t get all the data that I wanted for the above metrics from Site Meter, so I chose to keep it consistent by getting all information out of GA.

Blog Income

Adsense Revenue

October 2009: $38.60
November 2009: $75.40 (95.3% increase)

This month my Adsense revenue jumped big time which is an encouraging sign.  When it comes to Adsense, you can grow your revenue by either increasing traffic, increasing your click thru rate (CTR) or both.  This month I was fortunate to have increases in both traffic and CTR which is definitely the best case scenario.

Private Advertisements

November 2009: $285.00

Overall Thoughts

Overall, it was a great month for the blog.  Traffic increased nicely and the income bump was very nice.  With November in the books, it’s time to turn towards December.  The previous month’s success doesn’t guarantee anything for the next month.

For December, the goals are as follows:

1. Produce high quality content at least 5-6 times per week
2. Write a few guest posts for high quality blogs
3. Continue to develop the Partnership Program
4. Continue to monitor Adsense performance and make necessary tweaks

I’m also looking at a possible switch to a different Wordpress theme.  I am looking for a simple, clean theme.  One without a focus on images and video.  The current theme allows the reader to focus on the actual content which is my goal, but I think there is room for improvement.  If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments below.

For a larger overview of the process of growing a blog as an income source, check out my post entitled “The Slow Grind of Growing A Successful Blog”.

Do you have similar reports for your blog detailing your traffic and income?  I want to know about it and link to it.  Leave a comment with the URL.