Celebrating One Month

It was one month ago that I expanded my blogging adventure to include Derek Semmler dot com and it has been quite a ride. First and foremost, I’d like to give a shout to MsDanielle as we share a blogging birthday. Danielle, grats on the success you’ve had so far and I know we’ll continue to see great things from you.
As any new blogger is aware, one of the first orders of business was finding an identity. In this first month, I think my identity has leaned a little bit towards the “little bit of everything else” but that has resulted in some interesting adventures.
Highlights
The adventures began when I had the idea to openly express my desire that I want to be a t-shirt whore and that idea came to life when Leo Chiang jumped at the chance to make me an Exit Gear whore. Danielle, don’t think I am letting you off the hook either – I’m still waiting for you to come up with that killer t-shirt design.
From there I shared a story about how I made an effort to pay it forward and it resulted in a situation that had me scanning the local newspapers and nightly news hoping not to see disaster. In the true spirit of community and friendship, there were people ready and waiting to razz me about that – thanks to all of you. 🙂
As I tried to get over the guilt from that experience, I decided to help Stephen Fung with his goal to raise money for charity by matching him dollar for dollar up to his $100 goal. We’ve still got some work to do on that so be sure to do your part if you have not already.
Speaking Of Goals
When I started this site, I only stated one specific goal and that was to crack the 100,000 level at Technorati. Imagine my amazement when one week after stating that goal, my Technorati rating jumped to 73,995. After closer inspection, much of that increase was a result of the evil one himself – John Chow.

As you can see, Technorati seems to have corrected the “John Chow effect” and my ranking has settled back a little bit and I have missed my goal. However, I’ve increased the number of people that have showed me some Techno-love from 2 people to 10 people. I’ve still got my work cut out for me in order to reach this goal but this is no time to rest, I now want to crack 75,000 at Technorati.
Traffic and Subscribers
With my focus on just getting this site started and trying to build up quality content, I failed to set specific goals regarding traffic and the number of subscribers. Without a goal to compare against, I will just provide you with the details. According to my Google Analytics data, there have been 568 visits and 1,429 pageviews in the first month. In order to be successful, I’m really going to need to boost those numbers but I want to thank all of you that have been a part of that 568.
Of those 568 visits, there have been 21 people (at the latest count) that have subscribed to my RSS feed.

To the 21 people that have currently subscribed, I’d like to say thank you and would welcome the chance to hear from you on things that you like and don’t like. Obviously my goal is to continue increasing the number of subscribers but if anyone decides to drop me from their feed reader, I’d appreciate it if you share feedback with me and give me the chance to win you back.
Moving Forward
As this site continues to grow and develop, I need to get better about setting goals and using them to track my progress. One area that I have started to do that for this site, as well as my personal finance blog, is with my Blogging for Money series.
As many of you know, goals don’t become goals until you actually record them so I will use this opportunity to record specific goals for the month of April. For purposes of setting and monitoring goals, I will start with three metrics: Technorati ranking, Google Analytic reports on site visitors and pageviews (V & P), and RSS feed subscribers. Given those metrics, here are my goals for the month of April:

• Technorati: Surpass my original goal of 100,000 and reach 75,000
• V & P: 1000 visitors and 3000 pageviews
• Feed Me!: 50 RSS feed subscribers

While Danielle is currently beating the pants off of me, I’m planning to gain some ground on her and beat the goals defined above. There is no doubt that I am going to need your help in order to do that so feel free to help me out by grabbing my RSS feed or adding me to yourTechnorati favorites.
This first month has been an exciting one but I really feel that this is just the beginning. With my goals of increasing traffic and building a growing community, I will be focused on creating quality content. If you’d like to see more (or less) of certain topics on this site, please send me your thoughts. Thanks again to everyone for the help and do not hesitate to ask if there is anything that I can do to help you!