Yakezie Update #5, February Traffic Stats and Link Roundup
It’s time for weekly update #5 detailing my progress thus far in the Yakezie blogging challenge. Remember that my goal is to get my Alexa ranking below 200,000 within 6 months of beginning the challenge. Here are the stats for this week:
Beginning Alexa Ranking: 8,426,935
Last Week’s Ranking (week #4): 1,204,502
This Week’s Ranking (week #5): 1,039,663
I continued to make positive progress this week. I still haven’t seen the massive jumps in ranking that some other bloggers have experienced (except for the first week or to when I dropped about 6 million spots), but I have continued to improve the ranking by over 100,000 each week. I know at some point that rate of progress will slow down, but it’s fun while it lasts!
Blog Traffic Stats
I have to admit, I have absolutely no idea what type of traffic other blogs receive. I also have no idea what a respectable amount of traffic is for a blog that is only a couple of months old. Here are couple of key traffic stats from February for Back Nine Finance:
Unique Visits: 1,051 (compared to 333 total for January)
Average Visits Per Day: 95 (not necessarily unique)
I really have no idea if this is good or perhaps terrible. Any thoughts?
Link Roundup
Here are some links to some of my favorite blog posts from around the web this week:
- Sam over at Financial Samurai posted about how Diverse Interests Create Diverse Income Streams. I am currently working very hard on diversifying my income outside of my day job. I’ve talked before about my rental property endeavors. I have a couple other ideas brewing that I’ll discuss in the near future.
- JD Roth from Get Rich Slowly just got back from a long trip to Africa. He wrote a post about the experience called From the Rich to the Poor. It is a very eye opening read.
- JT at Money Mamba wrote a post entitled Solving the Retirement Crisis: A Tax Proposal. It’s an interesting proposal, but as with any major change involving taxes, it’s probably a long shot. That’s why I wrote a post earlier this week which discussed 4 Questions to Consider When Deciding Where to Put Retirement Savings. Taxes likely aren’t going anywhere (but up) – might as well learn to plan for them.
See you all next week.
P.S. – I should have an update on my real estate investing adventures next week!
Nice progress in your Alexa rank! The Yakezie Forums is a great way to interconnect too.
Best, Sam
Sam, I appreciate you stoping by and providing encouragement,
I feel your pain with the Alexa drop issue. I started out dropping over a million a day for a couple days. Then it was down to 100,000 a day. Now it is less than that. But hey, a drop is a drop, right? I think you are doing a great job. You are making good progress.
You’re correct, at least it is progress in the right direction. Honestly though, I Would prefer to see good conversation increase on this site more than anything. That is my primary motivation for even starting this blog. I want to talk to others about financial topics that are perhaps a bit more advanced than most PF blogs. Thanks for stopping by!
I never dropped by the leaps other people do. It took me a good 4-5 months to get below 200k and I have been in the 100s for a long time now. People have quickly gone below 100k. But we are making progress, that is what matters I guess.
I am assuming that it takes knowledge of SEO and other forms of “blog marketing” in order to move the needle that quickly. I know absolutely nothing about that side of this, and quite frankly, I’m not really interested in it yet.
I want to write things which will (hopefully) be interesting for people to read, and not just write posts to please the search engines. There are plenty of those articles out there already.
This webitse makes things hella easy.
Short, sweet, to the point, FREE-eaxctly as information should be!
I relatively new to this too! I use the Alexa ranking and Open Site Explorer (OSE)to evaluate my progress. OSE allows you to compare against other sites, I find that valuable.
It took me 9 or 10 weeks to go from 4.4 million to 200K. My goal now is to break 100K (I am at 139K). I find it is getting harder! Good luck.
I have never heard of OSE, I’ll have to check it out.
I definitely see how after a certain point it will become very difficult to make progress. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get there, if I ever do.
Thanks for stopping by.
Your story was rellay informative, thanks!
Of the poanlpy of website I’ve pored over this has the most veracity.
Why do I bother callnig up people when I can just read this!
