A few months ago I started reporting my traffic statistics at the start of each month. The traffic numbers are from the previous month, and I always compare the values with the same month the previous year. I know of many other bloggers that also report their traffic statistics, and also their earnings.
I am not a big fan of posting the earnings I make with Technically Easy, but I don’t mind sharing the traffic numbers. I only recently started to report my traffic numbers as a way for me to keep a record of my numbers and to ensure that those same numbers increase month-over-month. The one question I have been asking myself as I post the traffic statistics is how do I really measure my blog’s success?
How is a Blog’s Success Measured?
If you were to ask 100 blogger’s how they measure their blog’s success, each one may have a different answer, but many of the answers may be similar. Most blogger’s that I have conversed with seem to use the income generated by their blog as a measuring stick of success.
Some may mention specific rankings that they have received, such as PageRank from Google or Alexa’s own ranking system. These two values are also used by advertisers to determine if a site is worth the effort to advertise on.
Whatever the reason, a blog’s success can’t be boiled down to one answer, as each blogger will need to determine how their blog’s success can be measured.
Have You Achieved a Goal?
When it comes to measuring success you will first need to set a goal. Goals can be anything from income to traffic numbers. Even publishing a specific number of posts on your blog, or keeping your blog active for a number of years, can be considered a goal. There isn’t anyone that can set the goal for you blog but you.
Every blogger will have a different goal for their blog. There is no wrong goal as it is your blog, and you can author the blog anyway you wish, so you can set any goal that you would like. Whether it is a financial goal, a traffic goal, a publishing goal, it makes no difference. The goal is there for you to try to achieve.
The Goal I Have Set For Technically Easy
A few years back I decided to set the goals of my blog around my my traffic numbers. In the beginning it was difficult for me to generate much traffic for my blog, and it was definitely a challenge. I decided to learn whatever I needed to help generate traffic for my blog.
I started small, such as 100 visits a day. Once I achieved that goal I moved up to 500 visits, and then 1,000 visits. Technically Easy is now receives over 2,000 visits a day and will be looking at over 3,000 visits per day by the end of the year.
Setting my traffic goals gives me incentive for continuing to publish posts on my blog. It keeps me learning new things, and finding out what works and what doesn’t through experimenting. I have been happy for achieving my goals, and once I do I quickly set a new goal to keep me going.
Achieving a Goal is Success
Each time I achieve my traffic goal I can say that I have succeeded with my blog. Success is not a static condition, but it is a constantly evolving goal. The online world is constantly evolving, so the measurement of success must also change.
If you have achieved success with your blog today, can you say the same a year from now? For me if my traffic numbers a year from now are similar to what the numbers are today, can I deem my blog as successful a year from now? I wouldn’t think so as I wouldn’t have achieved my new traffic goal.
For those that have chosen income as a goal, will you consider success at $1,000 a month? If so, will you consider that a success a year from now, or are you hoping to grow that to $2,000 a month? Chances are you are hoping to be earning more a year from now, so you will set yourself a new goal and hope to achieve the same success.
For me, I each month I report my traffic numbers I always have the previous year comparison to see how my traffic has grown. If I can increase my traffic numbers year-over-year than I have succeeded in growing my traffic, and hopefully have achieved success.
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on July 19, 2011 at 10:52 am
The key is to ask yourself are you growing each month? Do you see signs of people sharing your content or asking you for interviews..this is how I rate it..
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
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on July 20, 2011 at 8:07 am
Growth is important each month since without the growth you won’t reach your goals. If you aren’t growing, then you should ask yourself why and make the changes that are needed to continue the growth.
on July 19, 2011 at 7:55 pm
Successful depends on you…If you think you have reached your goal, then you can say that you are successful in terms of your blogs…
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on July 20, 2011 at 8:09 am
I agree in that success does depend on you. Everyone has a different idea of what success is, so only you can determine if you are successful or not.
on July 19, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Thank you.Nice information’s..I also agree with you.But Report must be interesting.Some Time my Alexa Ranking go dawn some time go up.So i can’t publish my Traffic report.
