PB’s Site stats after week 1

Thu, Jun 5, 2008

Business, Fun Stuff, Personal, Site News

Alright guys, I was going to post the second article in my blog design series series titled “Making Your Blog Sexy”. But low and behold at 2:00 this morning I felt the need to post a little information on the progress of this blog. We’ve talked about a lot over this past week and I think it would be good to share the lessons learned and get some feedback on what has been happening here. You all know, that I like sharing information that betters our blogging community, so here is my first public contribution to building a btter blog.

The Piss Biscuit was launched officially on May 28th making us one week old. So what better time than now to show you guys the fruits of OUR labors.

Traffic Stats

Traffic is an interesting thing and many people have different views on what is and isn’t important. So instead of trying to figure out what number you’d like to see, I’ll just start with a list of stats that I feel is important to MY motivation… If I miss something that you’d like to know more about, just hollar and I’ll be more than happy to go dig it up for ya.

May 28, 2008 – June 05, 2008

Unique Visitors: 1,045
Hits: 42,616
Pages: 10,625

Best day for traffic: June 03, 2008 at 407 unique visitors

Social / Networking

Feedburner Subscriptions: 9 confirmed, 1 un-confirmed
Technorati: Favorites 1 | Authority 3
Stumble: 1 Stumble
Trackbacks: 4 (four)

Best response from a social tool: Stumble Upon with 370 queries on June 04, 2008

Freebies and Giveaways

A Premium WordPress Theme for subscribers (Expires June 28, 2008)
A Premium WordPress Theme for posts! (Expires June 28, 2008

Comments

173 New Comments (Does include my own)
11 Comment Subscribers (I’m not included)

Well there you go, just a quick content oriented look at some of Piss Biscuit’s stats after one week in business. Did I miss anything? And for those of you who have had blogs longer than a week, what do you think? What were your experiences? I know mine are not all that great… but I think it’s progress. What do you think? What are some goals I should set for this blog? Thanks again ladies and gents, for everything!

Tags: advertising, Business, marketing, Personal, Stats

16 Comments For This Post

theaffiliatepost Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 3:20 am

Two words…..Cracking start! I am not too anal about stats but that is a good effort. I appreciate the openess of this blog and what I would say is to wait till you get a month under your belt and then use that as a benchmark for improvement. Amazed that UBTC stumble resulted in 370 (or did I read that wrong).

I will let you know how much traffic you send my way from that fantastic banner of yours…might be good to know the hit rate of your banners for future reference.

The only way is up PB!

Bryan Clark Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 5:52 am

Awesome start. Have you decided which direction you are going to take this blog?

robin Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 6:55 am

The traffic on my site almost tripled when I added a blog. The fact that my site and blog is in Dutch limits my traffic to mainly 2 countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) but that is also my target audience. After a few months after the blog went live the traffic kept increasing but is stabilizing now with an average of 11000 hits a day.

I do check on regular base just to see what is happening but don’t use it to set goals. I find the popularity contest plugin a better tool to see what posts generate most traffic which gives me a better indication why people come to my site.

I wrote a post f.i. how to open a ISO files and on 4 months time it has been viewed 4000 times and continues to be the most read post so this tells me that writing simple tutorials is a simple way to get more people visiting my site.

Therefore I think the only goal you should set is to continue to write good posts, you have a writing style that people seem to find appealing and with your honesty and “right in your face” attitude you might not always make best friends with everybody but at least you are not boring.

Just don’t write every day just to have a post each day, I think it’s a mistake most bloggers make because when they see their traffic decreases after a few day’s of inactivity they panic and start writing about just anything that pops up in their mind just to keep the blog alive and the visitors coming. Only if you don’t have much of value to write about your readers will eventually stop coming.

It’s better to write less but at least some content with better value.
It’s much like the ISO post I referred to, I took me some time to write the tutorial but now it’s the biggest visitor magnet.

theaffiliatepost Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 8:08 am

“Just don’t write every day just to have a post each day, I think it’s a mistake most bloggers make because when they see their traffic decreases after a few day’s of inactivity they panic and start writing about just anything that pops up in their mind just to keep the blog alive and the visitors coming. Only if you don’t have much of value to write about your readers will eventually stop coming.”

