Blog Growth Stats for August 2017

Last updated on April 10th, 2019 at 06:15 am

I can’t believe it’s time for my blog growth stats for August 2017. It seems like these blog posts are coming around faster and faster every month.

I’ve made it easy for myself and have decided to just keep the same template every month. I figure that I am sharing the same stats every month, so why recreate the template?

It’s much easier if I just keep the same layout to make it easy on myself. If I am missing something or you want to see some other stats, let me know.

I can’t promise I’ll add it, but I’d love to hear what you think about my blog growth stats.

2 Week Siesta Keys Vacation

For the month of August, I took a 2-week vacation. Karen and I took a road trip with some friends and visited the Siesta Keys in Florida.

We had a blast and I can’t wait to do it again. I took along my MacBook Pro because I thought that I would spend time in the morning working on my blog.

I don’t know what I was thinking? All I did was check my social media accounts early in the morning. Not much else got accomplished.

The great news is that I still managed to get blog posts published while on vacation. Thank goodness, I have my content pre-written 2 months in advance 🙂

I even scheduled my YouTube videos to post while on vacation. (I had no clue that you could schedule YouTube videos…which was nice)

We made the most of our vacation. We snorkeled, saw the Manatees and even saw some Dolphins while swimming in the Gulf.

It was funny because I was floating with noodles when someone on the beach started pointing and yelling out to the water. I saw a fin and started moving as quickly as I could back to shore.

All I could think of was a shark was in the water. It turns out that the Dolphins had come close to the swimmers and were putting on a show.

It was awesome, to see them. And I definitely felt foolish after realizing that it wasn’t a shark, thank goodness 🙂

I’m starting to think that I’ve watched too many shark movies.

We ate a lot of great food and had a lot of Happy Hour drinks. The great thing is that when I weighed myself, I only gained one pound.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much I ate and drank while on vacation. The great thing is that I only gained one pound during the whole vacation.

Now I understand why so many bloggers want to travel while blogging. After my Siesta Keys vacation, I think I got bit by the travel bug. I can’t wait to do it again 🙂

Now Onto My Blog Stats for August

I know that you’re interested in seeing what I am doing for this blog and how I am growing it, so let’s get into it.

I want to be as transparent as possible to show you what I’m doing to grow my blog. My hope is that you can use this post to help you grow your own blog.

So now that you know I am NOT a traffic expert, let’s get busy and see how my blog did last month.

Video Walk-Thru of My Google Analytics

I’ve created a video that will show you the inside of my Google Analytics. I am only showing you this because I truly want to share what I am doing to grow my blog.

Plus, I am using it as a journal to help me keep track of my blog growth. If you’d rather not watch the video, I discuss my analytics below.

A Quick Look at My Blog Analytics

The only way that I know how to show you my blog traffic stats is to show you a quick snapshot of my Analytics dashboard for the month.

As you can see, my page views weren’t that great.

I did notice that there wasn’t a lot of action with my blog this month. Not sure if this was because I took so much time off from my blog? Maybe it’s because I still haven’t built up regular readers who want to hear from me?

Not really sure, but the thing is that I’ll be working on it and don’t have another vacation planned till November. So I’ll need to start focusing on getting my blog ready for that.

I really thought that I would end up getting more subscribers this month, however, I only got 7 new subscribers last month. (I know that sucks)

Growing My Email List

Growing my email list has definitely been a huge struggle for me. Right now my list size is 78, it was 79, but I had one unsubscribe.

I used to get upset or hurt when someone actually unsubscribed. However, now it doesn’t bother me. I figure it’s better to have someone unsubscribe than to sit on my email list and not even open them up.

Here’s a snapshot of the open rates on my newsletters I send out on Friday’s. It’s nothing amazing and I am still working on improving them. This isn’t my latest newsletter, as you can see, in this newsletter, there are only 72 subscribers.

As you can see, I have a 38.89% open rate. My click through rate is 1.39%. My click through rate sucks.

Like I said, I’ve never really grown an email list before. I’ve tried to in the past, but never put much effort into it.

Actually, this is the biggest email list I’ve ever had. Also, I this is the most effort I’ve put into staying in touch with my email list.

