32 Years And 6 Months

Derek Semmler dot com has been in operation for a little over six months now, while Derek Semmler has been in operation for 32 years.
In an odd bit of timing that was completely unplanned, I celebrated my 32nd birthday on the same day that this site reached the six month milestone. Reaching the age of 32 wasn’t anything spectacular but I am very pleased with the 6-month birthday of this site because many blogs fizzle out well before reaching a full six months of existence.
As I had mentioned during my blog anniversary last month, running this site has allowed me to meet quite a few fantastic people and has opened new doors of opportunity. One example of that is the exciting news of my partnership with Wendy Piersall of eMoms that I mentioned yesterday.

Update on Goals

As my fifth month of blogging had come to a close, I expressed the desire to focus on creating quality content while also taking the time to be more active in participating on each of your sites.
Many of expressed that you appreciate the “everyday life” type of posts and there were quite a few that received a healthy amount of discussion, including:

• Blogging Spouses
• Above the Law
• Secret To Earning More With AdSense

In addition, I have been doing a much better job of coming out from under my RSS reader rock and commenting on sites more frequently. While I still have much more work to do in this regard, I have enjoyed the discussions that have taken place and always feel that you can get more out of a post when your share your thoughts with the author.
If I’ve been neglecting the comments on your site, please mention it below and I will do my best to visit more often.

Statistics

The measuring stick of success – at least that is what many people think about their blog statistics. While I agree that the statistics are important and love to see them increasing, I’ve learned that it is not worth an insane amount of time spent worrying or obsessing about the statistics.
As I have said before, ever since I stopped checking my stats like a madman I have seen a nice consistent pattern of growth and improvement. This past month is no exception.
Here is the latest update on the key metrics:

• RSS Subscribers :: The number of RSS subscribers has improved again, moving up from 71 subscribers to 87 subscribers as of last Saturday. There were quite a few days where my RSS count was hovering right around the century mark, which is my next milestone that I want to obtain by the end of next month. Last month I had included a secret bonus entry to my contest that was only visible to subscribers of my full-feed RSS. This month I hope to share some tips and suggestions on how I earned nearly $300 from blogging last month, so subscribe now!
• Technorati :: I’ve had another nice month of progress on my Technorati rankings as I have improved from a ranking of 20,008 to a new ranking of 17,409. My authority has improved from 225 to a new authority of 253. While I wasn’t able to reach my goal of 15,000 this month, I was able to make it more than half-way to my goal and I am happy with that progress.
• Alexa :: Last month I reported an Alexa ranking of 113,717 and I was thrilled to see that my ranking has improved to 88,448 although I did see a decrease from 4.4 page views per user to 4.2 page views per user. Again, I understand that there are flaws to the Alexa ranking system but as a blogger it is always nice to see this number getting smaller and smaller.
• Traffic :: Without the benefit of a front-page digg, I knew the traffic numbers from last month would be nearly impossible to surpass. But if you compare the numbers to the traffic from two months ago, you’ll see that the 3,482 unique visits and 6,841 page-views is quite an improvement. In addition to the unique visits and page-views, I’ve also seen a nice increase in the pages per visit and the bounce rate has improved dramatically.

Goals For Month 7

While I don’t like to keep repeating the same line, I really want to focus on continuing to deliver quality content that all of you find enjoyment and/or value in reading. In addition, I want to continue my efforts to be more vocal on your site and be a more active member of your community.
In terms of statistical measurements, I mentioned a few goals above and I will list those as milestones that I plan to achieve:

• 100 RSS Subscribers
• Technorati Ranking of 15,000
• 4000 unique visits

Since starting this site, I’ve had quite a few good times and have had the opportunity to meet quite a few outstanding people. If the next six months are anything like this first six months, I think I am in for a wild ride!
Thank you to everyone that has been a part of making these first six months so much fun and rewarding! 🙂