Blog Update: Goals and Triumphs

The addictive world of WordPress stats & flags – Source: http://www.techwhack.co/

It’s been over seven months since I started The Real Mid Card and it’s time for another quick glance at some figures. I like to post these things for my own benefit, if nothing else. It’s easy to create and manage goals when you can spell out your own progress and publish it on here. I’m just going to run through a few factors and see how the site has been doing since the last time I did this. I’m not sure how long ago that was but I’m guessing at least a couple of months. I hope you find this at least a little insightful.

Views First off, let’s take a look some views totals. My current grand total of views is 3,790. Compare that to some other sites and it pales in comparison but for me, it’s a really pleasing figure. It’s been six or seven months now and the WordPress old adage of keep sticking at it and gradually you will build up an audience is starting to ring true. At the time of writing, my UK grand total makes up 1,993 of that figure. Hooray, almost 2,000! My US views have reached a staggering 882. My goal of extending my American audience to the point that it challenges, or surpasses the British contingent is being achieved pretty well now. In the last 30 days, it shapes up as US (345) and UK (305) so that’s good news. It illustrates my success in drawing away from relying on Facebook and making ground with organic search engine views, but I’ll get into that more later. I have 95 views from both Germany and France respectively as I await another centurion nation, and the list of random countries to get the odd views here and there has grown massively to include the likes of (most fascinatingly) the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Benin, Taiwan and Afghanistan.

Search engines As I briefly touched on, another big target of mine a few months ago was to stop relying on Facebook for all of my views, and try to use good content and wise tagging to achieve a more organic online audience, through search engines. This has progressed very well. Early on, pretty much all of my referrals were coming from posting on Facebook, and barely any were being generated from elsewhere. My views slowed down dramatically after the tour in April and not surprisingly since I can probably count the amount of people I have on Facebook who like pro wrestling (pretty much all I’ve wrote about, except for during the tour) on two hands.

I knew my views would continue to dip if I couldn’t get them from elsewhere. Now I’m proud to boast that the overall grand total of search engine referrals stands at 1,200 today, with Facebook referrals at 682. In the last two or three months, it has climbed above and even doubled it. Now I only link specific posts on social media that I think may be particularly interesting to some. I now rely on people naturally stumbling upon my blog out here in the blogosphere. The more I post, the more I tag and the longer I stick with it, the more The Real Mid Card will pop up on those engines. This is really positive news for me.

My loyal followers Followers are very hard to come by on here, or is it just me? You have to be a member of the site to follow someone, and not many people who aren’t bloggers will not sign up to WordPress. They will click on a blog and read it, but they aren’t going to create an account. I’m pretty sure it took me five months to get over 20 followers. I’m now starting to see them added a lot more often, and it’s encouraging to know that those people are going to see my work in the Reader every day. I follow my fair share of sites on here, and it’s really rewarding to be on the other side. My current amount of followers is 58, it’s not 1,000,000 but it’s a good start. I’d like to personally thank anyone who has chose to hit ‘Follow’ and continue to check out the work we upload here daily. It genuinely makes the work that me and my colleagues do all worth it to know that it’s being read. The impact that loyal, consistent readership has on this site’s figures is invaluable, and I’ll go deeper into that right now.

Averages Summaries and averages are a really good way of seeing how the success of the site has fluctuated over time. It’s also a good way to spot existing or possible trends. In my first month (January) I got 45 views total, in February (260), March (341), before this steady progression shot up to 794 in April. Post-tour this dipped in May (541) which had me doubting whether or not I could get those kind of views without tour related posts and the buzz that went with that. However last month in June (814) things were back on the up. At the time of writing, it’s the 29th and I have two and a half more days to go in July, with the count currently on 999. My long standing, initial, long-term target to be at the stage where I can get 1,000 views every month has been achieved, and I hope to build on it.I’m now averaging 34 views a day, compared to June(27) and May(17) – With this kind of continued progression, I hope to make some new targets for the end of this year.

New Targets In conclusion, I put this progression down to a few factors: followers, search engines and tagging, and the good nature of people who spread the word. I identified my targets and have achieved them by appealing more to an organic audience, solidifying a loyal readership and bringing on board two great writers. I’m very happy with how things have gone for the site up to this point. It’s really good fun and I intend to continue doing it until at least the end of the year. That means some new goal and new targets.

I want to continue the existing target of posting at least one article every single day from July 1st until December 31st, although I’ve been doing this (minus a couple of discrepancies, usually due to technical difficulties) for a couple of months now. All of July has kept up with this, and I should be able to do it all year, especially with the help of my writers Steven Forrester and Joseph Holberry, who I would like to thank personally for all of their help. I hope to take my 58 followers and build them up to 100 for the end of the year. I’d like to take my current average of 34 views a day, and take it up to 60 a day. This would allow me to attract a rough average of around 1,800 views a month. If I can achieve that, who knows where the site will go from there? Hopefully the organic search engine views will continue, the random wrestling related forum referrals will continue, the follows will continue, the comments will continue, the views will continue.

Thanks to anyone who reads the content of this site on a regular basis. I hope you find it entertaining. The three of us love wrestling and all we want to do is talk about it. Join WordPress, hit ‘Follow’ and leave a comment to spark a chat with us.

Craig

Be sure to head back to The Real Mid Card for more daily articles on the world of professional wrestling, and the small village of other. Help support a few budding writers trying to hone their craft. Your support is appreciated!