Not that I think our good friend piss biscuit will ever have problem with good content, as the way he has ’set his stall out’ as we say in the uk (meaning: start as you intend to go on, or words to that effect) is quite perfect. He seems born to blog in my opinion. These are however really valuable words for any new blogger Robin.

And if I may just ask, the traffic you quoted for your site…..is that organic traffic or from other means? and do you do the SEO for your own site? Just curious that’s all.

robin Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 9:00 am

The traffic are figures I get from my Belgian provider (nucleus), I guess that those also include googlebots and such, those stats are not so detailed. Actually the graph displaying it looks the same as PB published in his post.
F.i. last month I got around 13000 visits from 7000 hosts, I”m not sure how to read this but I guess it means I got around 7000 visitors coming back 2 times average (so about 12-13000 times?)

About SEO, I do have my site submitted to several linksites were you have all video and photorelated links. I also use “headspace2″ and “robots meta” and made sure that my permalinks are correct but nothing beside that.

For the keywords that are important for my business I notice that I score quite well in google.be, especially because most my client find me through google that’s an important factor. Eventhough my pagerank is quite low I noticed by going from PR1 to PR2 some weeks ago that gave a significant boost on some specific keywords. I check that regularly and my site jumped from page 3-4 to page 1 when certain keywords are entered.

zania Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 10:01 am

Great start PB!
I do think, however, that, although stats are really helpful to help us sort out where we are going in terms of keywords, and what type of post gets the most hits, etc, it’s too early to make any definite conclusions on The Piss Biscuit and where it will eventually sit in the blogosphere.

So what I would take from this is real encouragement that you are beginning to build an audience (and quite a few of those are appreciative of what you are doing here, so they will stay with you), which is great and is what I think you were aiming for initially, but I would also use this information to help discover the direction, as Bryan asked, you want this blog to head in.
But, if you still haven’t completely made up your mind on direction, I would want to hold back a little until a few more stat results have accumulated.

And I say that because, as I see it, you want this blog to become an established ‘brand’, so that it gives you the opportunity to decide just what you do with it in the future.
But please correct me if I am wrong here…

PB Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 11:28 am

@ AP: As always, I REALLY appreciate the motivational and inspirational comments. As you know they are the fuel behind the fire.

I do think UBTC’s stumble provided for the bulk of activity that day. Since then, I’ve been stumbling like a mad man

@ Bryan: Though I’ve really been thinking about it, I don’t quite have everything worked out yet to the total direction I’d like to go.

@ Robin: Wow, those are some awesome stats! I too, don’t put a WHOLE lot of weight on stats per say, but I do use it to gauge the blogs popularity and more importantly how many people are simply popping in and how many people are staying around and joining in.

As for keeping up with the content, I have every intention on doing that 10 fold!

@ Zania: Thanks so much for the informative commentary! I’ve got a great portfolio of SEO work the I’ve handled so I’ve got the background on it to really make PB stand out… only if I could figure out the direction I’m going.

@ All: So I guess these comments have got me thinking about where I should be going with this. I kind of like Bryan’s “Soapbox” suggestion as there is no real focus. Except a focus on the blogger’s world and what it takes to make it happen.

When it comes to the technical stuff… and of course design, I can offer my readers quite a bit of great information… but, I think one of the coolest things here is that I’m just starting out blogging. Like the thousands of us every day struggling to make it before we break it, I think I can lend a slight learning experience aspect to PB as well. This goes back to WHY I posted my first weeks stats, rather than the first months. Blogs are living breathing beings… and they grow daily so I want to share this growth with the public. Maybe someone will be inspired to post more, or realize the real value of great comments… either way, maybe that’s the niche I’m in! But what would you call it, and how would I optimize it for said niche?

Nick Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

PB- Just keep doing what you’re doing. As you know, I get to a million sites a day, as I see you commenting in most of the same posts I’m commenting in, and this site has become the first stop for me when I’m making my rounds- which is saying a lot. You’ve got to have a little focus, but I really wouldn’t worry to much about defining it. Once you do that you’ll be restricted, and I know this goes against what most of the ‘experts’ say, but your appeal (at least to me) isn’t that you are an expert in a certain field or anything, the appeal here is just you. Keep doing you and I’m sure you will rise to the top.

