Enter: Blekko.com. Blekko may seem simple and appear as just another little search engine but its features and capabilities will amaze you as it provides greater personalization options for search results as well as lots of analytical data available to webmasters.

The Concept

Blekko uses what it calls slash tags which are quite similar to how hashtags are used in Twitter to group topics as well as Google’s sorting tools on the left of search results page, such as date, location, images, etc. However, Blekko offers more freedom by allowing you to customize and create your own tags and sorting fields, thus giving you more control and more accurate search results.

Cool Tools

Under the hood, Blekko seems to be a powerhouse ready to revolutionize the search market. You can flag specific search results you consider to be spam, completely removing those sites from your search results and you can also view and compare lots of SEO details on indexed websites such as inbound links and crawl stats easily through results page – useful tools for webmasters.

Take a look at the video below from Blekko’s CEO, Rich Skrenta as he explains how this new search engine works.

Discussion

Blekko is definitely holding its own when it comes to personalized search and other neat tools. All that remains is how the market reacts to it and how easily users are able to let Google go.

Take a look at Blekko.com, do a few searches and let us know what you think!

The overall theme of the blog is dedicated to educating online users, especially webmasters and bloggers, on how to run successful websites and equipping them with all the tools and best practices that will be required. So far, I have been able to cover some good ground in the areas of Search Engine Optimization, Blogging and Social Media through posts that have been well received by my readers. Over the next few months I will be widening the scope and start focusing on more key topics that appeal to a larger audience.

Here’s what’s in store for the short-term:

Daily Tips

I will be posting daily tips to the site in the form of short useful snippets, myth busting questions & answers, quotes that should help to spark some deep thought & inspiration and offer links to tools and techniques for accomplishing various tasks. These will be geared towards getting you the information quickly and directly and will cover lots of ground in a short period of time.

So ensure that you subscribe to my blog’s RSS or E-mail feed and follow me on Twitter to keep updated.

More Topics & Freebies

Since the launch of the blog in March, I have been focusing a lot of blogging, social media, WordPress tips and SEO. However, my goal is to offer a much wider range of information useful for all webmasters, bloggers and general internet users. So you will see me begin to touch topics such as general internet security & guidelines, simple web design techniques, online business development tips & tools, offer sources of useful free tools and themes and also plugins and free themes designed and developed by me.

Guest Author Benefits

I will be implementing a new guest posting structure that will allow all guest bloggers on the site to benefit more than just a couple of back-links but possibly earn some cash, gain above average exposure and become part of a team dedicated to growth and development in the blogosphere.

Click here to view our current guest author guidelines and also sign up for an account to start contributing.

Mobile Device Compatibility

I will be launching a mobile version of the site in the coming week to cater to readers who prefer to use mobile devices to browse. I will also be posting on the best methods and tools for accomplishing this, so stay tuned.

Your Feedback is Required

I always welcome feedback, recommendations and comments from my readers and I would love to hear about your suggestions, questions and concerns in the comments below.

Remember that this site is dedicated to your online success and your input is one of the most valuable components that I appreciate.  I truly appreciate everyone who has contributed to the site so far whether its through guest posting, commenting or through e-mail comments.

Your success is my success

Though many of us use WordPress  just for blogging, it offers us much more than that and can be extended and upgraded to suit and accomplish almost any goal you have online. So to help you get the picture and also gain some insight and/or inspiration, I’ve decided to share some already popular, and not so popular but beautiful, sites that are enjoying success with WordPress as the backbone of their business online.

Most of these sites use WordPress to serve their blog’s content as well as a content management system to efficiently manipulate their site’s design, structure and content.

So, here’s the list:

1. TIME Magazine Blogs

2. PlayStation’s Blog

3. TechCrunch

4. ProBlogger

5. CSS Remix

6. Phone.com

7. CNN Political Ticker

8. Wall Street Journal Online Magazine

9. The Ford Story

10. Network Solutions

11. Department of Environmental Sciences

12. Mairie de Flamanville

13. Blu Homes

14. eBay Ink Blog

15. Mashable

16. Eye-Fi Memory Cards

17. The Mozilla Blog

18. Flickr’s Blog

Discussion

That’s it. Hope you found some inspiration to push your WordPress site / blog to the limits.