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on July 20, 2011 at 8:10 am
Reporting is basically a good way of keeping you on track of your goals. It provides the incentive you need to achieve those goals.
on July 20, 2011 at 12:21 am
Increase in traffic and bcomng famous in blogosphere all I measure my blogs success
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on July 20, 2011 at 8:10 am
Increasing traffic is a good goal, becoming famous – well it depends on what you mean by “famous.”
on July 20, 2011 at 4:45 am
Very nice post !!
Even I don’t like to share earnings, just prefer to show the traffic numbers… For me, reaching the S.M.A.R.T goals is a sign of success.
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on July 20, 2011 at 8:13 am
Some people don’t mind sharing their earnings, while others prefer to keep them private. The S.M.A.R.T. goals are a great measure of success.
on July 20, 2011 at 6:42 am
I like to set traffic goal and publishing goal as a measure of success more than the financial one. The more the blogs are published, the more you can reach out to the readers. The traffic report shows how successful you have become with your blogs.
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on July 20, 2011 at 8:13 am
Those are some good goals. Your two goals are related in that your publishing goal, I’m sure, helps to achieve the traffic goal.
on July 20, 2011 at 3:55 pm
Yeah having goals is important. My goal is to be the best tech blogger in the world:D Lets see how it turns out…
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on July 21, 2011 at 7:59 am
That is a goal many of us would like to achieve, however, I’m not sure how you will be able to measure that.
on July 21, 2011 at 9:26 am
no need to measure that. I will know when i get there:D This is ultimate goal of course. Setting smaller measurable goals is necessary too, i agree with that…
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on July 21, 2011 at 6:16 am
For me the measure of your blog’s success change as you progress in blogging. For newbies, they should be focus on driving traffic. For budding bloggers they level-up a bit by looking at how to convert that traffic into their list. And for the pre-Pro they gauge success on how they were able monetize their list.
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on July 21, 2011 at 8:03 am
That is a great way of looking at changing goals as your blog evolves. The professional bloggers now how to set, measure, and achieve their goals. That is what has made them who they are online.
on July 21, 2011 at 11:09 am
Success for me is measured by how many new enquiries I get per week
on July 22, 2011 at 8:15 am
The number of inquiries is a good indication of success as you can easily measure the number of inquiries.
on July 21, 2011 at 1:59 pm
My first goal is to increase traffic. Then I would want the profit to increase every month. But I think the most fulfilling success is receiving admiration and appreciation from visitors. And just like Coleman said, the time when people would share my blogs, buy them, or even asked by many about my ideas and maybe even ask for my autograph.
on July 22, 2011 at 8:14 am
The admiration and appreciation are great to receive. They provide great motivation to do even better with your site/blog.
on July 22, 2011 at 10:47 am
Actually, this was my question too… as a new blogger, i don’t know much about this kind of stuffs but i am very much willing to learn. Of course my goal would be to create successful blogs and have communities with it so that i will know what other people think about it and how do they feel about certain kind of things…
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on July 25, 2011 at 8:34 am
When I started out blogging I didn’t realize how much there was to learn to be successful. If you are willing to put in the time and effort to learn, then success will surely come.
on July 25, 2011 at 12:16 am
Hi there. Thanks for sharing this with us. It’s a very useful and interesting topic. Not many people understands well how to measure their blogs’ success.
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on July 25, 2011 at 8:40 am
Measuring success will mean something different to everyone. It is up to the blog owner to determine what they define success to be.
on July 25, 2011 at 7:15 am
Some people look at visitors, other at activity (comments) and some at sales. That is, if you’re trying to monetize your blog. If you’re blogging for fun you’ll be satisfied with activity and visitors, but if you’ll make money from it you’ll want conversions, so targeted visitors. You don’t need 10k random users, you just need 1k that buy.
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on July 25, 2011 at 8:49 am
I agree. Conversions is definitely the key for those setting online financial goals. If you get a lot of visitors, but many don’t convert, then they are just visitors and not customers.
on July 25, 2011 at 10:19 am
I measure my blogs success by the amount of comments it gets as well as the amount of Tweets. The way I look at it is if I get a lot of quality comments and people tweet my posts then I must be doing something right.
on July 25, 2011 at 12:53 pm
The number of comments is a great measurement for success. If your visitors are interacting with you via your comments, then you are definitely doing something right.
on July 27, 2011 at 3:55 am
Congratulations on breaching the 2,000 visitors-a-day mark. I measure the success of my blog with the same, the number of visits it gets. The other thing, equally important, is my target earning for the month, which is a lot dependent on meeting or surpassing the first goal.
