What started out as a normal Fourth of July holiday celebration quickly turned to tragedy for Britney Spears. The queen of multi-tasking was apparently trying to light off fireworks while carrying her kid in one arm. Things quickly got out of control when the cigarette she was smoking fell out of her mouth and landed in the pile of fireworks being held by her two year old son. Britney quickly dropped her child and grabbed the pile of fireworks which started to go off in her hand. The child was unharmed but Britney suffered second degree burns and partial loss of her left pinky finger. After receiving a skin graph from her right butt cheek, Britney is expected to make a full recovery.
Gotcha! With an opening paragraph like that, you know it can only mean one thing. Time for the BuzzMyBlog Monthly Progress Report! Anyone who has been reading my blog knows I like to have a little fun with these posts (and maybe grab a little attention) before I Digg into a review of my last month of blogging. June was a busy and exciting month. Numbers were good. I had a few well-received posts, and I learned a few things along the way. Oh...and as far as I know, Britney Spears is just fine (well...as fine as Britney can be anyway).
Traffic Statistics
Numbers were up slightly from last month, but not as much as I hoped. Page Views were almost identical at 4,247. Number of visits were up from last month to 3,218 from 2,555 unique visitors. My feed subscribers fell short of my goal of 150, but were still up at 127. All in all, I am pretty happy but I will need to work harder in July to keep the upward trend.
What I Did Well
I try to be careful not to get sucked into too many social media websites. They can be an awful distraction to your blog. Ignoring them completely however, can cause you to miss out on some great ways to promote and publicize your content. Such was the case early in June when I discovered how to really use Digg effectively. I wrote a great post on The Truth About Digg that brought in a great deal of traffic and got Dugg over 170 times. It was on its way to making it to the front page of Digg when BOOM! It got buried.
I had another great article about Optimizing AdSense to earn more money. It got Digg 92 times then suddenly also got buried.
Noticing a trend here? While Digg brought in some really good traffic for me, it also taught me a valuable lesson. Diggers hate bloggers. It is a fact of life as true as birds fly, fish swim in the ocean, and Britney is a bad mom. Diggers expect to find entertainment at Digg, bloggers try to promote themselves on Digg. This is a conflict of interest that allows Diggers to beat up on bloggers with the brutal Bury button. My post on the Truth About Digg got buried simply because it was about Digg. WTF? My article on AdSense was buried because apparently writing about AdSense is considered spam. Again, WTF? Well, at least I got some good traffic out of it. But going forward, I am going to stick with my other blog, Buzz Pirates, when it comes to submitting to Digg.
I had a couple other posts in June that got a good response from fellow bloggers. I wrote about choosing a niche to Make Money Online, warning new bloggers to stay away from the Make Money Online (MMO) niche if they want to make the most money. I also offered some valuable tips on focusing on your blog when you have limited time. Of course, the Weekly Buzz is still going strong and I met some great new friends. All in all, June was a very good month.
What I Didn't Do Well
Remember when I said social media sites can be a big distraction? Well I learned how to use Digg effectively, but yeah...I did very little else to promote my blog. That's just not good. I didn't do any guest posts, which I was hoping to do. I also didn't comment on other blogs as much as I would have liked. I think these are the two most important things you can do to promote yourself, and I noticed a decline of regular traffic from not doing so. I will make an effort to get back to the basics for July.
Goals for July
In May, I had a nice guest post on ProBlogger. In June, I created a little attention on Digg. My goal in July is to continue this effort and do something "outside of the box" to help promote my blog. I make it a permanent goal of mine to always try something different to earn traffic each month. Some things work better than others, but it always keeps things interesting and forces you to get creative. I encourage you to try some new ways of promoting yourself as well.
Maybe its the summer time rolling into full swing, but I have also been noticing a general decline in the Make Money Online niche. To be honest, I am pretty sick of it anyway. While I enjoy offering advice about earning money online, my blog really isn't a Make Money blog. I don't swamp you with annoying ads or pop-ups that probably could earn me some decent income. Instead, I enjoy writing quality content that hopefully helps you with your blog. My blog has become less of a money blog and more of a blogging blog. And I am happy with that.
I am going to continue with this metamorphosis in July and publish a few tutorials that will really help you improve your blog. Keep an eye out for some beginner step by step introductions to PHP, CSS, WordPress, and a lot of other topics that every blogger should know. If you have any requests, please let me know. So you don't miss a thing, sign up for my feed now!
Happy Fourth of July everyone!
Jeff
