blog stats update

It’s been a while since i’ve looked at the stats for this blog so here’s an update…

For the past week or so, RSS subscriber numbers have been at an all time high. I’m now at over 120 RSS subscribers. That’s a great feeling because when i see a blog that has over 100 RSS subscribers, i’m much more likely to subscribe myself or read the content and stick around on the site. Here’s a graph of my subscriber count from February 2007 to October 2008.

If we look at the monthly traffic breakdown, we can see an obvious spike in traffic in July 2008. If we ignore that, we can see a slow but steady rising trend in visits per month and that’s what i keep my eye on… not spikes.

This month, i’ve passed the 300,000 word mark on this blog. I now have over 1150 blog posts under my belt with over 2000 comments - so on average, i get about 2 comments per post.

In terms of revenue, this blog has never been a steady earner or something i could bank on making ‘x’ amount per month. Recently however, i’ve had numerous requests for paid reviews and believe it or not i’ve had to reject one or two as i deemed them to be ‘off topic’.

It’s never nice refusing cash but it has to be done if i’m to keep bringing this blog forward. I can’t and won’t have unrelated reviews on this blog. If, however, the review is about an unrelated topic (say fashion or something) and the owner is looking for a review on the website itself (design/ layout / navigation / first impressions etc..) then yeah, i’ll consider doing a review as i’d consider that on topic as it allows me to review something i know a bit about

But so far this month, i’ve completed 2 paid reviews and there’s possibly 2 more on the way. Whilst it’s all dandy having a few paid reviews every month, i’m well aware that too many can kill a blog so i’m never going to do back to back paid reviews or have a paid posts:normal posts ratio greater than 1:5 per month.

So in terms of revenue, this blog is slowly starting to pay for itself but the irony is i’ve never been so inactive on it. This college video project is eating up all my time & will continue to do so until mid-November when we have to present it.