Analysis of a Blog - One Month Old

My Dad was a frustrated writer – too caught up in work, he only ever wrote for his own pleasure, and he did that rarely. He would have loved this age of blogging, had he lived long enough to enjoy it. He once said to me: “A good writer can either make people laugh, or make them cry. A great writer can do both, in the same piece.”

Based on his criteria, Mike’s Life is a good blog, but not yet a great one. I’ve had emails, comments and Tweets to confirm that these ramblings have caused both mirth and tears, and that makes me happy.

Eight things I hate about Twitter seemed to provoke the most fun in people and became the most read post, and Money stress and marriage was the one that provoked the tears.

Mike’s Life is now one month old, and it’s time to review how I’ve done against the objectives I set in the beginning. Overall, I’m very happy, and as you’ll see from the statistics, things are well on track.

The experience has been amazing – I’ve learned so much, “met” so many new people, and I continue to marvel at the blogging community – this really is a business for the 21st century. It turns the whole ethos of conventional business upside down, with helpful advice and great comments from “competitors” and a wonderful mix of the social and business sides of life. One thing I have discovered, and that you cannot appreciate until you’ve tried it, is that it is really, really hard work! I am writing this at 5.30 AM, and that’s because I want to get this post made and still enjoy my Sunday with the family. I have lost count of the number of hours I have put in, but I do know that these hours are an investment for the future I want more than ever – to be a full-time blogger.

So, here are the facts for month one:

Visits - We had 1460 visits against an objective of 1500
Income - 39.44 Dollars earned versus 30 Dollars objective
Twitter Followers - 277 this morning and I was aiming for 200
RSS Readers - Only 6 so far, and I wanted to be at 10
Signed up to Site - I was aiming at 5, and that's what I got

As you can see, they are all pretty good, and the one which may have surprised you (it did me!) is the income. Bearing in mind that I started from scratch, with a new domain, I’m amazed to have generated that kind of income in a month. A little came through donations (thank you), a little from affiliate sales (again, thanks), but the bulk came through Adsense. When you look at the hours worked versus the income, well, you’d have to cry! But looked at as a new start, it’s really quite good, and it means at least the hosting is paid for a few more months! It’s all very encouraging.

Those are the headlines, but delving deeper into the stats, I can see that Twitter has provided the most traffic, search engine traffic is too low (I just don’t seem to be any good at writing key word rich content ) and the bounce rate (people in and straight off the site) is too high at 54%, although I do wonder of that’s Twitter people diving into the site to read one post.

As I said, overall, I’m very happy. But I did set some quite tough objectives for month’s two and three, so I’d better get on with it!

Thanks for joining me on the journey, please stay with me – if you haven’t already signed up for the newsletter or RSS feed, please do so now.

How does this compare with your blog’s first month? Please let me know in comments.