I guess I avoided it in the past because it is a lot of hard work 🙂

[clickToTweet tweet=”Starting a blog is half the battle, focus on growth #WordPress #freetraining at susanvelez.com ” quote=”Starting a blog is half the battle, focus on growth #WordPress #freetraining at susanvelez.com ” theme=”style4″]

Blog Growth Stats for August 2017

Unfortunately, my page views went down from last month’s blog traffic report. That’s not news to me, considering that I took a vacation from my blog.

Now that vacation is over, it’s time to get back to work on my blog. So we’ll see how next month goes.

Guest Posts Written In August

Last month I was able to get one guest posts published. I no longer link out to my guest posts as I don’t want to be penalized for reciprocal link building. Not sure if I can be, but I don’t want to risk it.

Whenever I write a blog post for anyone else’s blog, I always make sure that I run it through Grammarly. This tool has definitely changed the way that I write my posts.

I had no clue how bad I was with my punctuation and spelling.

Related: Grammarly Review My Experience and WalkThrough

Other Stuff That Happened

Okay, so my blog is now almost 10 months old. I wrote the first blog post on October 6, 2016. However, I didn’t actually start promoting it and keeping track of metrics until March 2017.

So, I’ve only really been promoting it and tracking my stats since April. For the past 4 months, I’ve been focused on really promoting my blog through commenting, guest posting, Pinterest, and Facebook.

I’ve already been asked to participate in a Giveaway. Last month, I was contacted by Empowee who wrote an awesome blog post featuring 36 expert bloggers who share their blog growth techniques.

Every time someone contacts me, it still blows my mind. I’m still learning how to grow my blog and don’t consider myself an expert. I can’t believe that I am still featured on the post where it features bloggers like Harsh Agarwal, Ryan Biddulph, Sue Dunlevie, Kim Doyle and etc.

Thanks again Empowee for reaching out to me, I appreciate you 🙂

Then…

Adeel Sami mentioned me in one of his roundup posts, you can read it here. Totally appreciate you taking the time to include me in your roundup.

Just wanted to let you know that you made my day when I saw my blog post featured with all those other awesome bloggers.

Commenting On Blogs

Yes, I am still commenting on people’s blogs. As you can see, it definitely works in getting you noticed by other bloggers.

Sure, you may not get a ton of traffic. But that’s okay, I was able to get some opportunities for my blog that I wouldn’t have gotten had it not been for taking the time to comment on blogs.

I know what you’re thinking, it’s too time-consuming. I have other things that I could be doing.

Yes, it does take the time to visit other bloggers blogs and read the post. Then take the time to leave a valuable comment.

However, I am going to keep doing it. None of the opportunities that I experienced in August would’ve been possible without me taking the time to comment and share other people’s content.

My YouTube Channel

I haven’t really taken my YouTube channel seriously. I love creating videos for my blog. I’ve decided to start creating a new video every Wednesday, instead of every other Wednesday.

Yes, it’s going to be a lot of work, with me posting new content on my blog every Tuesday’s and Friday’s. However, I want my YouTube channel to grow.

Last week, I batch recorded a bunch of videos. I know how much it helps to have content pre-written in advance. Why not do the same for my videos.

Videos Uploaded in June

1. How Create A Resource Library on WordPress
2. An Inside Look At My July 2017 Google Analytics
3. Set Up The Akismet Plugin On WordPress
4. My Blogging Schedule and Routine
5. How to Install Google Analytics on WordPress and Genesis

The great thing is that I’ve already got all my videos recorded for September. I am not really sure if recording more videos for my channel will help it grow?

After listening to this podcast, I figured I would try it. I still have a lot to learn about using YouTube and improving my channel, but I’ll get there.

Using Pinterest To Grow My Blog

As you know, I’ve struggled with growing my Facebook page. For the month of August, I made it a point to start focusing on Pinterest as my social media of choice.

While I am still learning how to use Pinterest and don’t get as much traffic from it as other bloggers. I am really enjoying learning as much as I can.

For the month of August, I started working on improving my Pinterest strategy. Now it’s my biggest traffic referrer.

The funny thing is that I still have quite a. bit to learn. So you can bet that I’ll be putting in some time to learning the ins and outs of it.

I don’t want all my traffic coming from just one source. I’ve done that in the past and it’s never a good thing, in case something happens to that traffic source.

So it’s nice to see that my blog is starting to see some traffic from Google. I love organic traffic. While I don’t focus 100% on SEO. I do make sure that each and every blog post is optimized properly to help my posts rank.

I don’t waste time building backlinks like I used to in the past.