Are there any other popular sites that you’re aware of that use WordPress as their CMS? Please let us know in the comments below.

To help us understand what’s really happening, there are a few kind, hardworking and blessed individuals who spend the time and money to do the research to find out who’s blogging, how, when, where and why. Thanks to them, I’m, able to compile this post and reveal some very interesting facts about blogging and social media and their impact.

So here are some mind-blowing statistics that show what’s really happening in the blogosphere, social media and beyond.

Statistics of the Blogosphere

1. More than 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002
2. 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann
3. Blogging is equally popular among both men and women with 50.9% of bloggers being female and 49.1% being male.
4. The United States has the largest share of bloggers with 29.22% of bloggers coming from the U.S.
5. 60% are 18-44, 75% have college degrees and 40% have graduate degrees
6. One in four has an annual household income of $100K
7. Around half of Bloggers are working on at least their second blog
8. 86% have been blogging for at least a year
9. 70% of all respondents say that personal satisfaction is a way they measure the success of their blog
10. 61% say they blog in order to supplement their income.
11. 53% of professional Bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging.
12. 57% say that their future plans include blogging even more (including 74% of 18-24 year olds).
13. Part-Timers, Pros, and Self-Employed Bloggers are blogging more than ever, while Hobbyists are blogging somewhat less.
14. 15% of Bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging.
15. One in five Bloggers report updating on a daily basis.
16. The most common rate of updating is 2-3 times per week.
17. The majority of blogs use tags (85%).
18. 82% of respondents say that they post photos to their blog, making images the most popular form of multimedia.
19. Bloggers participate in an average of 5 activities to drive traffic to their blogs.
20. 72% of respondents are classified as Hobbyists, meaning that they report no income related to blogging
21. 38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.
22. 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry.
23. 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog

Blogging Platform Traffic Statistics & Demographics

According to Compete.com, WordPress.com dominates the blogosphere with approximately 35 Million unique visitors per month as of May 2010. The graph below shows a comparison of monthly unique visitor traffic between WordPress.com, Tumblr, Posterous, Typepad and Blogger over the past year.

Sysomos, a provider of social media analytics, has also presented a report based on an analysis done on 100 Million blog posts showing bloggers’ age, gender and locations. You can find the full report here and below you will see a table of percentages of bloggers by location.

Based on the table above, we see that the majority of bloggers in the world reside in the United States by it does not deter the fact that blogging is truly a global activity and can be launched successfully from any country.

Social Media Statistics

We cannot deny the power of social media and its endless possibilities when it comes to launching and growing your business and truly connecting with the world. The statistics below will give you an idea of social media’s reach and impact on the world and should help convince you of its effectiveness if you’re still doubtful about it.

1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
2. 96% of them have joined a social network
3. Facebook now tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
5. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
6. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
12. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
14. More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.
15. More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60M Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.
16. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
17. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
18. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
19. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
20. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
21. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
22. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
23. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
24. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
25. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs in existence
26. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
27. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour
28. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
29. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
30. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
31. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
32. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
33. Only 14% trust advertisements
34. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
35. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
36. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
37. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
38. 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily
39. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
40. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
41. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
42. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
43. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years

Discussion & Conclusion

What can we learn from these statistics? The main thing anyone should realize is that blogging and social media are here to stay, at least for now, and any viable online business can be launched beyond traditional boundaries and truly excel globally.

What are your thoughts on the distant future of blogging and social media? Please leave a comment below, we would love to hear from you.

Sources:

Socialnomics by Erik Qualman
Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere
Sysomos Analytics

I may not have shared this specifically before but the ultimate aim of my site, Sam’s Web Guide, is for it to become a massive source of guidance and inspiration for mastering the different aspects of the internet while providing you with the tools to do so. Launching Sam’s Job Board takes the mission one step further in helping you to do and achieve more through the web.

