Blog Growth Stats for July 2017

Last updated on April 10th, 2019 at 06:16 am

I can’t believe it’s time for my blog growth stats for July 2017 update again. 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 for me to just add in the necessary information.

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 updates.

Took A Small Break

My traffic is definitely taking some time to grow, which isn’t bad. As long as I see positive growth every month, that’s all I can ask for.

I am still making sure that I do my daily blog tasks on a consistent basis.

However, this month, I took a long 4-day weekend break from my blog. I went to visit my brother in South Carolina.

It was my niece’s birthday and we took a day trip to Georgia. It was fun, but boy was it hot.

I really don’t like taking time off of my blog, as there’s always something to do. However, that weekend away was really nice 🙂

I plan on taking more time off in August.

I am a huge fan of the Summer and make it a point to get outdoors.

The great thing is that I already have all my blog posts written through mid-October.

So that definitely makes it easier to break away from my blog.

Now Onto My Blog Stats for July

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

I thought this month I would do a comparison June/July screenshot, so you can see if my stats made any type of improvement or not.

My page views went up from last month, but I got fewer subscribers for the month.

This tells me that I need to focus more on conversions for my blog. I am not sure if I’ll have time this month to come up with a plan.

I’ll be taking 2 weeks off from my blog.

I’ve been working my butt off last month to make sure that my blog was prepared for my 2-week break.

I’ll be checking my blog for about 30 minutes every day. I just won’t have time to devote to it the way that I’ve been doing right now.

So I’ll see how this affects my blog?

Growing My Email List

Growing my email list has always been a struggle for me. I’ve had an email list before, but never really focused on it as much as I am this time.

I’ve made it a point to actually start emailing my email list every Friday. My goal is to make this a part of my blogging routine, so I don’t forget about my subscribers.

When I first started emailing my subscribers every Friday, I felt like I was bothering them. However, now I don’t feel like that.

If someone doesn’t want to hear from me, they can just unsubscribe and I no longer feel bad about it.

I’d rather they unsubscribe than just sit on my email list not opening up my emails.

As you can see, I have a 37.31% open rate. My click-through rate is 2.99%. Personally, I think those stats could use some improvement.

I’ve had email lists in the past, but never took the time to nurture it.

I have to admit, I am not the greatest at growing or nurturing a list. All this is new to me, but I’m up for the challenge.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Share Together Grow Together #BlogGrowth @SusanVelez.com” quote=”Share Together Grow Together #BlogGrowth @SusanVelez.com ” theme=”style4″]

Blog Growth Stats for July 2017

My page views improved from last month’s blog traffic report. But according to my stats, you can see that it didn’t result in more subscribers.

This goes to show that obsessing over page views doesn’t do any good.

Instead, we should focus on targetted page views. That’s what I am going to do from this point forward.

Guest Posts Written In July

Last month I was able to get 3 guest posts published. As a way of saying “Thank you for allowing me to publish my posts on your blog”

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.

I was amazed at how many guest posts I wrote this month, considering that I took a small break.

I owe it all to Grammarly which has made me more a productive writer.

Grammarly makes it easy for me to just sit and write. I don’t focus on my Grammar mistakes until the end. I love it and use it every day.

Related: Grammarly Review My Experience and WalkThrough

My Blog Update

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.

Commenting On Blogs

Yes, I am still commenting on people’s blogs. As you can see, it definitely works building relationships with 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 without taking the time to comment on other 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. I know that I would’ve never been able to grow my blog to where it is without those relationships I’ve built.

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 July

1. An Inside Look at My June 2017 Analytics
2. How to Clean Up Your WordPress Database
3. How to Install and Setup The Free Social Warfare Plugin
4. Free Social Warfare vs Premium Social Warfare
5. How to Migrate A WordPress Site to WP Engine

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

I don’t use anything fancy to record my videos. I just use the Blue Yeti USB Microphone – Silver along with the Dragonpad USA Pop filter .

Yes, my videos could be better, but if I waited until I got really good with recording my videos, I would never get any uploaded.

After listening this podcast, I figured I would take my channel more seriously.

I still have a lot to learn about using YouTube and improving my channel, but I’ll get there.

I’ve also started putting my videos on Pinterest using Tailwind. I figured why not put them on Pinterest and try to get some visitors and hopefully more subscribers to my channel?

Using Facebook to Grow My Blog

Facebook is still my biggest traffic referrer and I know that I should continue putting forth the effort to grow my Facebook page.