I’m Struggling With

Growing my email list is still one of my biggest challenges. Not sure if maybe it’s because my opt-in freebie is not enticing enough or not?

I don’t plan on changing it yet. I’ll wait until I start getting more traffic to determine if I should change it or not.

Growing my community. I am trying to NOT focus on page views anymore as I know that I would rather grow a tribe of loyal readers than just a one-time reader.

To tell you the truth, I really don’t experiment with many different traffic methods. It’s hard to when I am still freelancing and working on other projects.

Whenever I publish a new blog post, I have a promotion system in place that I use each and every time. I promote each and every blog post the same way every time I hit publish.

In the past, I focused 100% on SEO. Thanks to this traffic eBook, it opened up my eyes to creating traffic from multiple places, this way I won’t have to worry about Google for traffic.

My Pinterest Plan

I’ve stopped trying to grow my Facebook page and learn Pinterest at the same time. That just didn’t work and I found myself accomplishing nothing.

I am going to focus on learning Pinterest and make the most of it. I am still using Tailwind and BoardBooster to help me automate my pinning.

In fact, both these tools made it easy for me to continue pinning while I enjoyed my Siesta Keys vacation.

It would have been impossible to pin without these tools. Like I said, I barely touched my laptop while on vacation. The automated pinning has definitely helped me with my Pinterest marketing.

Pinterest is now my biggest social network referral for my site.

As you can see, my Pinterest traffic is starting to improve. Not much, but it’s a positive growth, so that’s always positive.

Considering that I just really started focusing on it the past month, you can see how fast your Pinterest traffic can grow when you put some effort into it.

SO HOW MUCH DID MY BLOG GROW

We all want our blog to grow. Nothing is more depressing to keep working hard on our blog only to see that we’re not seeing the results we want.

Your growth stats may be different than mine. The main goal of my blog is to grow my email list. There are certain things that I pay attention to every month to see if my blog is improving or not.

I have an excel spreadsheet on Google Drive that helps me keep track of my blog numbers. Unfortunately, I didn’t start paying attention to my stats until 2 months ago. But then I also waited until 2 months ago to really start promoting my blog.

Do yourself a favor and start promoting your blog right out the gate. Otherwise, it’s going to take you a lot longer to start seeing traffic.

So let’s dive into my blog growth numbers.

July Blog Growth Numbers

• Email Subscribers (new opt-ins for the month): 11
• Overall List Size: 71
• Twitter Followers: 959
• Facebook Followers: 27
• YouTube Subscribers: 46
• Pinterest Followers: 366
• Page Views: 3056

I included my July blog growth numbers, so you can see how my blog grew in August. Without knowing the numbers, you won’t be able to tell whether or not my blog actually grew.

August Blog Growth Numbers

• Email Subscribers (new opt-ins for the month): 7
• Overall List Size: 78 (1 unsubscribed)
• Twitter Followers: 1040
• Facebook Followers: 27
• YouTube Subscribers: 53
• Pinterest Followers: 415
• Page Views: 2,724

As you can see, my blog is slowly growing. The numbers continue to grow, except for my page views.

When I started blogging, I knew that it was going to take a lot of hard work. I’m not scared of some hard work, plus I really do enjoy working on my blog.

It’s just nice to see my hard work paying off. After all, who really wants to work this hard and not see positive results.

My blog did make money this month. Unfortunately, I don’t share my income results on this blog. All I can say is that I owe this affiliate course props for showing me how to make the most of my top posts.

My Top 3 Blog Posts for August

One of the things that I love looking at is my top blog posts for the month. At the end of the ever month, I’ll go back and see if I can improve them and maybe toss in some affiliate links.

I’ll also spend some time trying to find more post ideas that I can use to write more content. After all, if the posts have already been proven to be popular once, why not write more content.

Now before I can set my goals for this month, let’s see if I reached my goals from last month.

My Goals from Last Month

• Continue blog commenting and networking with other bloggers. I’ve never really been a great networker and I am working on improving that. (Yes I did this)
• Write more content based off of my popular blog posts. If I take the time to piggyback off my successful posts, that should mean more traffic and hopefully, more subscribers. (Yes, I’ve started doing this)
• Keep learning more about how to use Facebook and improve my Facebook marketing. (I purchased this course)
• Spend time trying to improve my Pinterest marketing strategy (I did improve some of my images)
• Increase my subscribers from 45 – 60 (that’s double of what I have right now) (my email list was increased to 60)
• Focus more on my email subscribers and actually start building a relationship with them. (yes, I am working on this)

Tools for Success

Running a blog requires you to spend some money. You don’t have to spend a lot, but these tools have made my life a lot easier.

