$100K Site History - Quarter One 2006
After a rather tame December 2005 I was hoping income and traffic would start picking up in 2006, which it did but certainly not in the first quarter so I’ve combined the next 3 months of CG’s history into this one post.
Traffic
As you can see from the graph traffic was pretty steady, the site was averaging just under a thousand unique visitors a day. The two peaks towards the end of the quarter were caused by of our stories being picked up by Gizmodo again. Through out the quarter we were picking up a fair few natural links from other sites, they just weren’t converting into any form of significant traffic.
Overall the lack of growth was disappointing, we’d worked really hard for the past 6 months and there wasn’t much to see for it, but by sticking at it and continuing to post quality content it would just be a matter of time until the site was rewarded (or so I hoped).
Revenue
The revenue followed the traffic trend somewhat (i.e. crap)
| January 2006 | |
|---|---|
| Google Adsense | 396.72 |
| Chitika | 179.93 |
| Commision Junction | 93.33 |
| Total | 669.98 |
| Febuary2006 | |
|---|---|
| Google Adsense | 321.78 |
| Chitika | 110.51 |
| Commision Junction | 24.95 |
| Total | 457.24 |
| March 2006 | |
|---|---|
| Google Adsense | 419.68 |
| Chitika | 113.43 |
| Commision Junction | 40.55 |
| Total | 573.66 |
Even combined they were a long way off the $12,000+ CG enjoyed last month.
Conclusion
I’ve seen many site owners lose interest when the growth stops (or worse declines) and I’ll freely admit I’ve done that myself in the past. But if you want to be successful at anything you’ve got to persevere and that is especially true for websites. CG was about to turn the a corner next month (April 2006) and so that I can end this post on a bit of a high (and a cliffhanger before the next instalment 
) this is how one of the income streams grew throughout the year, the professional blue highlighting is the period covered by this post (graph thanks to the DP Adsense Charts).
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Very interesting to see how the site grew. Starting a site can be hard and even the slightest drop in the beginning can make discouragement. Sticking with it is key here.
I forgot to mention that it’s interesting to see the visits by new and returning. Mine is a fair bit different over the last 3 months showing about 90% new (something I need to work on). It seems you had a fairly loyal following early 2006.
I’ve just checked now and we’re running at 21% returning visitors, I reckon the drop is due to more search engine traffic and also the fact ads are a lot more optimized now for visitors to leave us.
If you’re getting 90% new visitors everyday think were your traffic would be if you could just make 10% of those repeat visitors or subscribers, certainly worth at least a thought.
That is something I am going to look in to now. Right now the site is averaging close to 290 visitors per day and steadily rising. It tends to jump up each Monday to another step on the stats.
Time to work on retention I think. Thanks for the tip
Another good post, thanks Al.
So the message stick with it, trust in your site / skills rings true??
I can almost hear the cliff hanger ending music ringing in my ears.
just jummped over here from my google reader to comment here..great and valuable information u r providing here selfmademinds has sticked to my mind..
eagarly waiting for your next post…
-Regards
also i want to suggest you to add comment acknowledgment so that it will notify the commentors that your comment has been submitted and is waiting to be reviewed..
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