Blog Perfomance - May 2008

Visitor numbers on my various blogs to end May follow. The totals exclude my own visits.

• Personal Reflections - 31,143, previous month 29,326
• Managing the Professional Services Firm - 15,451, previous month 14,825
• New England, Australia - 13,275, previous month 12,509
• Regional Living Australia - 8,750, previous month 8,211
• Management Perspectives - 5,282, previous month 5,118
• New England's History - 1,583, previous month 1,360
• History of Australian and New Zealand Thought (joint), 971, previous month 858
• Belshaw sans words - 68, previous month 20
• Total - 76,523, previous month 72,227, up 4,296.

Looking at patterns, total visitor numbers were 4,296 in May as compared to 4, 536 in April, 4,294 in March, 3,710 in February, 3,656 in January, 2,844 in December, 3,612 in November.

Total page views in May were 10,846 as compared to 11,058 in April, 10,969 in March, 9,456 in February, 9,485 in January, 7,447 in December, November 9,239. Page views are not directly comparable to visitor numbers because they include my own visits.

Comment

May was a difficult month from a blogging perspective because of the way limitations on time limited my writing, as well as the other things that I wanted to do with the blogs. While I have maintained posting on this blog, I remain way behind on some of my other blogs.

While I can be very disciplined and focused, I am not naturally a disciplined person. When I post regularly as on this blog, previous content generates its own ideas and momentum. When I get behind, I lose that momentum. This makes it harder for me, as well as harder to attract regular readers.

One obvious solution is to reduce the number of blogs. I am reluctant to do this because each blog represents a strand in my own thinking, a different aspect of my personal or professional thinking. I blog in part as a way of forcing and recording my own writing.

I carry Google ad sense ads plus search on on the blogs as a way of earning a little pocket money. Pocket money is right - less than 4 cents per hour! Still, it adds to the fun.

What I do notice here, and this will not come as a surprise, is that the blog to which I have devoted the most time (this one) is also the lowest earner measured by click-through percentages (0.17%) and average yield per click (17 cents). We can compare this with the two highest yielding blogs: - click-through percentages of 0.81% and 0.94%, average yield per clicks of 33 and 35 cents.

I say that this should not come as a surprise because this reflects the focus of the blogs. This one reflects my personal biases. The ads themselves are less targeted, the readers themselves less likely to click through. By contrast, both the top yielding blogs cover specific subject fields. Ads are better targeted, readers more likely to click through because they have come to the blogs with specific interests or questions in mind.

If I were a rational economic man, a simple shift in focus would more than double my time return almost immediately. I fear, however, that I am not!