Tailwind: This tool helps me automate my Pinterest efforts. My favorite part of Tailwind are the Tribes. They are kind of like Groups, but anyone can join without having to wait days for a response. I’ve recently started using Board Booster to help me with the looping feature.

So I don’t really know how much of a positive or negative effect it’ll have on my account?

SiteGround: I am on the GrowBig plan and I love it. If you’re looking for a reliable hosting account for beginners, I highly recommend this hosting account. You can easily start for just $5.95 per month. Although, I recommend paying for 2 years in advance. This will give you enough time to grow your blog and start making money before another hosting bill rolls around.

Related: How to Start A Blog On SiteGround

GetResponse: I use this email service to build my subscribers. It makes it easy to send out my 7 day WordPress course as soon as someone signs up.

ShareSale: This is the affiliate program that I work with for most of the products that I promote on my blog. I make it a point to only promote the products that I use and love.

Social Warfare: This social sharing plugin has made it easy for me to get people to share the images and content I want to be shared. I started off with Monarch, which is another good one. However, my favorite is the Social Warfare plugin.

Thrive Leads: An amazing plugin that allows you to add opt-in boxes quickly and easily. It integrates with pretty much all the popular auto-responders.

Thrive Content Builder: I used this plugin to create the opt-in lead magnet page for my 7 Day WordPress course.

Genesis Framework: I am using the Daily Dish Pro child theme for my blog and I use the Genesis Framework as my choice for this blog. The Framework does have a bit of a learning curve, but I love it. If you want something quick and easy, you can go with Divi or Beaver Builder.

I’ve used both of those page builders for clients in my freelancing business. If you’re uncomfortable with learning how to code, you may want to check out these page builders.

My Favorite Affiliate Program

If you’ve been following my blog, then you know that I am in the process of moving away from my WordPress freelancing business and more towards affiliate marketing.

I really haven’t taken the time to sign up with hundreds of affiliate programs, but here are some of my favorites.

ShareASale

ShareSale: I love this program, it has literally tons of different products that you can promote.

Here are some of my favorite ShareASale merchants:

1. StudioPress
2. BackupBuddy
3. Tailwind
4. PicMonkey
5. Grammarly
6. WP Engine

Amazon Associates Program

Amazon is an extremely popular affiliate program. The commissions are smaller, but the great thing is that when someone visits a product through your affiliate links.

You’ll get credit for whatever they buy, as long as they buy in 24 hours. For now, I’ll keep using Amazon.

This Month’s Goals

I personally think that it’s important to set new short-term goals for my blog. It gives me something to strive for. Plus, it’ll help me stay focused on what I need to work towards.

• Continue blog commenting as a way to network with bloggers.
• Double my email subscribers from last month..so my goal is 14 subscribers. (I know that’s not really a big goal, but I like to reach my goals.)
• Keep improving my Pinterest Strategy.
• Guest post on 2 more blogs for the month of August.
• Start writing another ebook.

Since I am focusing on Pinterest this month, I think I’ll leave my other social networks alone. I can’t be everywhere at once, otherwise, I won’t get anything accomplished at all.

I’ll still post on the other platforms, I just will be using an automated tool to do it.

As I mentioned, I will still make pins for every blog post that I write. Social Warfare makes it easy to do this.

Related: Steal My Pinterest Image Creation System For Social Warfare

Final Take Away

I hope you enjoyed this my blog growth stats for August 2017. As you can see, I am still learning how to grow a blog. Growing a blog has never been easy for me. Instead, the techie side of blogging seems to come easier for me.

However, with a lot of hard work and consistent effort, your blog will start to grow.

Hand Picked Articles for You:

• 6 Month Blog Update
• Big Blogging Mistakes
• Pinterest Image Creation System for Social Warfare

It seems like it’s taking forever for my blog to grow. But what can I expect when I didn’t actually start promoting it until March 2017. The one thing you should take away from all of this, start promoting your blog as soon as possible.

Don’t make the same mistake I made and wait for people to find your blog.

So tell me, what promotional method are you focusing on to grow your blog?