I looking at my blog traffic from October 1st through October 27th 2008.  I seem to have plateaued in visitors and this is due in part because of my reliance on Entrecard for visitors to the website.  But my numbers were still much higher than September totals.

For the month of October I had a total of 7,097 unique visitors to my site, here is my visitor and page view breakout.  This is o

# of Absolute Visits is the big thing to pay attention to, this is the # of unique people who actually visit your site.

Visits includes people who just hit page refresh or the same person clicking multiple links (this is good) but absolute unique are people who hit the site for the 1st time, it doesn’t track additional clicks or page refreshes.

Pageviews are the number of times a page load has been requested, this is usually very inflated as most admins open their own site to test and refresh the page often which can drive these numbers up.

Time on Site is also important, if you see this number too low, people aren’t even reading your content, they are visiting, dropping EC’s or something like that and leaving.  you see my average is 51 seconds and that isn’t really a lot of time to read full article so this means that many Entrecard droppers are “drop and run” on my blog.

Bounce Rate - This is the percentage of people who visit your site and immediately leave without looking or clicking on something else on your site.  This also tends to be very high when you use Entrecard as most people just drop and run, though we will talk about bounce rate variations later this can also mean someone came to your site to read a specific article and left without bothering to search for more content.

New Visits - this is the percentage of new visitors to your site, this good if you have a high amount of traffic and means you are bringing in new people and uniques.  This can be bad if you are looking for high # of RSS subscribers and return visitors though.

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My average breakout accounted to 319 visits per day which puts me at an Izea Rank in the low 300’s.  Which is very good, but as mentioned I saw growth of 100 in September, 200 in early October and seem to plateau toward the end of October.  I do have some days where I break over 400 uniques per day, but only 2 out of 7 days the last week hit this high of a number.

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So lets examine Traffic Sources, if you click on your Traffic Sources menu link on the left you will see several options.  For now lets stick with the overviews and reading the results.  Again for the time period of 10/1 - 10/27 my stats break down like this:

1. 18.55% of my traffic is direct (this means someone had my site bookmarked, or typed my URL manually)
2. 46.75% is from referring sites such as entrecard, technorati, zimbio…etc
3. 34.70% is from Search Engines

This is actually pretty good statistics, almost 20% of the people have bookmarked dragonblogger.com or come to it directly which is 1 out of 5 people.  These would be return visitors most likely you can assume.  obviously almost 50% of my traffic comes from referring sites, so this can be good or bad depending on the referring sites.  I get 1/3 of my traffic from Google searches which is good it means when people search for keywords, my site is showing up and people are arriving on it from Google searches.

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This final graph, (you have to click on the picture to read the numbers and percentages.) shows you that Google accounts for the highest percentage of hits to my site called “Organic” which is very good.  Organic means people are finding you and this means a high unique # of visitors.  Entrecard is however #2 and accounts for the other 1/3 of my traffic.  This shows that entrecard works in bringing visitors, but this also means that if I stopped doing drops tomorrow, I would lose about 30% of my unique visits as people stopped returning the favor.  I consider this artificial traffic or manufactured traffic.  I have to drop to get drops, and this is a gift and a curse for Entrecard.  I do spend way to much time now, almost 2 hours a day doing EC drops and I can’t keep doing it when I could be focusing on writing quality blog posts instead.  So in November I am going to wean back on Entrecard a bit and see how much of a hit I take.

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So this is an overview of some high level statistics you can garner from Google Analytics, don’t ignore these, you can look for trends, patterns. Look for which days have high # of unique visitors and see what you posted and how you advertised to learn what works best.

-Dragon Blogger

My fellow Entrecard users, forgive if I haven’t dropped you back since Friday. The problems with Entrecard have made reciprocating drops almost impossible.  Every time I click on Drops Inbox, I get a 500 error in Entrecard, I can’t barely even check my account dashboard.

When I visit any of my fellow’s sites, the Entrecard logo never loads the “Drop” button, so there is nothing to click on.  Ah well, I figured my site would take a huge hit with Entrecard being down for almost 2 days, but my site actually didn’t take too bad of a traffic hit.

My site did drop from about 300+ unique visits per day to about 50 per day.  This shows that at least a good portion of my users come to my site for more than just Entrecard drops and this makes me very proud.  I also want to tell users that I did have the option to do a Social Spark Opportunity yesterday, but I chose not to do it.  I just couldn’t believe in the product and it wasn’t worth promoting something I don’t believe in just for $6.50.  I value what people think of my blog too much to put an ad for some shoddy product that I just can’t sell without feeling like I am selling something hokey.

Spending the weekend with my kids, so not blogging my 4 times per day as usual.  I will pick that up again tomorrow.

Thanks to all my readers for visiting and I encourage you to do a Social Spark opp (See my post prior to this one) if you are bored this weekend, it is something to do.

