First stats report on my 6 months goal of 5000 visitors per day

Hi!

This is my second post in the series of my 6 months target of reaching 5000 visitors per day. The first one is here. Pretty bold, I know, but you need to aim high to reach high!

So, since yesterday it was February 18th, this is the big day of sharing my thoughts on how the first month has been and in the end of this post, the real stats. I must confess it was a fire and ice month, because I had ups and downs, I had days where my heart jumped with joy and boring days when nothing happened.

I have thought a bit about sharing the stats here, since if you are big and brave and share your stats, people will go wow!! But if you are small and just starting to grow and publish your stats, well, people may just find that they have higher traffic than you and may say, well, he’s not worth looking to, I have nothing to learn, he’s too small! Well, I will take my chances, I believe in being open and sharing information.

So…

What I have done this month

Write content on my blog

Pretty obvious, right? Well, indeed, but it is not that easy to do it, especially when you want to make people come back and stay longer since you need quality content. I have tried to find my voice and touched more areas of blogging about guitars. For example, I have posted a few rock news, like when Munky left the tour, or Chris Broderick joining Megadeth. This generated some searches on Google, since it seemed I was among the few ones connected to this kind of news so I got a few visits from this. It could be an interesting way of getting traffic for your music blog just that you need to be connected and to read all day long music news.

I can tell you that the best way to do this is to create a Google alert in Google News and you will receive news as they happen or read all day long Reuters or other news agency. This may give you a head start when it comes to publishing news.

I have also tried to publish some funny things like when that Goth guy was waking his fiancee in a leash! Or the top 10 rules for how to put up a successful power metal band! Man, I loved that one! However, I don’t think it suits me best.

But I can tell you that the most visited by far were those posts that I have written from the heart and from my personal experience. Top of the list is Why marketing a band is so much like blogging, article that got 1784 page views since it was posted, most of them from StumbleUpon.

On the next positions I had Electric guitars should clearly match the musical style with 961 page views.

So, from my point of view, I can tell you that what works best for me is posting personal thoughts on music, blogging about music and musical experience. Let’s name them little stories. They work for me. For you it may be something else, you should test around.

Comment on other people’s blogs

Well, an other obvious action, right? Comment doh! How didn’t you think about it? Well, I did!!

No, serious, first I have thought about commenting with some keywords but I realized fast that the traffic will not come from search engines but from social recognition so instead of doing this, I have changed my commenting nick to guitarFlame and then refined it to “Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com”. This gives me an identity, Ovidiu, and helps build brand awareness, GuitarFlame.com.

I commented as much as my time allowed me, my patience, and I’ve tried to be as true as possible, to bring some value to the conversation, not to spam fellow bloggers with comments such as “you are right!”. Doh!

Also I have left a bit the niche of electric guitars and commented on a few blogs that I have found that are part of do-follow movement, for some link-luv. It works every time, I will write it down to do this again and more often, if possible!

Also remember to increase the comment number on your blog. This can be done by asking your readers to participate, it is not hard. Just ask a question, ask them for an advice, end your post with a question, left something untold, people will feel the need of saying more! It works!

Establish relationships with fellow bloggers

Well, here it came naturally, it was not something that I tried to do. I found out that bloggers can be very friendly people, most of them have knowledge in computers since they are part of blogging process and all are part of this bigger music scene that we all play on!

I found great feedback and real friendly and supportive persons behind blogging nicks, like Dr. J (jinright.edublogs.org), Pribek of pribek.net, Jon of guitarnoize.com, Robert of buildingtheergonomicguitar.com and many, many more.

I can tell you that the feedback and real discussions with these people helped me feel I am not writing in vain on my blog and that there are people reading me here. And it feels great! Each time fellow guitar bloggers comment on my blog I feel like I know them since a long time and they are more than a nick behind a blog. For various reasons we emailed each other and I can tell you blogging is alive, people!! Alive, you get me?!!

Submit to social media

Well, here I can tell you that I am an idiot, I have submitted my articles to StumbleUpon without reading TOS so I got kicked at one point so it is forbidden for me to submit anymore articles from GuitarFlame.com. Well, I didn’t know it, I’ve done it, so, blame me for this!