10 Jobs Added

I’ve started the job board off today with 10 awesome listings so you can take a look to see if any of them interests you. I will be consistently posting jobs for Web & Graphics Designers, Bloggers, Work At Home Freelance Jobs, Awesome Career Opportunities and much more.

The site also offers visitors the ability to post regular job listings for free.

Featured Job Listings

The Job Board also offers featured listings for employers who may want a ‘sticky’ position on the site where their job listing is always visible. We will design a special banner ad for this which will give them the distinct advantage of having more viewers for their listing, more applications and their job posts get filled much faster. This attracts a fee of $25 for 30 days.

Subscribe & Receive Updates

I will be posting jobs on a daily basis, since there are so many new opportunities each day and I will ensure that you have access to them. To keep updated please sign-up through RSS, E-mail updates or simply follow me on Twitter.

Suggestions

So go ahead, take a look at the Job Board Here and let me know what you think. Please feel free to make any suggestions to make the experience better for you and others.

Millions of blogs are being added to blogosphere every month and many of them fail and eventually die within the first few months of their launch. Why? Basically, there could be thousands of reasons for this. And in this article I’ll try to cover few of them.

Here are 24 deadly signs that your blog may be dying:

1. When Money becomes your top priority and you found yourself spending most of your time in doing research about latest affiliate programs rather than thinking about creating high quality content.

2. When you update your blog very rarely.

3. When you lose your motivation and start ignoring your blog or start taking it as granted.

4. When you create high quality content, hit the publish button and then go to sleep without making any efforts to promote it.

5. When you start writing long posts in small fonts and don’t even have time to break your text into short paragraphs.

6. When it becomes very difficult for search engine crawlers to crawl your content (may be due to weird themes or some complex blogging platform).

7. When you don’t do any kind of SEO or link building for your blog.

8. When you don’t have any knowledge of the niche you are going to blog about (unless you are newbie who want to share his personal learning experience with the community)

9. When your readers have to wait for more than 30 seconds to get your blog loaded.

10. When you’ve filled every white space of your blog with advertisements.

11. When you don’t have time to reply to the comments/ questions of your readers.

12. When the contact form of your blog is not working and your readers don’t have any other option to contact you.

13. When you are using the default WordPress setting for your blog like default about page, default URL structure, etc.

14. When you start believing that blogging is only about taking and earning and not about sharing.

15. When you start giving preference to the quantity over quality of content.

16. When you think that networking with other bloggers of your niche is not at all important.

17. When you start fooling your readers by recommending them to crappy affiliate products.

18. When you start selling links to poker and casino websites from your Blogroll.

19. When you start blogging about everything minus the information useful for your readers.

20. When your readers have to fill complex captchas or to register on your website to write comments.

21. When you claim that you earn $9,999 from your blog every month but still use a free WordPress theme.

22. When you start scraping content for your blog from the other blogs of your niche.

23. When you start expecting overnight results and dream of becoming a millionaire in first two months of blogging.

24. When you start spending your hard earned cash in buying $9.99 products entitled “How to become a successful blogger”.

So, these are 24 reasons that I can think of as the tell-tale signs of when a blog starts dying. If more than a couple of these signs apply to you, it means that its time for a major overhaul in your blogging strategy or your way of thinking.

Discussion: How do you keep your blog alive? Want to add something to the list? Feel free to share it in the comments below.

The whole idea is that your friends and other contacts play a key role in your online life. These persons that you are connected with publish all types of information through tweets, blog posts, status updates, etc. This means that you can now have access to this public social web content that has special relevance to you. So this is where focusing on Keyword Optimization for Social Media plays a huge role and will especially affect these types of social search results.

Take a look at the videos below to get a broader picture of where Google is heading.

Also take a look at this video by Matt Cutts who is a part of the Google Search Quality Group. He will dive a bit further in the details.

Well that’s it. Are you convinced that you should start doing some SEO when using social media? I know I am.