Also, I need another volunteer for my Poetry Contest on Wanderer Thoughts it isn’t going to be much of a contest with only 2 submissions,  I mine as well just give away the Entrecredits at this point.

-Dragon Blogger

I have been using Feedjit as not only a means of tracking who visits my site, but it is also an invaluable tool to help me determine where users are coming from and how they are arriving on my site.  I do spend some time each night watching Feedjit’s live feed to see people pop on and off my blog.

You see I was very worried that too much of my traffic is artificially created by Entrecard droppers, and though it is great to have the visitors and have them drop.  If entrecard were to crash for a few days as it did today, I was worried my traffic would vanish with it.

So I was feeling a bit better after reviewing my Feedjit traffic tonight here is a snapshot of 13 visitors to my site, and only 3 of them were directly arriving from entrecard.  Most of them arrived from doing Google Searches and a few of them arrived directly, which means they either typed my URL directly, or have me bookmarked.  Here is a snapshot from Feedjit live, click on image to make larger and see details:

This is another tool you can use for your blog to analyze visitors and watch your traffic in real time.  It is an excellent tool and I recommend anyone to download and use Feedjit if they don’t already.

-Dragon Blogger

First off, I have only been blogging for about 40 days now and I have heard other people rant about the Google Pagerank instability and having been “hit” by Google Pagerank.  I don’t believe how yesterday and for the last two weeks my blogs was a PR2 and then today bam I am now slammed with a PR0.  I didn’t convert my site from http://dragonblogger.com to http://www.dragonblogger.com, my backlinks, and all external links are growing and not shrinking.

My IZEARank is <400, my Alexa rank is 300,000 3 month average and <150,000 1 week average.  So what gives, how does something like this happen?

The bad thing is now my blog won’t qualify for many of the opps that require PR2 or above, so my blog goals just got a lot harder to achieve.

So, go ahead my fellow bloggers, rant here about your Google Pagerank story.  Who else has been burned?

Okay, so I was playing around with Google Web Master tools tonight some more, and have decided to look at the google searches that take place and what my site lists at when people do searches.
The first graph GWT (Google WebMaster Tools) shows you is “Impressions” these are the queries where your site gets listed.  (Not user’s who arrive at your site, but what queries, and what place your site gets listed in the results).  This is important, because you want to know what queries your site is showing up under.

So you will see in this image (you can click to make it larger) that”Heroes” related queries account for many my blog showing up in google search quite a bit.  Some queries my blog is as low as the 4th or 3rd position which I think anything in the first 5 is pretty good for a start.

Ubuntu related posts and iPod related posts are my next ones.  Ironically if someone searches for “Dragonfly Poems” my blog is the 9th site listed since I have a few posts that link to and talk about that site.

The next statistic is traffic, traffic is actual users who end up on your site based on the query they searched in google.  This is extremely important as it will help you craft your site’s “tags” to be more google search friendly.  Learn the pattern of queries so you can adjust your tags accordingly.

Here you will see thatagain ipod and ubuntu, and heroes related queries are very big for my blog.  But someone who searched for “Detailed Hardware Information” arrived on my blog, and I was the #2 position on that query.  This was probably my CPU-Z post, where I actually used the tag “Detailed Hardware Information”

So if you make your tags match what you think somebody would search in google to arrive at your site, you can bet better rankings and matches and therefore be in the top listings.  Obviously the popularity of a site also affects your listing, so if 10,000 sites matched the same tag, the popular ones would get the top slots, but still.  I am surprised that my blog only 30 days has any queries that match the top 3-9 queries on Google, so its a good start.

Just thought I would share this with the world, how many other blogger’s out there do this kind of Query Analysis of their blog on a regular basis?

-Dragon Blogger

Wow, so sure enough I looked at Google Analytics and Dragonblogger.com did 409 unique visitors yesterday which is double my normal traffic for the past few weeks.  It turns out that my Monday night Heroes Blog posts are extremely popular, my one post getting 199 page views specifically in less than 24 hours.

(This is a big deal for me, since my blog is only a month and a few days old).

Review of Heroes Season 3 - Episode 3 - One of Them, One of Us, 199 views

This encourages me to keep up with topics that bring in readers, in light of this, I will be posting my next review after reading the most recent Heroes Novel Chapter and will give summary and opinion on that.

-Thanks for all support, feedback, comments and opinions readers.

I have received numerous requests via email on how I have gotten my blog to under 1000 IzeaRank in only its first 35 days of existance.  I have to say that one of the biggest tools that I use to achieve this is Entrecard.  First of all, I want to say that though my visitors to my site are high, I have a high bounce rate of 84%, which means that if I were to stop using these social networks, I would lose 70% of my traffic within 3 or 4 days.  I don’t have sustainable traffic yet, it takes about 1-2 hours of upkeep per day to keep this much traffic coming into my blog at this point.  I still strive for blog sustainability and I only believe this will happen with time and high quality posts about topics readers want to read about.

