September was a sensational month for me. Mainly off-blog wise. My football team I support in the AFL the Geelong Cats won the Grand Final. We’ve only won 2 since 1963 so they don’t come by every day and needless to say a lot of my attention this month was focused on that. The good news for you guys is that now footy season is finished that means more time I can spend helping you out blogging!
So onto the stats for September. You’ll see a welcomed addition of email subscriber stats!
Remember green is good (means I did greater than last month) red is bad 
Twitter stats for September
Tweets – 283 (Aug 123). +127 total 439
Followers – 396, (Aug 296) +100 total 754
Mentions – 145, (Aug 53) +92 total 211
You’ll see I’ve gotten rid of Direct Messages and how many people I’m Following. DMs are gone because there is too much spam these days and I rate mentions much higher than DMs. How many people I’m following is irrelevant really. I need to get as many targeted people following me as I can so my message is spread across more eyes and ears 
Overall my twitter stats are rocking! I have primarily been focusing on my twitter account. Perhaps even moreso than this blog. So if you haven’t added me to twitter already I suggest you add me to twitter now. I post daily blogging tips and I reply to all my @replies and DMs (as long as I don’t suspect they’re spam).
Facebook stats for September
Fans – 2, (Aug 6) -4 total 8
Only managed an additional 2 subscribers to my facebook fan page. As I write this I am just setting up a new facebook page which connects to my main/personal facebook page. So please add beginner blogger to facebook. I stream all my twitter tips and blog feeds to the page now so if you use facebook a lot it’s a great way to get everything in the one spot!
Blog stats for September
Posts – 4, Aug 5 -1 (total 16)
Comments – 19, (Aug 10) +9 total 35 (excluding myself, pingbacks and spam)
I know a pretty dismal effort in the actual posting of blogs. I think I have some weak mentality with blogging on my site. Maybe because it’s broadcast to the whole world I am scared to post often? I am a bit of a perfectionist at times when I can be so maybe that’s it. I spend a lot of time talking to people 1on1 and using twitter.
I’ll work on my blogging mindset, but my goal this month is to produce at least 2 blog posts a week, really aiming for 10 posts this month. As I said before I’ll have more time up my sleeve this month.
It was however a great month of comments and to me that is the most pleasing sign. I think this is a result of my twitter promotion and engaging with my audience. Just imagine how many comments I could get if I produced some more content on my blog. Exciting prospect!
RSS stats for September
Subscribers – 1, (Aug 3) -2 total 6
Pretty dismal effort with RSS subscribers. It bounced around a bit over the month. My guess is that due to my lack of posts people that were subscribed, unsubscribed. So something I really need to focus on is consistent and frequent blog posts. At least 2 a week. Would love to see that total at 15+ by the end of this month.
As you can see from the image below there is steady progress so that’s a good sign at least
Google Analytics stats for September
Visitors – 531, (Aug 435) +96
Unique Visitors – 299, (Aug 235) +64
Visitors not from Brisbane (my home town) – 416, (Aug 308) +108 (Because my IP address changes and I check my site constantly on different computers I wanted a way to check my stats that didn’t include my visits)
Visitors not from Brisbane and time spent on site higher than 0 seconds – 123, (Aug 102) +21 (I wanted to see how many visitors came to my site that spent greater than 0 seconds on my site – i.e. the page fully loaded and they spent some time on the site. I’m not sure if this is entirely accurate)
Obviously not as great growth as previous month but I’m still getting more traffic which is a great thing. Steady progress! I’m already off to a fantastic start this month in October and I guess the really exciting part is that I’ve hardly promoted my blog apart from on twitter.
Email Subscriber stats for September
Subscribers – 5, (Aug 0) +5 total 5
Great start to my email list. It wasn’t up for the whole month, didn’t promote it at all, it’s just sitting on the right hand side of my blog. Also given that I’m not giving anything away (yet) to sign up it’s a great start. I really recommend you sign up to my email list because it’s the fastest way for me to be able to answer your questions and let you know what’s happening in a quicker way than posting blog posts. You’ll also miss out on some great content if you don’t sign up!
If there are other stats you would like to know please let me know in the comments below and I will share any stats you would like to know!
Review of September Goals
* 20 Blog posts FAIL only posted 4.
* 50 Quality Twitter ‘tweets’ SUCCESS really hit it off with twitter. Tried to ‘tweet’ 3 tips a day and I believe I succeeded this by far.