Nick Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

Let me add to that. Look at what you’ve already done. I’m sure this isn’t all by accident, you’ve already managed to construct a blog that is more active than some that have been around for six, seven months. If this is by accident, then just keep going on in the clueless direction because your doing some amazing things, lol.

PB Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 4:41 pm

@ Nick: Dude, where ya been? I was looking for your stuff yesterday

I’m really not trying to develop a focus besides “organic blogging”. They have guys out there building blogs promoting them as “learn with me” or “Make money online” or learn how to make cool Photoshop documents… My market is EVERYONE. It’s a blog about just being a blogger and everything that goes along with it. Good, bad, slow, ugly… whatever!

Thank you for the compliment too! I’ve gotten a bunch of e-mails as of late saying the same thing and it’s exciting and makes me feel good about spending so much time working on it!

Nothing is by accident… however, I can’t really say that I know what’s coming next either. So I don’t think it’s clueless, but I think it’s real, and with so many bullshitters like the super bloggers… PB might just be a bit of fresh air!

Nick Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

Sorry about that, I just sent the stuff over now. Check your inbox, there should be a nice little package in there for you. Lol. I had World War 3 with the old lady yesterday so it just slipped my mind.

On topic, sounds good man, just stay in your lane and I don’t think anyone can stop you.

PB Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

I feel your pain! I’ve had about 8,600 World Wars Let me guess… whatever it was… you were wrong! I’ll go check my mail now.

Kirsty Says:
June 6th, 2008 at 7:44 am

I like your style! You know your stuff and can get your ideas across in a fun way. Nice work and well done on the cracking start! Who would have thought a pink and baby blue theme would fly in the world of making money online?

theaffiliatepost Says:
June 6th, 2008 at 8:08 am

@ Robin – They are great figures and thanks for the detailed answer. If only I could read your site…..perhaps I should have paid more attention in class when I was at the British School of Brussels!!!

@ Nick – Likewise. This is always stop number one on the rounds and long may it continue. I totally agree with you on the restrictions. Very good point!

@PB – LMAO, thats a lot of world wars fella! You were wrong LMAO.

Here’s how I see it – you are a week, on your first blog and you are killing it already. The pissbiscuit is going places and your numbers are starting to shape up good already. I can honestly say, and I think I speak for most people here, that I have enjoyed reading every single post and every single comment. While I know what you are going through, you don’t need to do it all at once. Like Nick said, stay in your lane and keep doing what you are doing. Bryans soapbox idea is genius and I think thats something you are suited to, in which case, you need to let the blog and it’s readers guide you and not the other way round.

Everyone here has said ‘keep doing what you are doing’ and this is a blog that will be built by word of mouth as you do have great branding and a likeable charm. Get yourself some stumbles, diggs etc and I guarantee that people who visit once will visit again and again.

If anything changes, you have plenty of people here that will let you know.

You have my full support!

PB Says:
June 6th, 2008 at 10:31 am

@ AP: Love it! You’re one inspirational and motivational friend. You make sure you ask should you ever need anything…. cause we’re cool like that! And thanks for making sure I keep my butt on track.

theaffiliatepost Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 7:30 am

Appreciate your choice of words PB!

Always here if you need.

theaffiliatepost Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 3:20 am
Two words…..Cracking start! I am not too anal about stats but that is a good effort. I appreciate the openess of this blog and what I would say is to wait till you get a month under your belt and then use that as a benchmark for improvement. Amazed that UBTC stumble resulted in 370 (or did I read that wrong).

I will let you know how much traffic you send my way from that fantastic banner of yours…might be good to know the hit rate of your banners for future reference.

The only way is up PB!
Bryan Clark Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 5:52 am
Awesome start. Have you decided which direction you are going to take this blog?
robin Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 6:55 am
The traffic on my site almost tripled when I added a blog. The fact that my site and blog is in Dutch limits my traffic to mainly 2 countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) but that is also my target audience. After a few months after the blog went live the traffic kept increasing but is stabilizing now with an average of 11000 hits a day.

I do check on regular base just to see what is happening but don’t use it to set goals. I find the popularity contest plugin a better tool to see what posts generate most traffic which gives me a better indication why people come to my site.

