Blog Growth Stats for September 2017

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

I can’t believe it’s time for my blog growth stats for September 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.

Published My First Kindle Ebook

September has been a very busy month. I’ve made it a point to keep doing my regular blogging tasks and blog promotion.

However, I finally made it a point to sit down and write and publish my first Kindle ebook. It was a lot of work to throw into the mix with everything that I do.

Yes, I am still freelancing on the side.

It was such a huge accomplishment for me, that I took a couple of days off after publishing my new eBook 🙂

I know what you’re thinking. I should’ve been out there promoting my new book and trying to get as many eyeballs as posible on it. However, I decided to reward myself and take time off.

So instead of worrying and working my ass off, I went for a 10-mile hike. It was nice and relaxing. I’ve personally found that I function much better if I allow myself to break away from the computer and take a break.

If you haven’t seen my new Kindle Ebook, you can read my new blog post about it here. You can also purchase the ebook from Amazon through this link.

Now Onto My Blog Stats for September

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 were down from last month.

I’m really trying to stop focusing on page views and traffic. It’s hard though, especially, with all the work that I put in every day.

I am getting better. At least I’ve stopped checking my Google Analytics on a daily basis 🙂 I just need to keep focusing on doing the work and stop worrying about everything else.

I’ve heard so many people say that if you do the work, eventually, your work will pay off.

I really thought that I would end up getting more subscribers this month, however, I only got 11 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 89, I’ve had a couple of unsubscribes.

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 84 subscribers.

As you can see, I have a 14.29% open rate. My click through rate is 1.19%. My click through rate sucks. I took a screenshot of this about 2 hours after sending out my Friday newsletter.

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 September 2017

Unfortunately, my page views went down from last month’s blog traffic report. That’s the one thing about blog traffic, it fluctuates so much. At least mine does.

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 September

Last month I was able to get three 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 11 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.

I waited 5 months before I started promoting it, don’t make that mistake.

So, I’ve only really been promoting it and tracking my stats since April. For the past 5 months, I’ve been focused on really promoting my blog through commenting, guest posting, Pinterest, and Facebook Groups.

Last month, I was contacted by Empowee who wrote an awesome blog post featuring 36 expert bloggers who share their blog growth techniques.

I also want to say thanks for Prince for featuring me on one of his blog posts. He included me in one of his blog posts where he featured 25 pro bloggers.

I still find it hard to believe when someone mentions me on their blog. Especially, when they say pro bloggers. If you linked to my blog and I missed it, I do apologize.

I’m only human and I don’t catch them all. But I do appreciate all the shares, mentions and links from any of my fellow bloggers 🙂

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 for everyone who features or mentions me on your blog 🙂

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 to Customize The Genesis Comment Form
2. An Inside Look At My August 2017 Google Analytics
3. BlogVault WalkThrough and Installation on WordPress
4. How to Do A Test Restore On BlogVault
5. How to Verify Pinterest On WordPress With Yoast SEO

The great thing is that I’ve already got all my videos recorded for October. 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.

My Promotion Strategies

I’ll probably end up taking this section out next month as my promotion strategies don’t really change from month to month.

When I first started this blog, I was trying to be everywhere. Now I am just focusing on using 1-3 blog promotion techniques. I’ve started really putting all my focus into mastering Pinterest.

I’ve heard so many bloggers say that you should focus 100% on mastering Pinterest before venturing into other promotional techniques. However, I’ve done that in the past with SEO and got burnt.

I don’t want all my traffic coming from just one source. So I refuse to drop everything just to learn one channel. Maybe that hurts my blog growth, but I don’t want to go down that road again.

Using Pinterest To Grow My Blog

Right now, Pinterest is my main focus out of all the social networks. I have really started taking time to learn it. My goal is to hopefully tap into some of the traffic that all bloggers say it can produce.

After just a month of really putting my focus on it, I’ve definitely noticed an increase. Take a look at this months stats compared to last months Pinterest stats.

As you can see, my traffic from Pinterest is growing. So what I’m doing is paying off, but I still don’t consider myself a Pinterest master by no means.

I still have a lot to learn, but it’s definitely nice to see my traffic picking up from Pinterest. I’m not getting anywhere near the traffic that other bloggers are getting, that’s okay.

I’ve learned to stop playing the comparison game a long time ago.

I’m still using both Board Booster and Tailwind to help me with my Pinterest strategy. However, I’ve just recently also started doing some manual pinning.

I’m testing things out to see if it improves my traffic?

Starting to Get Google Organic Traffic

I love getting Google traffic. In the past, I focused 100% on SEO because I’ve noticed that organic traffic converts very well. People who come to your site are looking for something and if you can help them, they’ll probably buy through your affiliate links, products, services or whatever you offer.

I’m happy to say that my organic traffic is increasing slowly, just like the growth of this blog 🙂

From this screenshot you’ll see that my organic traffic has improved from last month’s stats.

The great thing is that I don’t spend any time focusing on building backlinks to this blog. Yes, I do promote it and guest post on other blogs.

However, I am NOT doing those activities for the sake of building backlinks. I’ve stopped playing the backlink game.

Instead, I am just focusing on providing the best valuable and helpful content that I know how to do. That’s all I can do.

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.

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.

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

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

September Blog Growth Numbers

• Email Subscribers (new opt-ins for the month): 11
• Overall List Size: 89 (2 unsubscribed)
• Twitter Followers: 1113
• Facebook Followers: 33
• YouTube Subscribers: 58
• Pinterest Followers: 468
• Page Views: 2,549

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 September

One of the things that I love looking at is my top blog posts for the month. At the end of the every 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. (No I didn’t do this last month)
• Spend time trying to improve my Pinterest marketing strategy (I did improve some of my images and even created more images for some of my posts)
• 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.

Final Take Away

I hope you enjoyed this my blog growth stats for September 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.

I waited 5 months before I started promoting my blog. Who knows where I would be if I had started sooner…oh well.

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?