The Relevance of Search Results Improved

Through Google’s Social Search, more priority is placed on getting results from our social circle, which is presumably more trustworthy than some random results from the search engine. We have a great deal of control over who and where social results come from and as Publishers what information is made available through google social search.

So go ahead, sign up for a Google Profile Here and start experimenting to realize the benefits of Social Search.

Discussion

The face of search is changing rapidly as search engines find more unique ways of providing the most relevant search results. Do you think that this new service from Google will improve your overall search experience? Will you start optimizing for social search results? Give it a try and leave a comment to let us know what you think.

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging software packages available. Because of its popularity, there is a lot of support for it as well as ways to change it through themes, addons, plugins, and customizations. Being popular is not always a good thing though. For a package to appeal to a wide range of people and applications, it has to come with a lot of features and capabilities that a user may not want to use.

Those users may find WordPress a bit bloated for their particular application. Another thing about WordPress is that its popularity attracts quite a bit of comment and post spam, something many bloggers don’t want to deal with. Since WordPress is open source, hackers have access to the code just as developers do, so there’s often a perception that WordPress installations are more likely to get hacked. Finally, some people just like to be different. Why blog with WordPress just because everyone else does? So, even though WordPress is a great platform to use for blogging and other content management, there are some who prefer to use something else. For those people, here are six of the best WordPress alternatives that you can try.

1. LifeType

Bloggers love the user friendly interface offered by LifeType as well as its WYSIWYG interface that makes publishing content a cinch. LifeType features integration for media that’s great for images, podcasts, and video. The anti-spam filter built in to LifeType takes the headache out of managing spam, so bloggers can do what they want – blog – rather than mess with spam. User management and management for multiple blogs are other features that make LifeType a favorite of webmasters: even multiple domains are supported. LifeType is fully customizable too with a variety of plugins and themes.

LifeType can be downloaded here

2. Textpattern

Textpattern is more of a general
content management system (CMS) than a blogging-centric platform. This is a PHP-based system that relies on a MySQL database that uses standardized XHTML and CSS to present clean, SEO optimized pages. Textpattern gives users a “just write” interface where writers and businesses can publish content without having to worry about code and other technical aspects. The heavyweight features of Textpattern such as browser-based image uploading and organizing are supported by a surprisingly light code footprint that developers can use to customize it to any specific application.

Textpattern can be downloaded here

3. Mephisto

This powerful blogging platform has a lot of powerful
features that are usually found only in the big platforms with a minimal footprint. In fact, the developers of Mephisto have committed to keep the program from developing into a bloated CMS platform. This is a great publishing tool that can be used as is or customized to your needs.

Mephisto can be downloaded here

4. Serendipity

Serendipity is another PHP-powered
alternative to WordPress that can be used for either blogging or CMS. This software package emphasizes simplicity and ease of use. It’s designed for causal bloggers but plugin and development options are available that allow it to be tweaked for your purpose. This platform has native anti-spam support, nested categories and comment threads that offer it unusual functionality.

Serendipity can be downloaded here

5. Habari

Have you ever wondered what modern
blogging software would look like? With Habari, you get the feeling that the future has arrived. Its revolutionary model features community development, multiple database support, object oriented extensibility, state-of-the art media silos, atom publishing support, and other features that are attracting the attention of amateur and professional bloggers alike. Another thing that makes Habari unique is its built-in importers for Serendipity and WordPress, so it’s easy to make the change.

Habari can be downloaded here

6. b2evolution

This WordPress alternative has been around
for a long time although its name implies that it is on the cutting edge of development. In reality, b2evolution is a powerful, but basic platform that has photo management, multiple blog support, skins and plugin support as part of its default installation. Add news feeds, trackbacks, feedbacks, and localization and you have yourself a powerful blogging platform that even advanced bloggers will appreciate. Businesses can use b2evolution as a powerful Web CMS that can manage product information, blogs, wikis, downloads, and workflow to present a unified Web presence to customers.

b2evolution can be downloaded here

Discussion: Please let us know if you have ever used any other CMS or blogging platforms and how did you find the experience? Was it better than the popular WordPress? What blogging platform are you using now and why?