* Comment on at least 10 other blogs SUCCESS I actually posted on 20+ blogs. According to my stats it would appear I would get about 1 visit to my blog per comment I made. By posting on other blogs I learn more, engage more with similar bloggers and increase my brand awareness so I think it’s a good very very good thing to do.
* Engage with people on Twitter and other blogs SUCCESS
* Fix current images on site – make sure all unique FAIL I was going to put up a unique image that had just a face on them but I didn’t get around to it. It wasn’t significant enough to be a high priority
* Add google adwords to sidebar SUCCESS – Google adwords appears at the top of the page and I now run some ads on the right hand side. I don’t get paid for these to be up. If you sign up to them I get a slice. It doesn’t cost anymore than going to the site itself. I get paid because you click through from my blog. Also the 4 banners I post on the right hand side will always be quality products or services I recommend. I will never post scams or anything like that. So if you’re looking for a quality web host or want to build an email list with aweber check out the links on the side
* Add categories to sidebar SUCCESS
* Email list back up SUCCESS
* Create/Organise contacts that I have made through this blog SUCCESS
* Polish off areas of site – Contact, Adverise, sidebar footer etc FAIL I will get around to creating a proper contact box this month and fixing my advertising page. I may even just get rid of that link on the main navigation.
October Goals
* 10 Blog posts
* Add social media buttons to blog posts
* 30 blog comments on other blogs
* Twitter page background and twitter image update
* Fill 1 more advertising spot
* Play around with CSS make it look a bit better
* Business card look and feel on ‘about me’ page with links to social media sites
* Create at least 4 emails to subscriber list
* Set up templates for images, file name convention to streamline repeated tasks
* Contact and Advertising page polish up
* Approx 120 blogging tips on twitter
* 1250 twitter followers
* Video tutorial post
So that’s September stats and October goals for this month! Any questions please let me know in the comments below or by any other means
If you enjoyed this blog post you may also enjoy:
How I set Up Google Analytics To Track My Blog Stats
Beginner Blogger Stats and Goals – Aug-Sept 09
Beginner Blogger Stats and Goals – July-Aug 2009
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I must be your one RSS subscriber, ’cause that’s where I read this post! I hope you don’t mind a tip from me: The biggest failure is on the posting front, although I’m sure you know that. But the rest becomes irrelevant if you’re not posting regularly, so this month focus on that goal above all others and you’ll see the other numbers move in the right direction for you.
Hey Sarge, I think it’s a great idea to chart your progress this way. It keeps you focused. The stats for “housekeeping” show that you are way more organized than I am these days. I noticed that you scaled back your goal for monthly posts from 20 to 10. That’s probably a more reasonable goal, but don’t forget that the quality of your posts is much more valuable than the quantity. So if you only have 4 posts that reach your audience and engage them to make comments and give feedback, that is better than 10 posts with no engagement from your audience. Keep up the good work! I’ll see you in twitterland.
You’ve got a good writing style, just need more of it. Up that content, as pointed out by Mike CJ.
Keep blogging man!
Appreciate the comments guys. I know writing more blog posts is something I have to work on. It will happen!
I really think I can achieve all that's on my list this month.
Wish there were another 24 hours in a day!
Wow, just reading this I’m realizing how lucky I am. The 5th day after my blog was released I got a dozen or some reviews/thumbs up on one of my posts on Grooveshark. I received around 5000+ uniques in that one day, and am still receiving around 200 each day. My subscriber count jump to 92, then backed down to 50, but CoolAppSite is continuing to grow at a rate that I’m really amazed with. For some stupid reason, I feel like it needs to grow faster, but just reading this post (and you post excellent content here, it’s not like mine is any better!) made me realize that I should be PLENTY content with what I have. That being said, don’t give up!
Ha forgot to mention that the thumbs up were on StumbleUpon. Love that site, gives me so much traffic if used properly.
@Robomaster – Wow you found an oldish post of mine, hehe. You’ve got a nice looking blog there! There are quite a few social media sites, like Stumbleon for instance that I haven’t properly looked at and dived into yet. There are a lot of things I haven’t tried and I’m certainly not giving up.
I know some people in the blogging world that don’t bother too much with SEO. While it’s always best to concentrate on the reader and delivering valuable content I think that a little bit of SEO work certainly won’t go astray. Especially after reading your comment – I’m going to assume that a bulk of your traffic comes from search engines. I get next to no traffic from search engines and that’s due to spending next to no time in that area. Something I’ll work on in the coming weeks.