Conquering The 7-Month Itch

You’ve likely heard of the 7-year itch with regard to marriage. The other day this blog surpassed the 7-month itch and is still as fun as the very first day some seven months ago.
It hasn’t always been easy – particularly with the new blog that I am authoring on Dad Balance – but it has never stopped being fun for me. This blog has grown substantially since those early days and there are so many of you that deserve thanks for making that possible.

Recap of Goals

As I entered the seventh month with this blog, I had expressed a desire to continue producing quality content that entertained and/or interested the readers. In addition I set a goal of being more vocal with my comments on other sites in an effort to return the favor and help build your community.
Based on feedback from all of you and the fact that I was included in a few top commentator link love posts for September, I believe that I have met both of these goals.
From a statistical standpoint, I had set the following goals for myself:

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

Crunching The Numbers

Whether you believe there is much significance to the statistical rankings or not, I find it to be a decent barometer of how things are progressing and it is always nice to see the numbers improving.
With the various statistical measurements, I believe that some do hold quite a bit of importance – such as RSS subscribers – while some are just fun to compare, such as Alexa ranking.

• RSS Subscribers :: It has been a goal of mine for some time to reach 100 RSS subscribers and I am right at the edge of this goal. On the day this blog turned 7 months old, there were 97 RSS subscribers with a high for the month of 103 RSS subscribers – today it stands at 101. The daily fluctuations have the count moving above and below the century mark by a few here and there but this is great progress. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to subscribe now!

• Technorati :: The goal of reaching a Technorati Ranking of 15,000 has been achieved as I have improved from a ranking of 17,409 to a new ranking of 14,855. My authority has improved from 253 to a new authority of 284. It is very exciting to reach this goal and now I have the challenge before me of moving towards the milestone of 10,000. Thank you to everyone that has made it possible to achieve this goal!

• Traffic :: While the RSS subscribers and Technorati ranking increased, I actually saw a dip in traffic this month and will need to pay special attention to this moving forward. For the month, I had 2,652 unique visits and 4,657 page-views which is quite a bit off the pace of my goal to have 4,000 unique visits. Looking deeper into the numbers, I see that direct traffic and search engine traffic have increased substantially but the referring sites have dipped noticeably. The largest decrease from the referring sites came from StumbleUpon so I will need to work on that this month.

• Alexa :: In what may be one of the least significant rankings, my Alexa rank has continued to improve from 88,488 in August to 79,657. While I say that this ranking is one of the least significant, it is important to note that services such as Text Link Ads and ReviewMe do use the Alexa ranking to determine the value of your links/reviews. Therefore it is nice to see this ranking continue to improve.

Moving Forward

These first seven months have been very exciting while also requiring a good deal of work. With a new blog in the mix that requires a good deal of attention to get off the ground, I’ve had many late nights in an effort to keep everything moving forward. But I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t love it!
From the department of broken records, I want to continue moving this site forward and the way to do that is to deliver quality content that entertains or educates all of you. I’ll also be active in your community so be sure to look for my ugly mug on your MyBlogLog widget.
In order to set a few measurable goals, I will refine the goals from the previous month to add a few new challenges:

• 125 RSS Subscribers
• Technorati Ranking of 12,500
• 4000 unique visits

Thanks again to everyone that has become a part of this community! I truly look forward to every comment and email from all of you and sincerely hope that you enjoy your time here as much as I enjoy having you here.