Hey, my name is Daniel Felice. I am a freelance web designer, specialising in WordPress. I enjoy all things technology, travel, food and motorsport! Enjoy
// February 2nd, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Project Blogger
I had a quick look at my stats a few minutes ago and noticed something weird. Normally I can expect the same everyday, with some growth week to week- however I was not expecting this…
I had a look at the referrers and it doesn’t seem any more than normal so I cannot explain this increase..
Where did you come from?
// January 19th, 2009 // 7 Comments » // The Internet
I am thinking of removing the Entrecard widget on this blog as it is not doing much in way of traffic these days. When the blog was new it was a great way to bring in some traffic, but now I think the blog is doing well enough to survive on its own.
I get a handful of hits per week from Entrecard, and those users do visit the blog from Entrecard just drop their card and move on to the next site anyway – so the traffic isn’t traffic that is going to keep on coming back.
I think Entrecard is great for new blogs and for bloggers who want to bring in easy traffic. In the early days most of my traffic was from Entrecard but now as the blog has gathered a bit of pace and is doing well in the search engines I reckon only about 5% of my monthly hits actually come from via Entrecard.
It takes a bit of work to drop cards and get credits so you can advertise on other blogs, and this does not always convert into hits. When I do campaign I might get a small increase in traffic for that day but then the next day I am back to normal.
I rather good traffic – people who read my content and want to come back. Entrecard users just come here to drop their card so they can increase their credits, so my content isn’t really being read.
I think I’ll remove the widget sometime this week!
// December 19th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Project Blogger
The past two months have been tough for danielfelice.com. After a great September, traffic started to head south in October and got even worse in November. However I am pleased to say that December is looking better!
So far hits have surpassed November and slowing catching October, however with the holiday season and Christmas around the corner, things might start to slow down next week so I am not expecting to beat October by too much, if at all.
However it is good to see that traffic is getting better and it would be nice to start the new year on a high note.
Thanks for your support!
// November 3rd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Project Blogger
After such a great September it was always going to be a challenge to continue growing at that same rate in October. From the first day of the month things began to take a turn for the worse and that trend continued until the last week of October.
Most of my attention over the month was taken away from this blog as I put all my efforts into getting Explore With Me up and running. I would have liked to have blogged more during the month but there simply wasn’t the time.
It wasn’t all bad though. I did manage to blog the 100th post in October and my Google PageRank went from zero to two. It has already dropped to 1 though!
Traffic was down all month and we ended October about 50% down on September. It wasn’t the worst month we have had so far – however it was nothing to brag about.
I blogged on average every second day so I am not convinced this is the only contributing factor to the poor traffic. However having said that I am at a complete loss at the why the blog struggled so much last month.
The best performing posts during the month were “Creating a Social Community with WordPres“, “Must Have WordPress Plugins” and “Why Most MMO Blogs Don’t Succeed“.
StumpleUpon and Digg seems to be one of the best traffic sources at the moment. I am still submitting most of my posts to the social communities and it is proving to be a success. Nearly half of the hits from the month came from StumpleUpon.
Not much to report here for October. I have said it before – the more hits you get the more revenue you earn and as hits were down so was revenue.
I am in the process of finalising a private ad deal which would go live this month some time so that will dramatically boost my revenue for November. At the moment it looks as though it is a one time deal however there may be other deals if this first one is successful.
November will be another tough month I think. I am going to be away for 3 weeks of it, so finding the time to blog may be an issue this month.
// October 1st, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Project Blogger
It is that time of the month again! Another month has just ended and after a poor August, September bounced back with a bang! September was the best month danielfelice.com has ever had in its short 5 month history.
September was a massive 252% increase on August and 62% better than my best month so far, July. After a bad August I hoped this month would improve, however I didn’t expect it to be this good.
Having the contest really helped me this month I think, and also the first two parts of “How to Start a Blog” have shown some keen interest being the most viewed pages of the month.
I seem to be receiving traffic from a number of sources this month which is good to see. I have been making more of an effort to join forums, post comments on other blogs and submit my posts to social communities such as StumbleUpon and Digg. The top three traffic referrers for the month were DNTrade, StumbleUpon and TylerCruz.com.
Search engine traffic was big factor in Septembers success. A good 25% of all traffic was from search engines this month with terms such as “freebies4webmasters”, “daniel felice”, “promote blog for free” and “create a blog” being the best performing search terms.
Revenue this month was also up on last month and also beat July’s record! I made a total of US$22.35 this month which is about $5 more than July. It has to be said though without the £10 from freebies4webmasters I would have only made about $5 this month – so thanks to them!
