Thursday, February 01, 2024
Feb. 1 blog report
Blog visits took a beating in January, some much worse than others, but overall down and in some cases way down. My main blog, personal, which I write on regularly, went from over 6600 in December to only 284 in January. There were a few like that, way down, but a few actually got better and a number of others held their own.
One theory I carry around that is sometimes validated is that the majority of blog visits are shopping-driven, in other words, people are on google because they're looking for something, and they click on your blog out of google either because they think they might find what they're looking for, or, because of idle curiosity but still coming out of that google page of links to what they're looking for. It looked good so they clicked to check it out. But they wouldn't have been there, on that google page, at all if they weren't shopping. Thus December naturally will be way better than January, and January is probably going to be the worst month in the year (by that theory) - because there's no money left. They spent it all in December.
I have yet to pull the museum together, or do any number of things I've promised to do, yet the blogs carry on and I actually get to writing on them as much as I usually do.
A friend of mine actually made a writers' blog, and interviewed me on it, so at the moment I'm experiencing whether I will get any traffic from that. Maybe, maybe not. It appears you can drop stuff on Facebook until the cows come home with no effect, so I imagine the same might be true with blogs - really stepping up on the production might make a difference but really not that much. I like to keep them alive if possible so that they might gather in an audience of some kind, but because I'm rather poorly linked back to my author stuff I doubt if I'm getting much in the way of sales out of my blog system.
Back to the friend's blog: it's profesional, it's everything I wanted best of indie to be, and she's actually making it as professional as she can, therefore it's quite a blog. It makes me jealous. It kind of looks like what I had wanted. More importantly, it does what I had wanted mine to do.
I will say that the >100 club (all blogs that get >100 hits each month) is growing; my whole page is now >100. This could be because I've been around for a while and Google knows where to find me. As I fill these blogs with random words those words become the bait that catches the fish; google will pick up on what is being talked about here and present it on a platter (in Google lineup) for the reader who then, for whatever reason, comes to pay me a visit.
One theory I carry around that is sometimes validated is that the majority of blog visits are shopping-driven, in other words, people are on google because they're looking for something, and they click on your blog out of google either because they think they might find what they're looking for, or, because of idle curiosity but still coming out of that google page of links to what they're looking for. It looked good so they clicked to check it out. But they wouldn't have been there, on that google page, at all if they weren't shopping. Thus December naturally will be way better than January, and January is probably going to be the worst month in the year (by that theory) - because there's no money left. They spent it all in December.
I have yet to pull the museum together, or do any number of things I've promised to do, yet the blogs carry on and I actually get to writing on them as much as I usually do.
A friend of mine actually made a writers' blog, and interviewed me on it, so at the moment I'm experiencing whether I will get any traffic from that. Maybe, maybe not. It appears you can drop stuff on Facebook until the cows come home with no effect, so I imagine the same might be true with blogs - really stepping up on the production might make a difference but really not that much. I like to keep them alive if possible so that they might gather in an audience of some kind, but because I'm rather poorly linked back to my author stuff I doubt if I'm getting much in the way of sales out of my blog system.
Back to the friend's blog: it's profesional, it's everything I wanted best of indie to be, and she's actually making it as professional as she can, therefore it's quite a blog. It makes me jealous. It kind of looks like what I had wanted. More importantly, it does what I had wanted mine to do.
I will say that the >100 club (all blogs that get >100 hits each month) is growing; my whole page is now >100. This could be because I've been around for a while and Google knows where to find me. As I fill these blogs with random words those words become the bait that catches the fish; google will pick up on what is being talked about here and present it on a platter (in Google lineup) for the reader who then, for whatever reason, comes to pay me a visit.
