Traffic and Income Report for March 2013

I finally got into a good groove with my job, blogging and everything else life has to offer!  March was by far the BEST month ever for WannaBite, but that’s not saying much, considering we’ve only been in existence for about 4 months LOL.  I am a strong believer in numbers.  If you set goals, and work hard to reach them, usually you will attain that goal.  In blogging, you must set reasonable goals, and figure out how you will reach them. Don’t expect traffic and income to come to you!!  NO, be proactive!  By knowing your numbers, you can see the success you are having, AND, learn what didn’t work so you can alter your growth strategy.  After all, almost every blogger I know wants people to read their blog, why write it if that wasn’t the case, just keep a private journal!

March 2013, we broke 12,000 unique visitors!  That is very exciting!  My personal goal was 10,000, it was just a number, but one that is symbolic!  You can also see a solid growth trend, keeping in mind the end of the month is Easter, so many readers will be offline spending time with family!  We also saw steady growth in all traffic sources, which is exciting!

One of the most exciting areas was organic search!  I have a strict blogging policy: Write posts so Google and find, index and connect people to them.  Everything I write is written with certain keywords in mind.  I want to think like someone googling, while not taking away any of the experience for the reader!  Our organic traffic has seen sharp increases which is very exciting!    Part of this is due to the Genesis framework, which is very SEO friendly, another piece of the puzzle more content.  The more quality content I publish, the more Google has to index, thus, the more traffic I should get!

Another important metric I follow closely is the mobile traffic metric.  Now this is important because I have put a tremendous time investment into Instagram.  I personally love instagram (follow me?!) and so Instagram has been a fantastic traffic generator for me.  Unfortunately, Google Analytics (all of this data is from Google Analytics) does not track app traffic, so there is no place for me to see traffic from Instagram.  This means one thing, I need to look at what percentage of my traffic is coming to the site via a mobile device.  In general, sites receive about 20-30% of their traffic via mobile.  We currently receive about 52% from mobile devices, a large portion of that is most likely traffic from Instagram!  Although overall traffic is up, the percentage of mobile is down, which is actually a good thing.  This means the site as a whole is healthier, relying less on one social platform!

Here is our top referral traffic sources.  No surprises here at all. Pinterest continues to dominate our referral traffic.  We still get traffic from my other site, WeUseCoupons, but it has slipped into 4th.  In February it was in 3rd position.  Facebook traffic is also rising which is exciting.

These are the top recipes for the month of March.  Although I didn’t post this in February, I’m going to start.  Some recipes will fall out of this list because once they are off the front page, few visit them.  Others have more life to them.  For example, out of the top ten this month, only two recipes stayed on this list from February.  You will also notice the desserts are generally more popular than main dishes.  That is good to know, although it’s difficult to do much about that because we eat what we make, and we can’t be making desserts daily!!!

One thing you will probably notice in the numbers is there is a small gap.  That is because of our new blog redesign.  I had a fabulous design create a custom style for WannaBite.  But I forgot to add tracking back to the site!!  AHHH.  I’m not adjusting the numbers simply because they were really good already!

Social

I mentioned earlier I love Instagram and have focused on it, so naturally it will have the best numbers!  Although they are all important I find it difficult to do everything all the time.  Busy moms and dads know exactly what I mean!! One new social media application is The Vine!  I recently joined and will begin to include those numbers in April!  So here are the social numbers for March with their growth from February indicated:

Facebook: 525 likes (+45%)

Instagram: 13,590 followers (+21%)

Twitter: 50 followers (+40%)

Pinterest: 4,201 followers (+3%)

While I’m writing this post about March, if you look over at my Facebook numbers, you will notice that something explosive is going on!  I am very excited to post about it more in detail after I have firm data to back it up.  I am extremely impressed (so far) by my test and methods for Facebook growth.

Income

So I know that this is a big part of why you read this post, people have told me they love this part LOL.  We made $92 through adsense last month.  More than any other month, but next month I already know we will be into the three figures!  We have a sponsored post lined up and we have some fun things we will be doing.  I’m also applying to different networks to add them to the sidebar and see if they do anything, we will see!  With WannaBite my focus initially has been all about traffic, and not so much income.  I feel that traffic is key to earning income, so focus on the one thing that will make a different.  Traffic.  That will bring sponsored posts, brand invitations, ambassadorships etc.  I love WannaBite and trust me, I don’t do it for the money, yet!! 😉 I love blogging.  I love to share.  I hope this post helped you!  Let me know if you have any questions!!!

Sorry for the spelling errors btw, I haven’t had time to reread this post!!!  My keyboard was dying and well, it’s Sunday LOL