The truth is that it’s been a constant struggle and I really don’t enjoy it as much as I do when I create videos and guest blogging.

So I’ve decided to take a break from trying to grow my Facebook page.

Maybe, I’ll come back to it later.

Who knows. I don’t get a ton of time to work on my blog, so I’ve decided to focus on those tasks that are actually helping me grow my blog.

I am still going to participate in Facebook Groups as I enjoy doing that.

Building A Community

I’ve been hearing and listening to so many bloggers talk about the importance of building a community on your blog.

I’d love to focus more on building a community and not so much on traffic.

Yes, I want to get more traffic, but what good is that traffic if they don’t really care about what I do or have to offer.

So I will be focusing more on building a community around my blog. Actually, that’s why I decided to share these reports with you.

My hope is if you’re new and trying to grow your blog, you’ll join me along the way. Hopefully, these reports will help you realize the things that I am doing to grow my blog.

If you have any other ideas on what I can do to help build up the community on my blog, I’d love to hear it.

The whole building a community on my blog is totally new to me.

It’s definitely a learning curve and I am always learning something new to growing my blog. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve never really focused on growing a blog the white hat way.

I was always more of a black hat person 🙂

Answering Readers Questions

Another way that I thought I would grow readership and build community is to start answering my readers’ questions.

I’ll be answering one question per month to see how this goes. If I don’t get a question from a reader, then I’ll browse some of the Facebook groups and answer something from there.

Of course, this is just a test, so I am not sure how this will go. I’ve already answered a question from a reader who asked how to add your latest blog post to your email signature.

I’m Struggling With

Let’s see, where do I begin 🙂

Of course, my traffic continues to struggle. I am changing my mindset from just traffic and focusing more on targetted traffic.

My Pinterest traffic. So many bloggers say that it’s just a huge source of traffic for them. I still haven’t learned how to use it effectively.

Oh and my bounce rate. I would love to improve it and see if I can get people to stay on my blog longer.

I am sure there’s more, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with my struggles.

My Pinterest Update

Pinterest is hanging on to be my 2nd biggest referrer. However, it’s still a long way off from beating out my biggest referrer, which is Facebook.

I haven’t really put a lot of my focus on my Pinterest strategy.

This month, since I am not going to be focusing on growing my Facebook Page, I thought I would finally sit down and focus on using Pinterest.

I am going to go back through the Pinning Perfect course and see if I can improve my current strategy.

Creating Pins for My YouTube Channel

As you know, I have a YouTube channel. I record a new video every Wednesday and really don’t spend a lot of time promoting my videos.

In July, I decided to start creating pins for my videos. So far, I think I have created 8 pins for my videos.

I am hoping that by adding my videos to Pinterest, maybe that will help me grow my YouTube channel?

Trying to Improve The Bounce Rate

I’ve really started listening to the ProBlogger podcast every day. I love it and I have started implementing some of the things that he recommends.

On episode 18, Darren discusses sneeze pages. He said one of the best things to do as your archives get bigger is to set up sneeze pages. So that’s what I’ve done.

You can listen to the episode here.

Check Out My Sneeze Pages

• How to Start A Blog Tips for Beginners
• Growing Your Blog What You Need to Do

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 3 months ago. But then I also waited until 3 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.

June Blog Growth Numbers

• Email Subscribers (new opt-ins for the month): 15
• Overall List Size: 60
• Twitter Followers: 864
• Facebook Followers: 22
• YouTube Subscribers: 37
• Pinterest Followers: 339
• Page Views: 2962

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

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

As you can see, my blog is slowly growing.

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 June

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 is 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 Architect: 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.
• Get at least one guest post written since I’ll be taking 2 weeks off.
• Work on Improving my Pinterest marketing strategy.
• Enjoy my time off from my blog this month 🙂

Stop Focusing On Page Views

I am not going to say that I don’t want to focus on page views.

However, I am going to start focusing more on targetted page views.

We all know that targetted traffic is a lot more important than just any traffic. So I am going to stop chasing my tail trying to get tons of page views.

That’s more important than focusing on subscribers. I know that if I can keep providing valuable content for my readers, eventually, they’ll become a fan.

Final Take Away

I hope you enjoyed this my blog growth stats for July 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, I am noticing positive results from my blog.

Hand Picked Articles for You:

• This Blog’s 6 Month Blog Update
• My Big Blogging Mistakes
• How I Create My Pinterest Images Using 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. Chances are people aren’t going to find your blog on their own.

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