Activities I Consider a part of Social Media Marketing

Just to set the stage for the discussion, I consider the activities below as part of social media marketing:

• Commenting on other blogs
• Connecting with other bloggers
• Using social media sites to talk about products / ideas
• Creating online profiles that promote your idea / product
• Guest posting on other blogs
• Collaborating on projects with other bloggers

Going Viral & Spreading Like a Wildfire

The word “Viral” is defined as “…to do with or caused by a virus.” So when we go viral with our blog, business or idea we are spreading like a virus throughout the social internet and infecting and affect the minds of our readers and viewers of whom we did not even have direct contact with. So suddenly, 100 visitors become 1,000 visitors, then 10,000 visitors and so on. This is especially effective if we have a unique product or idea.

Social Media has afforded many business and personal websites to reach out to thousands and in some cases millions of persons across the world at a very minimal cost and time.

So my questions is this: Are you spending enough time on social media marketing or are you waiting for the visitors to come to your site?

I can guarantee you that if you have the quality content to market, engaging in social media will bring great improvement to your site’s traffic and long-term growth and success.

Here are 2 social media sites from which I am enjoying an increase in readership to my blog and have made some brand new connections with other bloggers:

Twitter – Ensure that your site or blog makes it easy for visitors to tweet your posts by using the Tweet Meme share button. Its very important to work on building your twitter presence by engaging other users by following them and connect with persons you find interesting within your niche. Having a large targeted following on twitter can bring you massive traffic when you tweet your articles.

Blog Engage – This is an excellent site to use as a tool to connect with other bloggers and get your articles out on the web. Blog Engage allows you to publish your blog posts to a buzzing community and allows others to vote on your articles and you can add friends so it pretty much works like Facebook but is built for bloggers. Create an account, start publishing your posts, vote on other articles that you may like and watch the traffic flow to your site. Be social! Get to know others in the blogosphere while sharing your thoughts and ideas. Be very active, make your presence felt in a non-intrusive way and watch yourself grow as a blogger.

The sites above will definitely help you to see an increase in traffic to your site especially when combined with reaching out to other bloggers by commenting on their sites and creating quality content / services that users will be interested in.

Engaging in online social activities is a very proactive way of attracting visitors to your site rather than waiting for persons to use a search engine to stumble upon your site, which in basic terms may be by chance.

Actual Results from Social Media Marketing vs. Search Engine Optimization

Well I cannot discuss this topic without showing some actual numbers that represent the idea. So here is a glimpse of what my traffic looks like from social media activities versus results from search engines. The samples are shown over a 1 month time frame using Google Analytics

Visits from Social Media sites & Referring Sites that I have interacted with:

Based on the graph above we see that visitors are spending some time on my blog reading and are engaged. You will also note that readers from referring sites accounted for 59.24% of total traffic. Traffic within this group was typically obtained from sites like Twitter, Technorati, Blog Engage, blogs that I have commented on and guest posted, etc.

Visits from Search Engines:

The graph above shows traffic from search engines with a much higher bounce rate with less time spent on the site and accounts for only 8.82% of total traffic. The search engine traffic here comes from Yahoo, Google and Bing.

Note also that in the graph above the spike in search engine traffic at about April 6 seem to have occurred because of my blog being upgraded to a Page Rank of 2.

So the conclusion is clear: Social media activities encourages better quality traffic than that obtained from search engines.

Conclusion

The conclusion is apparently very clear; traffic obtained from Social Media Marketing outperforms Search Engine traffic, especially for new blogs that do not yet have a reputation on the web. For a site to be truly successful in a shorter period of time the owner or author needs to be super active on the web interacting with others and working to make themselves and their site known.

Discussion:

Please leave a comment and let us know what you think? How has SEO and Social Media Marketing worked for you? Do you think it will be the same 5 years from now? Let us know.

Here are my blog statistics so far.

