On the 7th of March 2011 Woman Seeks World went live to the world. I’d spent about 6 weeks learning, planning and creating a travel blog that I wanted to be a vehicle to share my experiences of moving abroad, travelling the world and becoming location independent, as well as extra income ideas for people also wanting to follow this path.
In three months I can say that this blog has become my passion and something that I’m completely engrossed in and committed to. I went into travel blogging because its a topic I’m passionate about, but in the back of my mind hoping that one day it could become my career too. I set myself a goal of growing the blog for six months and adding as much great content as possible before even thinking of monetising, and this is something I want to stay true to, because I believe that building a community around the site and providing useful posts is what will ensure my success in the future, so I want to have a great foundation for moving on to monetisation towards the end of this year.
Where I’m At – Stats Recap
It’s hard to believe how far I’ve come in three months, and I’m extremely proud of it, but the competitive part of me still thinks I could have done more! I’m more than happy with the growth though – It’s been hard not to compare myself with others and be sometimes frustrated if I have a bad week of traffic or comments, but overall everything is going up month by month, so I just need to remember this when I start getting too perfectionistic!
The focus of my first three months has been:
Content – Initially I was posting 2-4 times a week, but the last three weeks I have been posting five times a week. This has resulted in a definite increase in traffic, so I’m going to continue to be posting every weekday from now on.
Twitter/Facebook Interaction – Half the fun of blogging is meeting new friends and interacting with like-minded people so I’ve put a huge focus on social media – I make sure I tweet every day, and ensure that I’m not only promoting my own content, but also others which I think is useful and relevant to what Woman Seeks World is about. I also take part in the weekly Travel Talk On Twitter (#TTOT) sessions which has allowed me to grow my followers and meet some really interesting and inspiring people along the way!
I also try to engage my Facebook readers by posting questions throughout the week, or anything else relevant to travel, location independence or moving abroad.
Link Building – So many people say this is the most important thing in growing your blog, and I’d say I mostly agree with that! I’ve been a little bit all over the place with my link building – from making sure I read other peoples blogs and providing useful or thought provoking comments, so also using sites like Yahoo Answers, BootsnAll and Where I’ve Been, as well as dabbling in writing some Ezine articles. My links are growing quite well now, and I’m finding that my content is being linked to by others, so I want to continue to have a little more focus and planning in this area in the future!
Last week I took the plunge and used the website fiverr.com to outsource some of my link building to an experienced SEO expert. If you haven’t heard of the site you should definitely check it out – basically people advertise what they will do for 5 bucks – great for time consuming tasks like building links!
In terms of stats for the blog, I’ve found it quite helpful reading about others successes and challenges in their first few months, so I wanted to be open and share mine with the world also.
Traffic
As you can see, apart from a couple of spikes (Thank you Lonely Planet for retweeting two of my posts!) traffic has been fairly consistent at around 60 hits per day, although in the last month I’m noticing this increase week by week. Last week I had my first ever day of over 100 hits, so am excited to watch this increase over the next few months!
Most of my traffic is coming from referring sites like twitter, but my search engine traffic is growing, with around 15% of all hits coming in this way.
My bounce rate is also quite high, but am hoping this will gradually go down with more content and a bigger focus on the location independence nice and more informative guides.
Twitter Followers – 835
Facebook Fans – 109
RSS Subscribers – 47 (I’ve been a little disappointed at how slowly my subscriber number has grown, but not really sure why this is. Im thinking that maybe there isn’t a real incentive to sign up for receiving my posts, so I’m contemplating adding an eBook or additional content only for subscribers in the next few months)
Alexa Ranking – 333, 605
Sleepless Nights Spent Thinking About Blog – Too many to count in the first few weeks! Does this ever go away?!
Where To Next – Goals For The Next 3 Months
Obviously, I want to continue to grow all of the above stats, but most importantly, I’d like to be growing at a faster rate. I feel like I’m ‘in the groove’ now with my posting and using Twitter etc, so in the next three months I want to focus on the following specific goals:
- Be consistently getting over 600 hits per week. I think this will happen naturally as I build more followers, links and provide more useful content to my audience – all areas I will continue to spend time on each week.
- Have 1,400 Twitter followers and 200 Facebook fans by the end of August
- Ive just signed up to the Travel Blog Success program, so will be spending time each week going through this material and implementing more structure in my overall long term blogging goals
- Spend at least two hours link and community building each week – this will include commenting on other blogs, identifying high Page Rank sites to link to, using forums and outsourcing work to fiverr
- Design and purchase some business cards
- Attend Travel Bloggers Unite Conference in Austria in August
In addition to WSW, I have also started up a site completely dedicated to moving to and living in London – I’m still in the process of adding content after the planning and research phase, so I’m guessing it’s going to be a very busy summer as I try to fit all of this around a full time job! I’m so pumped for the challenge though, and am already looking forward to the next recap at the start of September!
