End Month Traffic Review - November 2007: through the 50,000 mark

Overall total visitor numbers across the blogs follow as at end November. The totals exclude my own visits.

• Personal Reflections - 20,850, previous month 19,279
• Managing the Professional Services Firm - 11,790, previous month 11,119
• New England, Australia - 9,581, previous month 8,898
• Regional Living Australia - 5,802, previous month 5,444
• Management Perspectives - 4,227, previous month 4,066
• New England's History - 662, previous month 557
  History of Australian and New Zealand Thought (joint), 265, previous month 182
• Total - 53,177, previous month 49,565 up 3,612

So the total number of visitors since I started keeping stats has now passed the 50,000 mark.

While these numbers are small compared with Neil's totals, his combined total for November alone was 18,951 visitors, I am still pleased to have reached 50,000.

I do not have final November figures for page views, but the most recent figure was 9,114 (full month 9,239) as compared to an October total of 8,761. Since October itself was a record month by a substantial margin, I have been able to more than hold the increase. So that's pleasing.

I am less pleased with some of the detail.

Visits on this blog at 1,571 were noticeably down from the previous month's 1,729. During the month I put up 36 posts, a record, so in this case more posts = less traffic.

Looking at the stats, part of the reason lay in the relative absence of high points, posts that were topical and caught attention via the search engines. But I also think that I just got a bit boring at times during the month. This is my personal blog, so I follow my own whims. However, I also like to be read.

The winning blog during the month was New England Australia, with 683 visits as compared to the previous months 472. This moved it just in front of Managing the Professional Services Firm on 671 visits as compared to 589 in the previous month.

I was pleased with the New England result, although not sure what I did to deserve it. I put up 14 posts during the month, with one still to go, so I did manage to maintain regular posting. I still haven't got the balance right on this blog between present and past, between news and analysis.

I was very lucky to get any traffic increase at all on Managing the Professional Services Firm. So far I have put up just 3 posts in November, although there are also a number of part completed November posts. If I want people to come back I have to maintain a regular pattern.

With ten posts, one to go, Regional Living Australia jogged along during the month. At 358, visitor numbers were slightly down from the 371 in the previous month. The striking thing about this blog, though, is the number of page views, almost two for every visitor.

This may not sound like a lot, but most visitors look at just one page. So the average across the rest is very much higher.

Management Perspectives is my other professional blog. With five November posts so far, it too has suffered during the month from irregular posting. However, in this case I am also in the process of changing direction.

Traffic on this blog - 161 visits in November, 141 in October - has been very low simply because the original intent has not worked. So I am broadening it to include broader management and business issues, thus providing a better forum for another slice of my interests. I am also trying to get better cross-linking with Managing the Professional Services Firm since there are commonalities between the two blogs.

My last two blogs, the joint History of Australian and New Zealand Thought and New England's History both had very low traffic.

I am not worried about New England's History (so far two November posts) because this blog is a long term exercise, the creation of a historical resource. I am concerned about the History of Australian and New Zealand Thought (four November posts so far) because this blog requires regular posts if it is to build traffic and attract interest.

Pretty obviously, seven blogs represents a huge posting effort. With some posts still to go, I have so far published 64 November posts, some quite long. This time has to be squeezed into gaps between work and domestic duties.

Obviously I get a great deal of personal satisfaction from all this, or I would not bother. I especially love the personal interaction that comes from blogging. It really keeps me alive and interested, broadened in a world that might otherwise become awfully narrow.

In all this, I am still working out out the best balance. I think that I am getting there in that the combination of experience and feedback forces constant change. However, it remains a slow process.