Well January has definitely been a very exciting first month for BuildThatList!
Starting with my first post on the 5th of January, I have had a very exciting ride and am extremely happy with the results I have achieved. So what I have decided to do is break down the statistics of BuildThatList’s first month and let you know about the things I think I did well – and the one’s I will be trying to improve on in February!
January’s Blog Posts
Blog posts are the lifeblood of your blog’s and especially as brand new blog – I not only had to try and post consistently, but my articles had to set a standard that would make people want to return.
Blog Posts
In January I made: 7 Blog Posts with a total of 5,907 words!
A special mention to my first and longest blog post, Email Myth 1: List Building Seems Hard (1449 words)
Blog Comments
I am a massive believer in creating a community around your blog – and feel that blog comments and the discussion that it brings is one of the best gauges of community.
In an effort to jump start the community around my blog I decided to provide as much incentive as I could to visitors that would stop for long enough to leave their thoughts.
I made BuildThatList:
- Do Follow
One of the first things that I decided to do was to spread the Google Juice. I know a lot of bloggers are looking for ways to increase their PageRank and I thought that if I could help them with that – then they would leave me a comment (and we would both win). - Added KeywordLuv Plugin
KeywordLuv is one of my favourite wordpress plugins, because when connected with do-follow, I cannot think of a better incentive for the blogger that is interested in keyword optimisation.For those of you who do not know what KeywordLuv is, it is a plugin that allows bloggers to put their names as ‘Tom@Keyword Here’ when leaving a comment and it shows in the actual comment as ‘Tom from Keyword Here’ linking just to ‘Keyword Here’. The SEO benefits are huge – and it allows me to give that bit more back to my commenters.
- Decided To Spread The CommentLuv
CommentLuv is a very simply plugin that just includes the commenters latest blog post at the bottom of their comment.I love this plugin because it gives us a taste of their blog without actually having to visit it.
Having set these incentives, I also decided that I would be very strict with the comments that I accept and reject. Spam is getting harder to pick – so I set the following rule for my comments:
If a comment adds value to the post – I accept. If not, even if legitimate, I delete.
That was a massive introduction to sharing how many comments that I received in January, but I just wanted to let you know about my thoughts on commenting first.
Total Quality Comments: 76 (an average of over 10 per post)
Total SPAM Comments: 21 (approximately 30%)
My star performer was RSS Subscribers VS Email List | Which Is Better? with 24 comments.
Guest Posts
I am not sure if guest posting is something I am going to make a habit of, but I was offered the opportunity to write a guest post in January and decided to accept.
Bloggers: Grow Your List In 3 Easy Steps – BlogForProfit.com (10 Comments)
Visitors & Subscribers
As you can see, I had quite a decent start in the content realm of my blog – let’s take a closer look at whether that content converted to visitors and subscribers.
I install Google Analytics from day 1, so here are my traffic stats:
Visits: 643
Unique Visits: 446
Average Pageviews: 2.06
Time On Site: 3.28 (Benefit of long blog posts!)
Almost 70% of my traffic comes from ‘Referring Sites’ so I thought it would be nice to share some love and thank my top 10 refeing sites:
- Teenius.com – 47 Visitors
- FeedBurner – 42 Visitors (Subscribe To My RSS Feed)
- Twitter – 27 (Follow @BuildThatListCo)
- BlogForProfit.com – 24 (Benefits Of Guest Posting)
- StumbleUpon – 24
- DailyBlogTips – 22
- JohnChow.com – 22
- RobsWebTips.com – 21
- ProBlogger.net – 19
- ShoeMoney.com – 16
A special thanks to Jackie from InternetMarketingForMummies.com for these kind words on her blog:
If you’re looking for some honest information about building your list this site will be helfpul. Just remember to be clear about your goals and how you’re working your business and don’t let yourself get sidetracked from that plan.
What I want you to notice is that 7 out of my top 10 refering sites are other blogs. This is a direct result of my commenting efforts – and blog commenting is something I think every blogger should be doing.
I am disappointed with my search engine traffic (only 7 views), but this is only because my blog is brand new – so expect search engine traffic to be a much larger percentage in the coming months.
Aweber List Subscribers
Obviously having a blog that focus’ on list building means I should be building a list for the blog – and of course I am.
Right from the start I included the signup form in my sidebar, but it wasn’t until I offered some free squeeze pages as a ‘bribe’ that I started to get some momentum behind my list.
I Currently have 19 Aweber Email List Subscribers and the list seems to be consistently growing.
I am consistently looking at ways to build my list and add value for my subscribers, and I currently am working on a fantastic extra squeeze page that I am sure you will all love!
RSS Subscribers
As I mentioned in my RSS vs Email List post, I mentioned that I feel that there are reasons for building your RSS subscriber count as well as your email list – but I can’t say I have focused that much.
That being said, I currently have 25 RSS Subscribers!
I am going to work on a couple of things that I think we quickly grow my rss feed subscribers – just simple things that will make it easier for people to subscribe.
Social Media
The @BuildThatListCo Twitter account currently has the following stats:
Followers: 65
Following: 55
Tweets: 102
This is something that I haven’t focused very much on over the last month, and am looking to grow my Twitter account naturally. I see too many bloggers have 10,000’s of Twitter followers and they are following just as many, and I wonder ‘how are they supposed to be holding conversion and building relationships?’
So I will not be using any Auto-Follower programs or websites and am aiming for 150 followers by the end of February.
Blog Engage
I am not a very big social media user, apart from Twitter. But I decided to try Blog Engage and while it seems like I am doing quite well – it is not proving any actual traffic.
Two of my articles have got over 15 votes, which meant they probably hit the front page – however as you have already seen – they didn’t even make my top 10 referring websites.
My decision is still out on whether I will continue to use blog engage, but it doesn’t take much to submit my articles and they seem to be ‘do-follow’ so I will keep testing for a while.
Well that is about it, I can’t think of anything else to share, except that it has been an exciting start to the year, and I am hoping that the growth I have seen continues throughout the year.
Thank you to everyone who commented, ReTweeted, voted, Stumbled or in any way participated in BuildThatList.
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