Vanilla Ice was arrested last night after an argument with his wife turned violent shortly after the conclusion of the American Idol. Inside sources say Vanilla, whose real name is Robert Van Winkle, was angered over the surprise elimination of Michael Johns from America Idol, and took his frustrations out on his wife Laura.
Is this true? Well yes...he was arrested. Was it because of American Idol? Who knows...maybe? But with a title like this, you know it can only mean one thing. Time for my long overdue Monthly Progress Report for March!
March was a very exciting month for me, but like most blogs, it had its ups and downs. My blog saw exciting growth early on fueled by some very popular posts about the future of EntreCard and Graham Langdon's personal response. My blog also benefited from a very popular Ask A Pro post that saw responses from people like Maki at Dosh Dosh, Zac Johnson, Darren at Problogger, and Shoemoney. The month wrapped up with a huge response to a special Weekly Buzz give away that awarded the winner 200 guaranteed visitors through a focused StumbleUpon campaign. Congratulations to Tom at TechnoGumption.com for being the winner. I hear the campaign worked out very well for him.
My blog also had a few disappointments in March. I tried to promote my first affiliate product and didn't make a cent. I need to continue to learn more about earning affiliate commissions. I will be sure to share anything I discover (let us know if you have any tips!). I also tried offering a Contest Winner Picker tool that I thought would have more interest. No one seemed to care. Oh well. I had a few technical difficulties with my feed that I think really affected my traffic. Finally, and perhaps worst of all, I joined Twitter. Talk about a distraction from your blog! It is so much easier to type 140 characters than an entire blog post. I have to make a serious effort to focus on my blog first, then Twitter. My blog has suffered the last week or two because of it.
All things considered, I am pretty happy with my statistics for the month of March. The number of visits nearly doubled while my monthly page views rose to 5563. These numbers aren't stellar, but as I have said before, I would rather have slow and steady growth of faithful readers instead of hordes of useless traffic. The percentage of new visitors to my blog was a ghastly 14.48%. That is completely evident in the severe drop of Unique Visitors. Most of my traffic was from returning visitors! That is good, I suppose. But I need to do a lot more to attract new readers. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I need to break out of the EntreCard and StumbleUpon rut. That is where all my traffic comes from and it is the same people. I think a kick-ass guest post somewhere hot is in order for April. As for money, I made a whopping $11.30 from Google Adsense. Finally, I am happy to have crossed the 50 subscriber threshold for my feed.
I have some MAJOR goals for April, even though the month is half over. First, I need to use Twitter for good instead of evil. If I focus on my blog first and work hard at some good content, I can use it to promote my blog - instead of neglect my blog, which I feel has happened lately. I will also focus more on Monetizing my blog in April. I started using AdSense again in March but only made a few bucks. That will continue to improve. I have been working on a slight redesign of my blog that will make it more "monetization friendly". Among other things, I will begin to offer private ads. I will continue to learn more about earning some affiliate commisions as well, and will be sure to share with you anything I learn. Finally, I will continue to spotlight some great blogs as part of the Weekly Buzz feature. Look for another special give away in April. So stick around...there are still a lot of exciting things yet to come here at BuzzMyBlog.com!
Cheers,
Jeff
ps - I case anyone was wondering...I am not British but I do think "Cheers" is a great closing! Especially because I am about 3 hours away from grabbing a beer! Have a great weekend.