Here is an overview of Entrecard.

First you have an entrecard account, I recommend an account for each and every one of your blogs, but you can link them all together (more on that a little later).

You create a 125×125 pixel ad for your blog, make sure you have your blog’s name or URL inside the 125×125 ad.  Having a picture with no blog name or URL makes it hard for people to know who you are or what your blog URL is.  You want this to stick in their mind even after they see and recognize your entrecard picture.

Once you create an account you will go into your dashboard as seen here:

The biggest thing to note about your dashboard are the following:

1. The amount of credits you have (this is your advertising credits, EC’s)
2. The amount of cards you dropped today / all time
3. The amount of credits it costs to advertise on your blog
4. The amount of cards dropped on you today / all time

• Entrecard Credits (ECs)

These are advertiser credits, like online dollars. Each site you want to display your entrecard on costs a certain amount of ECs per day. You purchase advertising in 24 hour chunks for a set # of ECs from a blog site.
The more popular a blog is (the more drops it receives) the more it costs to advertise on that blog.
You get 1 EC for each drop you perform on someones blog, and you also get 1 EC for each drop that is made on your blog. You also get ECs from advertisers who purchase spots on your blog, but these ECs are paid only when the advertisers AD is displayed not at time of purchase.

• Dropping Cards

Dropping cards is one of the best ways to get ECs as well as get your blog visited by other Entrecard users.  When you first start out and link a blog, you will use the “Campaign” button at the top and do a search for blogs related to your blogs topic.  If you write poetry, do searches for “Poem, Poetry, Writing”…etc and then visit each and every one of these blogs sites and drop on them.

Tip:  Hover over the little Entrecard of the Site and hold Control Key and then click on “Visit Site”.  This will open the site in a new Firefox or Google Chrome tab.  This allows you to mass open a bunch of sites at the same time, then flip to each of the taps with Control - Page Up or Control - Page Down, click the drop, then Control + W to close the tab.  This is a little trick which allows me to make dozens of drops very quickly.

Here is another note, look for sites that say “Drop For Life” or “Drop U Back”.  You know these people will almost always pay you back with a drop.  Secondly, look at blog post before you drop.  If you visit a blog that has a last post > 30 days ago, pretty much assume there is a good chance it is a less than active blog.  Drop if you like the topic but don’t necessarily expect a drop back.

I always try to read some of my dropper’s posts on their main page before dropping, and I comment where appropriate.  This is because even though they appreciate the drop, dropping and running will give the blog a high “Bounce Rate” and though they get the Unique Visits, it shows that their content isn’t keeping people on the site for a follow up click.

• Drops Inbox

After you have done many drops and you notice people start dropping on your site, go to your Drops Inbox as often as possible, at least daily.  Remember you can only drop once time per 24 hours, and if people are doing 2 drops on your blog but you are only returning 1, they aren’t inclined to keep dropping as often.  Entrecard requires a little bit of work, try to drop on all people who drop on you every day.  I set aside 1 hour per day to just perform entrecard drops and advertisements.

The funny thing is, when I was doing multiple Entrecard drops per day, I was losing track of which droppers I was returning the favor on.  I now use the “Show only people I haven’t dropped on” drop down menu, to show all the Entrecards of visitors who I haven’t dropped in the last 24 hours.  This way if you check your Entrecard several times a day, you know who is left to drop on for that day.

• Advertising

Okay here is the fun part, when you start off a new blog you need to advertise it, but you won’t have very many EC’s so you want to click on Campain, and click on Search, then Sort by Cheapest. But beware, many of the cheap blogs either are decomissioned or have never updated in months so they are cheap for a reason. New blogs sometimes don’t have a badge setup yet. Visit every site before you pay to advertise on the site, make sure the site is up, the site works, and doesn’t have content that conflicts with yours. Also visit their profile and see how often they accept or respond to advertisers, and note what their reject rate is.

When people advertise on your blog, visit their site first before just accepting.  Make sure its content is appropriate.  Secondly, reject some way off topic advertisers.  By doing some rejections, you actually make your blog more popular in the long run as you don’t look like you pander to just anyone.  But don’t reject too many or people won’t even try to advertise.

• Handling Multiple Blogs

This is one of my favorite parts about Entrecard is the ability to have multiple accounts and link all of the blogs together so you can switch back and forth between your Entrecard accounts.  You can only do 300 drops per day on one account, but if you have multiple accounts you can drop up to 600 cards per day.  I often try to get 300 drops per day, and I usually do at least 20-30 additional for my secondary blogs for about 400 drops per day.