I have submitted a lot to Digg but it paid just about nothing! Digg didn’t work for me yet. StumbleUpon, YES!!! I love StumbleUpon!!! StumbleUpon rules!! No Reddit, no Squidoo. Or I may need to work a bit on these too, to learn them better. So Stumble me, people!

Why I said that StumbleUpon rules? Well, cause I got 4 stumbles during this month and it is so great to see spikes on your traffic stat in the morning! And you know what? It is damn recursive! I don’t know why but all those articles that were stumbled were submitted like 1 month and a half ago, they got about 50-60 people and then came back one month later with more people! I don’t yet get it but I will study the problem since I am very interested in it.

Build social profiles and join online communities

I have started to work on StumbleUpon communities, I have added friends that share the same interests as me, since the idea of SU is simple: friends see the same pages in the same area of interest so the more the better!! Way to go! I love this part! Plus that I get to see a lot of articles from other people and get ideas.

I have also joined MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Entrecard, BlogRush (that I have removed at one point by mistake when tuning the theme and I didn’t feel I miss it so I left it out!). However, Entrecard brought me some visitors, not many, but it did, compared to other networks. So I will keep it for now.

Be real

I work on the internet since a while now, but I have never liked sharing my identity. Why do it? I just don’t like it. Well, this time I said I will do it for real so I put up a real about me page, with honest information, with a picture, etc. It builds trust. I know I always look to the about me page on a blog to see who’s there, behind the blog.

Being real on the internet is good, since it helps you build relationships, it helps you grow your readers base. Be real and don’t be afraid to show you are not perfect. You know what? I blog about guitars, BUT I AM NOT PERFECT!!! I am not the great guitar player I would love to be, I know I have so much to learn and study, I know…all the things I don’t know! If it makes sense to you… Don’t be afraid to share it, nobody thinks you are perfect so don’t stress yourself for hiding facts about you playing the guitar. So, if you are not perfect, who gives a damn? You can learn it and I can learn it! Share it and feel free!

Does it sound like one of those self-motivational speech?! Damn!

Try to increase RSS reader base

I have done this by adding a subscribe to RSS under each article and by making a larger Subscribe to RSS button on the right side of the screen. yes, the big one with a pick! Now that you have seen it, you could subscribe to it! Thanks!

Watch blog stats

A kind of thing that make you an addict but you need to watch it, you need to know what works better and what doesn’t work, where are your visitors coming from and for this, my best friend is Google Analytics. I suggest you get an account if you don’t have one! It will be the best thing you will do from this point of view.

Well, this is just about anything I have done this month.

What I didn’t do?

I didn’t put up advertising. Actually I did at one point but I removed it because it is not wise to do it before getting a steady traffic. It scares people away.

What am going to do for the next month?

First of all, go on with everything I enumerated above.

Then, the first thing I have thought of doing is guest blogging

Yep! I hope not to be too soon, I have already spoken to Dr J of ControlRoom and he agreed to be part of it and help me, so thanks, Dr J in advance

So, if you want to be part of it and we all earn traffic and brand awareness from this, contact me, I have a Contact page I will be happy to exchange a post with you!

Start a video channel on YouTube

…and make some videos with me and my band playing the guitar. I will not tell you more for the moment since I don’t have a very clear plan yet, only ideas and I don’t want to break it before starting it. I will see, I don’t even know if it is going to be this month but I will let you know.

Write down notes on how thing are going here

…so I can put up a free PDF ebook that I will share here on site at the end of these 6 month. And you know what? I will start right now with this post that I will publish on PDF for downloading it! It is that easy! Free!!

Now the stats, that you are probably waiting for

At the end of this month, I had

• 5,707 visits
• 9,444 page views
• 4 SU spikes, the highest of 519 visitors in one day
• 64 RSS subscribers and growing
• 9.9% direct traffic, 31.03% search engine traffic and 59.07% social referring sites.

Maybe I am not big yet, but watch me for the next 5 months and we’ll see how I will be doing at the end of these 6 month challenge of getting 5000 visits per day.

After all, I should only get 30 times the current traffic, right?

Piece of cake! Now stumble that!

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