2Nn3FB ovibjexcftbp
orVj60 , [url=http://bgfzviyqrbhv.com/]bgfzviyqrbhv[/url], [link=http://tbadzgyqepxf.com/]tbadzgyqepxf[/link], http://ayvqtyhmffuc.com/
GWc6Ij lxwybgrtfjyy
cIEZ29 , [url=http://dxogxnfubzkr.com/]dxogxnfubzkr[/url], [link=http://jzetokjuhpxh.com/]jzetokjuhpxh[/link], http://agauptbwxtcv.com/
I am not a blogger, but it seems to me that if you focus on content first, the ranking will fall into place. Obviously you need some marketing to get people to your site, but they aren’t going to come back unless there is relevant and frequently updated content.
Bogey, the subject matter of your site has a lot of potential (and seems under-served in the world of PF blogs), but 30% of your posts are about where your 2-month-old site ranks. The ranking will stagnate for sure unless you keep a steady flow of the finance and investment posts that are the purpose of this blog.
Jonathan,
First of all, thank you for a comment that provides some great value to me. You are correct that a large portion of my posts thus far have been on this “ranking” subject. I was just thinking this week about posting good material more frequently. I am good to take your comments to heart and cut this update back to once per month (maybe even less frequently), instead of once per week. There really is no need for it.
Secondly, you said:
“Bogey, the subject matter of your site has a lot of potential (and seems under-served in the world of PF blogs)…”
It has always been my belief that virtually every topic has been covered hundreds of times on all sorts of PF blogs, but despite that, I jumped in anyways.
I would love to know what types of articles you enjoy seeing on this site, because hopefully there are more people out there who feel the same as you do. So far, I’ve felt like I have been all over the board, but perhaps I just haven’t paid close enough attention to myself. Of course, I have done a lot of posts so far about real estate.
Thank you again for the thoughtful and insightful comment. It is motivating.
First of all, thanks for taking my comment as I intended – as constructive criticism!
When I say “under-served area” I meant that most of the PF sites I have seen have primarily focused on a couple of core topics: frugality, getting out of debt, and maxing out 401ks and Roth IRAs that invest in mutual funds and/or index funds. They all seem geared toward the financial novices and the miserly, and usually seem to begin with the blogger’s journey from drowning in consumer to amateur PF expert.
You come at this from an entirely different angle – as a young professional who has always had his head on straight (financially) and isn’t that interested in sticking to the “tried and (sometimes) true” path of investing in the markets. You want to dive right in and be personally involved and develop cash flow and true wealth through tangible assets (i.e. real estate). You’re interested in creative finance and creative investing. I may be getting ahead of you, but that’s what I took away from reading your posts and your “About BNF” section.
Or I may just be projecting – after all, that last paragraph describes ME.
Anyway, I think you should use your perspective heavily to your advantage. Any financial subject that interests you should be interesting to the type of reader that I am (and I saw there were comments last week from a bunch of other 20-somethings).
Absolutely – I love constructive criticism. That’s why this blog is here, in order for everyone to learn and grow.
I certainly know what you mean about the same general topics being covered. I am definitely interested in acquiring assets that most people never have the interest or drive to acquire, building cash flow outside my day job, etc. Your right on the money. That’s exactly where I want this blog to go.
Me and this atrilce, sitting in a tree, L-E-A-R-N-I-N-G!
If your articels are always this helpful, “I’ll be back.”
Good points all around. Truly appreciaetd.
Full of salient points. Don’t stop believnig or writing!
Nice job! Keep up the great work and consistently write great content, and the traffic will come!
Thanks for stopping by, and for the kind word. Please come back often!
Nice job–you will be under the one million mark in no time!
I am not sure how old your blog is, but for the first year or so, I was at around 95 visits per day.
Amanda, thanks for stopping by and thanks for the traffic comparison. Hope you come back often.
95 visits per day based on the age of your blog is really good actually. You are doing very well, keep up the great work!
SavingMentor – thanks for the encouragement and thanks for stopping by!
Looks like your traffic is really good for just starting out. I agree that more content would increase you visitor engagement. Good luck!
@ LaTisha
Definitely working hard on creating more engaging content. I just finished writing 2 posts that will go up Monday and Tuesday….come back and check them out!