The switch tab near your email at the top is very useful, this lets you see linked accounts and transfer ECs between your blogs so you can give your baby blogs more advertiser credits.  This also allows you to easily switch back and forth between your accounts, to check their dashboards for advertisers, and visit the drops inbox to return drop favors.

• Dragon Blogger Tips

Last but not least now I will explain how I use Entrecard.
I always drop everyone who drops on me, and if there wasn’t enough people dropping on me to fill up 300 drops, then I start campaign browsing. Honestly, I sometimes do Random searches, and drop on random people. I always give preference to bloggers who list “Drop U Back” or who list their Top Droppers on their blog, as these people tend to show more odds to return the favor. Secondly I drop on my advertisers, even if they aren’t in my drops inbox, because they advertised with me, I drop them. I also sometimes blog chain, and I can knock off lots of drops this way. This is when you visit a blogger’s site, and open the entrecard ad in their site to another site, then do the same over and over again. Dropping on each site as you go. This causes me to reach out to random blogs, but it also lets me see the blogs who really are advertising like crazy out there. When I see one blog having ten or twenty ads on other blogs I know they are heavily promoted.

I buy advertisments on expensive sites where I can, and cheap sites when I don’t have the credits for the big sites.  If I don’t have any ads running in the next 24 hours, I will sort my searches looking for blogs that have no ADs in the queue.  I try to have at least 3-4 ads running every day on someones blog somewhere.

I do visit the Statistics page and look at top droppers…etc and I will do a follow up blog on leveraging the Entrecard Analytics.

Happy Dropping my friends,

-Dragon Blogger

As many of my blogger friends know I started this blog on August 23rd 2008, and today is Saturday September 27th 2008.  My blog has been in up and running 34 days so far and this is my 101st post.  This morning my blog finally jumped from a Google PageRank of 0 to PR2.  I am quite happy and excited to finally get a Google Pagerank # above 0, and am continuing to ensure my blog will stay on course to generate traffic and readers.

For everyone out there who stumbles across my blog I consider my blog successful for being only 34 days and I put hard work into making it more so.  I have several tips for new blogger’s and even bloggers looking to try something different.  Look at my “Blogging” category and read all of my posts on blog promotion, design, analytics and my methods for bringing my blog from 0 - an average of 176 viewers per day for the past week.

I have said this before and I will reprint it, the three most valuable social networking tools I find myself using every night are:

Entrecard - This is a must have for your blog, create a good appealing 125×125 ad, don’t use a generic one from Entrecard, it must say your blog’s name on it as well, don’t just have a picture without at least saying your blogs name on the logo.  Drop often and find people who have “Drop For Life” or “I will Drop You Back” on their sites, these people will return drops.  Join my Entrecard Generator, and use it.  It will open many quick links to Entrecard sites for easy drops.  (My generator is still being build, I add new links every few days)

SocialSpark - This is another must in my opinion, not only do you get the analytics, but you also get to browse other peoples blogs by category and link up with people in like genre’s.  Many people are helpful and I get alot of my viewership from SocialSpark people checking out my blog.

Zimbio - This is a really nice way to get your blog promoted, and to find nice articles and well written blogs.  I don’t get alot of traffic from Zimbio, but when you post your articles, you can easily get 90+ links on Google External Links from Zimbio.  I like the concept of Zimbio, the whole blogs turned into online magazine articles.  I am still trying to figure out how to leverage it to get more traffic flow, but I think Zimbio will be a more major player as more people start to use it.

Remember don’t get discouraged, it is easy to get euphoric when you see your blog have 200+ visits one day, and then get depressed when you see the next day it drops down to 20 visits.  You want to remember to have quality content posted, keep readers coming back with unique topics.   I also believe in some variety, there is benefit to specialized blogs, but if you make a technology blog and focus too specifically without somewhat reaching out to other topics once and a while, you will have such a restricted audience.

I advertise my blog over and over as 50% Internet & Technology (I consider posting about blogging, promoting analytics Technology), 25% Entertainment (My Heroes Reviews, TV Shows, Comics…etc), 15% Personal (Local reviews, social life…etc) and 10% Advertising (Paid Posts and Sponsorships).

This is a healthy mix in my opinion, as I try keep a little bit for everyone, but people who are interested in blogging, science, technology and politics will come back to read my latest on these topics.  Ironically, I have 101 posts, and my 5 most popular posts by far are:

1. Mozilla Songbird - Managing your iPOD with Ubuntu Hardy Heron
2. Dragon Bloggers Review of Heroes Season 3 Premiere - Part 1
3. Downloading YouTube Video’s to your iPOD Nano
4. Dragon Blogger Review of TNT Network’s Raising the Bar
5. Dragon Bloggers Review of Heroes Season 3 Premiere - Part 2