So what do you guys think, am I focusing my efforts in the right areas? Would you or have you done things differently and seen some impressive results? I’d love to hear from you!
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Great job! My blog is about three months as well! I haven’t broken a 100 hits a day yet. Like you, I’d like to see faster growth as well. I know one way is to guest post. Have you done any yet? I’ve done a few. It didn’t bring a huge influx of traffic but instead got my name out there as more and more people keep seeing me.
I’d like these next couple of months to focus more on guest posting.
Great Twitter and FB fans numbers! You definitely seem like you’re on the right track.
I’m sure three months from now there’ll be great results to share!
Congrats on all your success!
I would love to post every weekday but I definitely wouldn’t be able to uphold the quality of my writing which is important to me as a writer. Within my first 3 months of blogging so far it has been interesting trying to keep up with all my favourite blogs and commenting. I think I should be happy that before my 3 month anniversary I will reach 1500 page hits – not bad for being relatively new to the game (i think?).
Thanks for all the inspiration!
The Wanderfull Traveler
Congrats on your good start.
I started my blog around the same time and found it tough growing an audience (I’m around half your stats for traffic) but you do see increases even if they are small.
It’s these small increases that make it worth it and give the impetus to carry on.
Good luck and I hope you reach your targets
Paul / MyPostcardFrom
Congrats on your great start.
I’ve been blogging for around the same amount of time and found it tough trying to build up a readership (my traffic stats are around half and average 30 page views per day) but I too have seen slight increases over time.
It’s these increases that make it worth while and gave the impetus to carry on what I’m doing.
You’ve inspired me to set myself some goals as well =)
Hope you reach those targets and I’ll see you in Austria.
Paul / MyPostcardFrom
Hi Nicole,
Congratulations on your achievements! It’s fantastic to hear you’re doing so well despite blogging only for the past 3 months. i’ve been blogging for 8 months and my numbers are not even half as yours! But I really do admire the quality of writing you’re providing. Good for you! Good luck and keep up the great work!
Ya for 3 months!
I’m so excited for what you have done so far….and obviously so pumped for what’s to come. I’m also fairly new to the travel blogging world and am all kinds of envious of your ability to post every weekday. Amazing!
Keep up the great work!
From a fellow blogger, that you for your honesty and congrats on your success! You just got another follower 😉
I think you’ve done fantastically for three months! It made me wonder if I had applied myself even half as much as you (my blog is turning six years old this month) then I would almost be Darren Rowse by now! You’re very inspiring! And it’s good of you to put stats up, very useful for beginner bloggers (might have to send my next beginner blogging course participants to this post actually!)
Thanks Amanda : ) I guess its all relative, but I wanted to share my progress with others as I know how hard it can be when youre starting out and have no idea what youre doing!
Thanks so much Annette, glad you liked it! : )
Hi Sarah, thanks – at first I found it really tough posting every day but thankfully Ive settled into the groove now! Best of luck with your blog!
Hi Amer, thanks so much! All the best with your blog!
Thanks Paul, you’re right, we just have to keep going and wait for that snowball effect to happen! Good luck with your goal setting and look forward to meeting you in August!
Thanks Murissa, thats great – the most important thing is you’re enjoying it, so I think that pretty much gaurantees your success in the future! Look forward to following your blogging path! : )
Thanks Benny, congrats on 3 months to you too! You’re right, guest posting is a great way to reach different audiences, in fact, Im adding that to my list now – Ive done a few but want to keep it going. All the best! : )
Nicole , you are doing very well.
Link building and sharing on social networks is the key in traffic grow.
If you are leaving comments on some blogs, you should digg/like/redit/ect those post too.
Also join photo thursdays or fridays or etc. It is really helps with link building.
thanks for sharing about #TTOT and fiverr.com. i didn’t know about these too.
Thanks Vi! You’re right – things like link building and social media are so important!
Please let me know if you’re looking for a author for your weblog. You have some really great articles and I believe I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I’d really like to write some content for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine. Please blast me an e-mail if interested. Cheers!
I just hit my 3 month blogging and love the traffic and comments I am getting, though I would love increase traffic. Thanks for sharing!
All the best! Thanks!
It’s cool that the first comment is from Benny. I enjoy his site, and it helps knowing that he did not start off with instant success, and because of hard work, he now has a loyal following.
Great article by the way. I guess blogging is a marathon…not a sprint!
Thanks Naeem, it is totally a marathon!
Not too bad, though my sites only 28 days old and I already get 1000-2000 hits a day, then again I have been doing advertising and SEO for 12-16 hours a day every day for the past 28 days. It’s good fun, nice and cheap too.