Number of Posts

For March I published a total of 30 posts that were well received by the community and the responses and discussions were amazing. Its really important to post frequently to offer readers fresh content and build a source that google and other search engines can trust. While posting, always ensure that your articles are as unique as possible and really stand out. If I can’t do this with a particular post I will not publish it.

Comments

There were 145 comments posted on the site. I really appreciate everyone who noticed my blog and took the time out to comment and engage in discussion.

I’m a huge believer of sharing the love so I ensured that the Comment Luv plugin was installed on my blog and allowed commentators to benefit from Do-Follow.

Guest Posts

Guest posting is an extremely important practice for any blogger who wishes to gain exposure and attract fresh visitors. I published a total of 3 guest posts on other sites that have helped me to build some good relationships. To find out how you can guest post on my blog click here.

My Guest Posts:

• The Healing Wonders of Blogging – Rob’s Web Tips – 20 Comments
• How to Harness The Power Within Your Stats – Site Sketch 101 – 20 Comments
• Overcome Your Fears – Let’s Sermo – 24 Comments

Traffic Stats

• Unique Visitors: 392
• Total Visits: 842
  
• Average Page views per visit: 2.95
• Average Time on Site: 5 minutes 10 seconds
  
• Bounce Rate: 50.59%

Top Referring Websites

• Feedburner – 121 Visits (Subscribe and receive updates here)
• Google Organic – 73 Visits
• Twitter – 55 Visits
  
• Techjamaica.com – 42 Visits
• Jamaicans.com – 32 Visits
  
• Robs Web Tips – 31 Visits
• Webmaster Success – 25 Visits
• Site Sketch 101 – 24 Visits

I have been spreading my presence far and wide and received traffic from a total of 70 different sources. 59% of my blog’s traffic came from other sites.

Google Page Rank

I was lucky enough to launch my blog just in time for the google page rank update that occurred earlier this week. I was quite shocked when I checked and found that my Page Rank is 2 after just a month of working on my blog. Thanks google! If you would like to check your google page rank click here.

My Most Popular Posts

• Have You Ever Been Hacked? Simple Mistakes to Avoid & How to Recover – 18 Comments + 4 Tweets
• Will SEO Be Necessary in the Next 5 Years? – 17 Comments + 2 Tweets
• Alexa Traffic Rankings Inaccurate – Room for Improvement – 17 Comments + 1 Tweet
• 10 Simple Steps to Secure & Protect your WordPress Blog – 16 Comments + 10 Tweets
• How to Add an About Author Box in the Post Footer in WordPress – 14 Comments + 6 Tweets

Can anyone add to these comment numbers please?

Twitter

Twitter has proven to be an excellent tool for
connecting with other bloggers, readers and a great way to market your ideas and links. Having the right people following you and retweeting your posts is a great way to gain exposure and attract extra traffic. I had a huge spike in visitors when Lisa from 2createawebsite.com retweeted one of my posts. My traffic doubled that day because she has about 5,700 followers and a fair amount of them clicked on my link that she retweeted thus attracting new visitors to my site. So my advice is to use twitter heavily and monitor your progress and practice what works for you with it.

Since the launch of my blog I have acquired 97 Followers and I’m following 99. Follow me on twitter here.

Alexa Traffic Rank

Ok, so I’m not the biggest fan of how Alexa
collects and reports website traffic data, however, I still use their information as a guide for how well I’m doing in comparison to other websites. It’s pretty encouraging to see your ranking improve on a daily basis and it does give me some motivation and satisfaction for doing my best each day.

At the start of the month my rank was at 13 Million and is now 310,589. Great results I think for a first month. To check your traffic ranking click here.

So there we have it, my first month! I know my stats may be tiny in comparison to other high profile blogs but I’m satisfied that I have been doing my best for my first month of blogging and thankful for all I have learnt. I hope that you will all share this journey with me as we strive towards Massive Success. To all of those who have contributed to my site by leaving valuable comments and taking the time to read i say THANK YOU!! All this would not be possible without you.

Discussion

If you have any suggestions or would just like to share a thought please feel free to leave a comment. I would love to hear what you think about my progress so far and probably find out what I could be doing better.