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on July 27, 2011 at 8:12 am
I have many goals that I am currently working on with my blog, many of which you have mentioned. First would be to increase my traffic, second would be to increase my traffic based on certain keyword searches and then it would be to generate comments or conversation regarding my posts. I am a new blogger as of April of 2011, my biggest goal was to reach specific Alexa and Page Rank numbers. At this time I have packaged all these together as my current goals but I am sure over time those too will change.
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on July 27, 2011 at 9:15 am
Thanks for sharing this idea. While I do not announce my stats as publicly as you do, via my About page there is a link to my stats that I update every month. I look at the last 12 months, because I believe a time span that long is better suited for displaying the long term trend, and before you go start looking, here’s the direct link: http://www.husdal.com/about/about-husdal-com/audience-and-traffic/ I like your idea, though, so perhaps I will start doing it monthly as well.
on July 27, 2011 at 11:11 am
“Statistics that are monitored will always increase” – or something like that. This is a great way to monitor and aim for your goals.
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on July 28, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Interesting quote. All I have heard is “you can’t improve what you can’t measure.”
on July 27, 2011 at 1:04 pm
You are so right about what success means to each of us. Basically, it all boils down to setting specific goals. When you achieve a “goal” that means success… In my case, I do set up “several” goals. I work on those goals and monitor their results. When I see results then that is a success. Actually it could be anything from setting up a small site to “I will make” tons of money this month. My recent goal is to launch my Consulting services on a separate website.. when I finsh setting it up and putting it live, that to me is already a success. Then, I will go to the next step
Anyway, your traffic numbers are really looking good. Keep it up!
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on July 28, 2011 at 6:30 pm
You have some great goals, and I have seen what you have accomplished online and can tell you have obviously successfully reached many of your goals.
The key to being successful is to constantly set new goals to achieve, and you certainly do that.
on July 27, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Everyone has a different answer for sure. The point is you will need to set the criteria. Be it income, traffic (Alexa Rank), interaction (comments, shared on social network), networking (knowing more bloggers in your niche). When any one of this improve each month, you are successful in blogging
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on July 28, 2011 at 6:35 pm
I agree with you Min Jong. Everyone will have different criteria, so everyone will deem success to be differently.
on August 2, 2011 at 12:05 pm
FOr me No of users visiting regularly are more imp. Money & Traffic is not everything for every blogger.
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on August 2, 2011 at 12:39 pm
I agree that money and traffic is not for every blogger. Many bloggers just like to post on their blog for the sake of writing, and don’t really care about money,
on August 9, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Depends on what the blog’s purpose is. If it is for monetization then the revenue it generates is the measure. If it is for branding then the number of visitors and interactions that become important.
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on August 9, 2011 at 3:02 pm
We measure the success of our blog by the clicks we get onto our affiliate links and sign ups using our lead capture forms. We find the more people interact the more actions they take so get a good discussion going and people will come
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on September 8, 2011 at 6:39 am
I honestly lack words to describe this, as all i can say is it a great article. I do measure my blog success by accessing how much i have reach my set goals. despite that measuring my success by looking at google PR & Alexa is very important as that means more traffic more interraction in my blog and more money.
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on September 8, 2011 at 8:42 am
Reaching your goals is the best way for determining your success. Everyone will have different goals, so it is important for you to set your own and try to achieve them.
on September 25, 2011 at 7:19 am
For me the measure of a blogs success is the amount of income that it generates. I cant see the point in wasting valuable time writing articles unless your blog pays for its self. Reading blogs where the writer puts across the idea that blogging should be about ideas not profit reminds me of all those morons when I was a teenager who declared that they were not materialistic.
on December 1, 2011 at 8:57 pm
Measuring Blog success for me is when it has a huge number of comments, of course the traffic and most probably blogs that are giving giveaways and contest as well. That’s a simple thoughts of mine base of what I observe to the other successful blogs.
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on December 11, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Reading blogs where the writer puts across the idea that blogging should be about ideas not profit reminds me of all those morons when I was a teenager who declared that they were not materialistic. For me the measure of a blogs success is the amount of income that it generates.
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