Blog Report For August 2008

Wow, I’m having trouble accepting the fact that TheAtHomeCouple.com is already 1 month old – and what a productive month we’ve had!  If you remember back when I posted our goals at the beginning of August, we had 5 main objectives which were fairly attainable.  Our top 3 was to post everyday, increase our presence online via social media, and to connect with like-minded bloggers by actively commenting.  Mission accomplished.

We actively created profiles and have begun participating on all the major social networking and social bookmarking sites as you can see in the newly added “Connect With Us” section in the sidebar.  I also spent the month rabidly commenting on some of my favorite blogs, and discovered some sparkly gems along the way – which is always nice.  Somehow I managed to convince Alan from AffiliateConfession.com to grace us with an off-beat interview and he gladly accepted, which was awesome, and I pretty much posted everyday minus 3 or 4 times that I needed to disconnect and let the laptop cool down.  As Borat would say, “Great Success!”

If you’re reading this post expecting to see an income report of some kind, it’s not happening just yet and here’s why:  a) We have been focused on building the foundation – which is the content and the community, and b) I hate seeing 2 month old blogs that are full of ads and top 10 lists.  If you think no one will notice that you’re rewriting content from authority blogs, or polluting your site with 125×125 ad blocks in an attempt to attract buyers for your ad space, think again.  It’s blog suicide and unless you’re already established and have social proof of your status online do not pretend to be something you’re not – because you’ll stick out like a sore thumb.  Be yourself and you’ll do just fine!

Even though I’m not going to let you know about the $7.85 we made from Adsense, I do have some screen shots I’d like to share with you guys and gals relating to our traffic, subscribers and search engine presence from our Hostgator cPanel admin.  As you can see below from our AWStats report we had 1370 unique visitors between 08/01 and 08/31, with 16,855 page views and an average of 5.79 pages per visit.



On a per day basis, shown below, our lowest was on 08/03 with 8 unique visitors, and our busiest day was on 08/08 with 324 unique visitors – which was when I did the first post discussing SocialMarker.com and how to use it for efficiently submitting your posts to social bookmarking sites.  Our overall average bounced between 75-100 visits per day, sometimes higher and rarely lower, which could only mean one thing – you guys rock!



In regards to subscribers, as of Saturday we have 25 wonderful people who have locked in with their favorite RSS feed reader to keep up to date with our Internet marketing adventures. I’m still not 100% sure on how to read the statistics provided within the Feedburner dashboard, but as you can see below it says “25 readers” so that’s what I’m sticking with!



For those of you who don’t know, I’m really big on keyword research, backlinks and getting organic traffic from the search engines using Wordtracker, to find kick-ass key phrases for post titles and content. Out of curiosity I opened up Google and typed in “the at home couple” and was pleasantly surprised with the results I received. There are approximately 833 listings for this term, and tons of them are links coming from other blogs as well as social media services that we belong to.



I think that’s enough screen shots for now. I’ve absorbed quite a bit of information in the last 8 months, and even though it’s easy to get overwhelmed it’s becoming apparent that I might actually know what the heck I’m doing – which is comforting. I can remember a point in time when Veronica actually thought I was loosing my marbles with this “Internet” stuff and she would just sit and nod when I’d start rambling about affiliate marketing this, and click through ratio that… Poor girl!

We just want to say how awesome each and everyone of you are. We’ve hit some sort of nerve within the blogosphere and it’s comforting to know that there are other people just like us who lay in bed each night dreaming of working from home or traveling to distant places without breaking the bank. It does seem far fetched until you actually go out and do it, and with the power of the Internet at our fingertips there is no reason why a twenty-something couple or stay at home mom can’t improve their situation and bring freedom and excitement into their life. It really is a beautiful thing.

Cheers,

Elijah

16 thoughts on “Blog Report For August 2008”

  1. From one of the “25 wonderful people” who has your blog RSS’d to my reader (Google), I’d like to say congratulations!

    Thanks for letting us know how it’s going. Your immediate success gives hope to others who wonder how their own efforts might pan out.

    May your results increase to the power of 10 each month from here on out… or better!

  2. Many thanks Q. I truthfully hope to be sitting with you somewhere in the hills of Europe this time next year discussing how much you should sell “one” of your companies for…

    You guys keep us going.

  3. Mark, I pretty much learned everything I know from you – in one way or another. From buying my first domain name to spotting niche trends in Wordtracker and building sites for those markets – it’s all you man!

    To say that I’m grateful for your pages and pages of free content would be an understatement. You have been instrumental in the little success I’ve enjoyed thus far. Thank you.

    I’ve always enjoyed writing, so knowing that you’re digging it makes it worth every second.

  4. @Eren – 🙂 you always make me smile, especially at our mastermind sessions. It is pretty awesome indeed, and like I said it appears that we are doing something right – so my goal now is to continue doing that something, and helping as many people as they can to find their something as well. 🙂

  5. I think that the “something right” that you are doing is being authentic- being real- being yourself. People see right through fake people— at least I do-LOL….
    Other than that sharing with your readers great information is also the reason for your success.
    And yes: 1370 unique visitors, 16,855 page views and of 5.79 pages per visit in your first month blogging is absolute success if you ask me.
    keep at it and I’m sure you’ll be even more successful 🙂
    Eren Mckay

    Grow your business – Eren Mckays last blog post..Training Online For Free with 16 Steps to Success

  6. Hey Man,
    You and V are doing an AWESOME job. Keep it up and keep the knowledge coming. I have learned so much from you. Congrats on the $7.85. All you have to do now is replicate that over and over again and you’re set.

    Great job you guys.

    T

  7. Wow I’m having trouble accepting the fact that it took me two months to past beyond 25 mark after reading your little success story. Congrats on your first successful month and best wishes for the coming month(s).

    You now have 26 in exact…

    Cheers
    Yan

    Yan Shall Blogs last blog post..Where Did They Go From Here?

  8. @Eren – You know how I feel about fakes.. Stay tuned, you’ll love my next post – video post to be exact..

    @T – “It’s all because of you…” you know whats up. Reciprocation is the word of the year bro…

    @Yan – It’s because of the Internet being full of great blogs with high quality, free information like yours that we even did half as good as we actually did. 26 is a great number 🙂

  9. I’d love to…

    I got some huge bumps from Stumble Upon 3 or 4 times throughout the month… I regularly comment on 10 or so other blogs so that was huge regarding direct referrals.

    I was known in quite a few other blogging communities before we launched, so I think that helped because people already knew my name, and my twisted sense of humour 🙂

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