I wrote a post f.i. how to open a ISO files and on 4 months time it has been viewed 4000 times and continues to be the most read post so this tells me that writing simple tutorials is a simple way to get more people visiting my site.

Therefore I think the only goal you should set is to continue to write good posts, you have a writing style that people seem to find appealing and with your honesty and “right in your face” attitude you might not always make best friends with everybody but at least you are not boring.

Just don’t write every day just to have a post each day, I think it’s a mistake most bloggers make because when they see their traffic decreases after a few day’s of inactivity they panic and start writing about just anything that pops up in their mind just to keep the blog alive and the visitors coming. Only if you don’t have much of value to write about your readers will eventually stop coming.

It’s better to write less but at least some content with better value.
It’s much like the ISO post I referred to, I took me some time to write the tutorial but now it’s the biggest visitor magnet.
theaffiliatepost Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 8:08 am
“Just don’t write every day just to have a post each day, I think it’s a mistake most bloggers make because when they see their traffic decreases after a few day’s of inactivity they panic and start writing about just anything that pops up in their mind just to keep the blog alive and the visitors coming. Only if you don’t have much of value to write about your readers will eventually stop coming.”

Not that I think our good friend piss biscuit will ever have problem with good content, as the way he has ’set his stall out’ as we say in the uk (meaning: start as you intend to go on, or words to that effect) is quite perfect. He seems born to blog in my opinion. These are however really valuable words for any new blogger Robin.

And if I may just ask, the traffic you quoted for your site…..is that organic traffic or from other means? and do you do the SEO for your own site? Just curious that’s all.
robin Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 9:00 am
The traffic are figures I get from my Belgian provider (nucleus), I guess that those also include googlebots and such, those stats are not so detailed. Actually the graph displaying it looks the same as PB published in his post.
F.i. last month I got around 13000 visits from 7000 hosts, I”m not sure how to read this but I guess it means I got around 7000 visitors coming back 2 times average (so about 12-13000 times?)

About SEO, I do have my site submitted to several linksites were you have all video and photorelated links. I also use “headspace2″ and “robots meta” and made sure that my permalinks are correct but nothing beside that.

For the keywords that are important for my business I notice that I score quite well in google.be, especially because most my client find me through google that’s an important factor. Eventhough my pagerank is quite low I noticed by going from PR1 to PR2 some weeks ago that gave a significant boost on some specific keywords. I check that regularly and my site jumped from page 3-4 to page 1 when certain keywords are entered.
zania Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Great start PB!
I do think, however, that, although stats are really helpful to help us sort out where we are going in terms of keywords, and what type of post gets the most hits, etc, it’s too early to make any definite conclusions on The Piss Biscuit and where it will eventually sit in the blogosphere.

So what I would take from this is real encouragement that you are beginning to build an audience (and quite a few of those are appreciative of what you are doing here, so they will stay with you), which is great and is what I think you were aiming for initially, but I would also use this information to help discover the direction, as Bryan asked, you want this blog to head in.
But, if you still haven’t completely made up your mind on direction, I would want to hold back a little until a few more stat results have accumulated.

And I say that because, as I see it, you want this blog to become an established ‘brand’, so that it gives you the opportunity to decide just what you do with it in the future.
But please correct me if I am wrong here…
PB Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 11:28 am
@ AP: As always, I REALLY appreciate the motivational and inspirational comments. As you know they are the fuel behind the fire.

I do think UBTC’s stumble provided for the bulk of activity that day. Since then, I’ve been stumbling like a mad man

@ Bryan: Though I’ve really been thinking about it, I don’t quite have everything worked out yet to the total direction I’d like to go.

@ Robin: Wow, those are some awesome stats! I too, don’t put a WHOLE lot of weight on stats per say, but I do use it to gauge the blogs popularity and more importantly how many people are simply popping in and how many people are staying around and joining in.

As for keeping up with the content, I have every intention on doing that 10 fold!

@ Zania: Thanks so much for the informative commentary! I’ve got a great portfolio of SEO work the I’ve handled so I’ve got the background on it to really make PB stand out… only if I could figure out the direction I’m going.

@ All: So I guess these comments have got me thinking about where I should be going with this. I kind of like Bryan’s “Soapbox” suggestion as there is no real focus. Except a focus on the blogger’s world and what it takes to make it happen.

