Blog Audit – State of avgjoegeek.net

I’ve been blogging for the past 6 months. During that time I have been working on trying to build up a following, get traffic to the site, write amazing content, and of course try and earn a buck or two in the process.

Find out how successful I’ve been and how I go about performing my first blog audit! So – how does one perform an audit on their own blog? You will need to continue reading to find out!

What is A Blog Audit?

For me it means to go through  the sites I use to measure traffic related stats and the various ways I  monetize the blog. This is just to see how it is performing and try and find out what is working – and what isn’t.  There are other ways to audit your blog as well – through your content or taking a look at the visual aspect (Your theme, navigation, placement of content/ads etc..) and see if there is anything that needs to be tweaked.

For this article I will just be reviewing my over all stats and how much money I have made for the past 6 months.

Web Stats

If you don’t have traffic you don’t have readers. If you don’t have readers then what is the point of blogging? So it is important to go through and try and plug up the holes in your site by reviewing your traffic stats.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the best free tool found on the web for measuring traffic. Although it isn’t 100% accurate – it is a great tool to figure out the ‘health’ of your blog or website.  But it is important to figure out what to look for. Although it is neat to see the “live” view – it is more important to figure out what reports provide you real data that you can use.

6 Month Report of Visitors to avgjoegeek.net

Note: I didn’t start seeing traffic until March – after I had written about 30 article! It was also when I started getting stats back from Alexa as I was building up my back link profile and working on figuring out SEO for the site.

• Visits (Total): 32,675
• Unique Visitors: 29,160
• Pageviews: 44,928
• Pages / Visit: 1.37
• Avg. Visit Duration: 00:01:06
• Bounce Rate: 83.50%

Top Ten Referral Sites

Note: Yes, this is obvious that Google is #1. But if you see the numbers from social sites? I could have 10 times that if I had been promoting more from within them as well. Social Media is highly effective IF you spend the time working on it.

1.  Google / Organic (Search Results) – 24,607
2. Direct / None (Unable to read info of Device) – 3,090
3. Yahoo / Organic (Search Results) – 816
4. Bing / Organic (Search Results) – 630
5. Google.com /referral – 340
6. stumbleupon.com /referral – 328
7. facebook.com /referral – 304
8. aol /organic – 124
9. pinterest.com /referral – 124
10. feedburner / feed (RSS subscribers) – 114

Top 10 Websites of avgjoegeek.net

Alexa

Alexa is a great site to get a general “pulse” on how your website ranks with the world. I’ll post the screenshot of my current ranking Globally and within the U.S. below.

Alexa site info for avgjoegeek.net

It will be interesting to note that I rank pretty high with the following Countries as well:

• Romania 9,730
• Bangladesh 17,859
• United States 57,574
• Pakistan 72,714
• India 97,521

Clicky

Unfortunately I only use the free version of Clicky stats. But I like the information it provides. I don’t ever just rely on Google – well because the data could be off.  Anyways here is the past 31 days of basic traffic stats. This has been pretty typical for the site. So.. I have some work to do

avgjoegeek.net Clicky

As you can see although the site is growing – I still have a ton of work to do to try and improve it. I’ll be spending more time researching for not only great basic articles that interest me, but find out what people need help with and provide articles offering a solution! Ok… now SHOW ME THE MONEY!!! – erm.. here are the realities of advertising and affiliate income on a new blog for a part-time blogger .

Advertising and Affiliates

If you don’t know already avgjoegeek.net does run advertising and affiliate programs. I just don’t try and shove them in your face every time you visit. To find out exactly what I run and affiliate with you can visit my disclosure page here on the site.

Adsense:

Mind you the numbers posted are the estimated earning before Google goes through and audits the reports. The actual payouts are typically  less than the estimated earnings.

• Dec 2011 – $0.03
• Jan 2012 – $17.03
• Feb 2012 – $8.10
• Mar 2012 – $5.72
• April 2012 – $14.45
• May 2012 –  $8.09

Other Sources/Affiliate Earnings:

Why No Amazon?

 I get asked this alot – Why don’t you have an affiliate account with Amazon? Well, it’s because the silly politicians in the fine state of Colorado decided to try and put a local sales tax on the internet.  So Amazon said – nope we’ll just take our multi-billion dollar business elsewhere.  So I get screwed at probably would have been the most lucrative part of the site

 So Is This a Sucess Or Failure?

Well it depends on how you look at it I suppose. If you are looking at it from strictly a financial standpoint? Um.. not so much a success. I will end up breaking even and be able to pay for hosting and registration costs. But if I look at everything else? I am getting some steady traffic. I get some decent engagement on the site. And I enjoy what I do. So with that I consider myself successful.

Room for Improvement

There is always room for improvement. I need to stand back and take a look at the direction of the site.  Figure out the holes and plug them up.

And of course keep writing! What would you like to see on the site? Feel free to leave a comment below!