For those of you who don’t know freebies4webmasters give you £5 per month for just showing 3 banners anywhere on your site and an additional £5 when you sign up.
My affiliate ads still aren’t performing as well as I would like – actually I am yet to make a single cent from them. I will have to look at this again and see what I am doing wrong here.
So it was a great month and hopefully things will keep on flying away in October! Thanks for all your support over the past few months.
// September 24th, 2008 // No Comments » // Project Blogger
This week has been absolutely fantastic for the blog in terms of growth. This has been building up for a while, but this week has blown away any expectations that I had for the week. I did not expect to reach this level for another few months.
Traffic in the first half of this week has already exceeded all of last week – not only that – it has exceeded all of August! August wasn’t a good month to begin with, but it wasn’t that bad, so to achieve that in 4 days is amazing!
I have not really been doing anything different this week, in fact I have probably blogged less this week than previous weeks.
I started to submit all my posts to StumbleUpon and Digg a few weeks ago, and looking at the traffic sources I am getting a good number of traffic from those sites. Search engines are also proving to bring in some good results with referrals from searches such as “create a blog”, “how to create a blog” and even “make money online”.
It is good to see that the site is gathering a bit of a following. Next step is to generate some revenue!
Thanks for all of your support!
// August 31st, 2008 // No Comments » // General, Project Blogger
As predicted, hits and revenue were down in August which is a bit disappointing after a great July. Hits were down about 40% and I put this down to the lack of posting this month. I was away for 12 days of the month which made it difficult to keep on top of things, so hits have suffered due to this I think.
Revenue was down about 60% month, and for the same reason as above. It takes hits to drive the revenue up, so with hit being so low of course revenue is going to be the same.
Hits were all over the place this month. Each day was as unpredictable as the next. As you can tell from the below screen shot, one day hits were good, the next day bad, then they would shoot up for no reason at all, and then the next day back down. I can’t figure it out.
Top referrers were AUDomaining.com.au, DNTrade.com.au and goofblogger.com. The most popular posts being Are .NET.AU’s Worthless? and 5 Ways to Stay Motivated.
Google Adsense really pulled through for me this month. It was the only network that made me any money this month, and although it wasn’t much, it saved me from this month being a complete disaster.
I have to look at my affiliate marketing networks and try to figure out what I am doing wrong. I need to find the time for some more research and hopefully implement the changes during September.
So it was a bad month, but it is all part of the journey and the point of Project Blogger. Hopefully danielfelice.com can bounce back in September.
// August 9th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Project Blogger
I was very consistent last month, managing to blog 28 times out of 31 days. This month was a slow start for me as I was away on holidays until August 5.
I created some scheduled posts for the first two days of the month but then I did not blog again until the 5th of August.
Looking at my stats so far for this months, I think not blogging for a few days has affected my traffic. The first two days of the month started strong, but as soon as I did not blog for a day my traffic headed south and has not recovered since.
Making a quick estimate – I think my traffic has dropped off by about 50%, however my subscribers remained loyal as they have remained at the same number for a few weeks now, which is great to see.
Blogging everyday means that there is new content for my audience and it keeps them coming back on a regular basis. I know if I see a blog that has updates every day, I will check back every day to see what is new. If they don’t update everyday and have posts a few days old, I am more than likely not to check back so regularly.
I like to keep my content fresh and constantly changing. However, sometimes I cannot find the time to sit down in front of the laptop for an hour and blog. Though this puts me under pressure as I don’t want to miss out on new viewers and I don’t want my loyal readers to forget about me.
Do you blog every day? If you don’t does it result in less traffic?
The actual exam of VCP-310 or even 350-001 is not tough for a 640-802 student who has already done his 70-290.
// July 12th, 2008 // No Comments » // The Internet
I came across a website today that I think is a great resource for any webmaster – Smart PageRank. As you can guess by the name of the website, Smart PageRank tells you the PageRank of your domain name, or any other you choose to search on for that matter.
Not only does it tell you a websites PageRank, you can also get valuable information about how your website is seen by the search engines for both the www and non-www version of the domain name that is being searched.
Smart PageRank will tell you:
As well as being a great resource for webmasters, domainers can also benefit from Smart PageRank. If you are looking and buying domain names and want to verify information given by the seller then this one website will tell you everything you need to know about the domain name.
I don’t think I would trust the “website value”, however the rest of the statistics shown are very valuable. Best of all is that it’s free!
http://www.smartpagerank.com
Copyright © 2010 Daniel Felice. All rights reserved.