When it comes to the technical stuff… and of course design, I can offer my readers quite a bit of great information… but, I think one of the coolest things here is that I’m just starting out blogging. Like the thousands of us every day struggling to make it before we break it, I think I can lend a slight learning experience aspect to PB as well. This goes back to WHY I posted my first weeks stats, rather than the first months. Blogs are living breathing beings… and they grow daily so I want to share this growth with the public. Maybe someone will be inspired to post more, or realize the real value of great comments… either way, maybe that’s the niche I’m in! But what would you call it, and how would I optimize it for said niche?
Nick Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
PB- Just keep doing what you’re doing. As you know, I get to a million sites a day, as I see you commenting in most of the same posts I’m commenting in, and this site has become the first stop for me when I’m making my rounds- which is saying a lot. You’ve got to have a little focus, but I really wouldn’t worry to much about defining it. Once you do that you’ll be restricted, and I know this goes against what most of the ‘experts’ say, but your appeal (at least to me) isn’t that you are an expert in a certain field or anything, the appeal here is just you. Keep doing you and I’m sure you will rise to the top.
Nick Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Let me add to that. Look at what you’ve already done. I’m sure this isn’t all by accident, you’ve already managed to construct a blog that is more active than some that have been around for six, seven months. If this is by accident, then just keep going on in the clueless direction because your doing some amazing things, lol.
PB Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
@ Nick: Dude, where ya been? I was looking for your stuff yesterday

I’m really not trying to develop a focus besides “organic blogging”. They have guys out there building blogs promoting them as “learn with me” or “Make money online” or learn how to make cool Photoshop documents… My market is EVERYONE. It’s a blog about just being a blogger and everything that goes along with it. Good, bad, slow, ugly… whatever!

Thank you for the compliment too! I’ve gotten a bunch of e-mails as of late saying the same thing and it’s exciting and makes me feel good about spending so much time working on it!

Nothing is by accident… however, I can’t really say that I know what’s coming next either. So I don’t think it’s clueless, but I think it’s real, and with so many bullshitters like the super bloggers… PB might just be a bit of fresh air!
Nick Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Sorry about that, I just sent the stuff over now. Check your inbox, there should be a nice little package in there for you. Lol. I had World War 3 with the old lady yesterday so it just slipped my mind.

On topic, sounds good man, just stay in your lane and I don’t think anyone can stop you.
PB Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I feel your pain! I’ve had about 8,600 World Wars Let me guess… whatever it was… you were wrong! I’ll go check my mail now.
Kirsty Says:
June 6th, 2008 at 7:44 am
I like your style! You know your stuff and can get your ideas across in a fun way. Nice work and well done on the cracking start! Who would have thought a pink and baby blue theme would fly in the world of making money online?
theaffiliatepost Says:
June 6th, 2008 at 8:08 am
@ Robin – They are great figures and thanks for the detailed answer. If only I could read your site…..perhaps I should have paid more attention in class when I was at the British School of Brussels!!!

@ Nick – Likewise. This is always stop number one on the rounds and long may it continue. I totally agree with you on the restrictions. Very good point!

@PB – LMAO, thats a lot of world wars fella! You were wrong LMAO.

Here’s how I see it – you are a week, on your first blog and you are killing it already. The pissbiscuit is going places and your numbers are starting to shape up good already. I can honestly say, and I think I speak for most people here, that I have enjoyed reading every single post and every single comment. While I know what you are going through, you don’t need to do it all at once. Like Nick said, stay in your lane and keep doing what you are doing. Bryans soapbox idea is genius and I think thats something you are suited to, in which case, you need to let the blog and it’s readers guide you and not the other way round.

Everyone here has said ‘keep doing what you are doing’ and this is a blog that will be built by word of mouth as you do have great branding and a likeable charm. Get yourself some stumbles, diggs etc and I guarantee that people who visit once will visit again and again.

If anything changes, you have plenty of people here that will let you know.

You have my full support!
PB Says:
June 6th, 2008 at 10:31 am
@ AP: Love it! You’re one inspirational and motivational friend. You make sure you ask should you ever need anything…. cause we’re cool like that! And thanks for making sure I keep my butt on track.
theaffiliatepost Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Appreciate your choice of words PB!

Always here if you need.

ThePissBiscuit.com