Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of my blog–thirty days, that is. As a late-adopter blogger, I’ve been wondering how my blog is doing. I’ve asked a few people and gotten some answers, but I couldn’t find many hard statistics.
I’m guessing that many other bloggers may have similar questions, so here is a dump of my blog statistics. To be sure, this is just one data point, and I haven’t exactly adhered to good research methodology…but for what it’s worth:
- There have been 42 posts, 922 comments, and 304 trackbacks.
- According to StatCounter, the site had 268,060 unique visitors. This reflects 211,947 first-time visitors and 56,113 repeat visitors. (A first-time visitor is defined as a person without a cookie for the site. A return visitor is defined as a person returning to the site an hour or more after visiting it.)
- According to Technorati, 1,479 sites now maintain 2,843 links to the blog. About two weeks ago, my blog ranked #488 in Technorati; the current rank is #289.
- According to Feedburner, 4,231 people get my blog via feeds. Sorry, about my repeated editing, guys!
- According to Feedblitz, 428 people get my blog through email.
- Traffic to my web site, www.guykawasaki.com, increased from about 400 page views/day to 800-1,200 page views/day.
- My Amazon sales rank for The Art of the Start (go ahead, I dare you to click on this link) hovered between #1,500 and #2,000 prior to the start of my blog. Currently, the sales rank hovers between #500 and #750.
- I use SnipURL to track how many people click on links. This has yielded lots of interesting information:
- The links in the right column called “Alignment of Interest” (as opposed to “conflict of interest”–get it?) generated between 900-1,000 click throughs (each) to the home pages of BitPass, FilmLoop, Kaboodle, PhoneBites, and SimplyHired.
- I tested the power of a blog posting versus a listserver announcement when FilmLoop released its Macintosh version. My listserver has about 8,000 subscribers. The blog posting generated 1,846 click throughs. The listserver generated 605 click throughs.
- I tried a section in the right column to list a “loop du jour.” 113 people clicked through in the first two days. Then I switched to plugging loops in postings. 1,925 people clicked through to see the loop about China. 3,164 people clicked through to the loop of pictures of the readers of my blog. 1,597 people clicked through to see the loop of only the award winners. 1,469 people clicked through to see the Tony Hawk wedding loop (this posting is very recent).
- 7,140 people clicked through on the blog entry about the charts of Karl Hartig. Incidentally, he told me that his weekly visitor count increased from 231 visits/week to 38,946 visits/week.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know what all these stats mean, but I hope they will help you gauge how your blog is doing. All in all, I’ve had a blast, so thank you for reading my blog–and linking to it too.
Written at: Atherton, California
That’s some very, very impressive traffic for a blog. That’s better traffic than any blog I know of, and most websites.
Guy,
You have 900 subscribers through Bloglines (www.bloglines.com).
I can see that since i read your blog through that.
You are doing awesome. Keep going !!!
The Google AdSense model is still a good one; however your ability to generate revenue actually deminishes because of two things.
One: The placement of your ads are most likely the reason your calcs come to $.001 per visit. If you place ads above, below or in a sidebar of each of your posts, I bet you’ll see an increase- placement is everything. (See http://www.tuaw.com)
Two: People visit your blog to see what “you” have to “say”. This is good in the sense that when you say “visit something” it has much more credibility and trust. Most people know what Google ads are these days– if the ads where much more relevant in terms of your “content” then it would be better for everyone. The end result is that with a blog, your content simply “changes to often” for adsense to keep up. That IS NOT a bad thing for us fans Guy!
Keep Kicking Butt!
Congratulations on your 30 days! Hope you will be here for quite some time. I throughly enjoy reading your blog. Not ot mention, a lot many stat programs will not tell you of those readers behind a proxy, where only a single cookie is allowed.
FK
Great post, thank you. I fully agree that using AdSense is not a business model. With that off my chest, you can improve your revenues.
Put a rectangle below your posts. People like to read your posts and when they are done they are much more likely to read on and take action. So that is the perfect spot in articles. End of the article.
And dependent on your content, the amount of money you can make with AdSense can be performing a lot better. I put my summaries of the MBA at the OUBS online and the click throughs are amazing and the prices people pay for something like “Porter’s 5 forces model” is amazing :)
Check the license, I think it is forbidden to give this kind of information about your earns with adsens. warning you could give banned.
What a great stats!
Could you explain how you got soo much traffics in a short period of time?
Item #2 certainly plays silly buggers with the definition of “unique.”
Jeez Guy I visit your sit by using my Safari’s RSS feature. How does this change your stats? I get to read all your great posts, but must go to your site “manually”… Maybe someone can tell us.
Impressive stats. :) That’s a fairly low click-through rate compared with the traffic though. Some sites can get up quite a bit higher.
I’d say your blog will pay for itself with the increased book sales.
Guy, the statistics for your (relatively) new blog probably represent those who already know who you are. After all, it’s (almost) impossible to create a well-known brand in 30 days, and you do have a great reputation in your area of the world. The true benefit of the blog is creating an audience from people who had never heard of you. And that takes time. It will be interesting to see if a year from now you’ll be able to distinguish those who discovered you through your blog. In other words, the numbers are misleading, and whether writing the blog is ‘profitable’ or not is hard to say at this time.
Guy,
You invest 2 hours daily on the blog. What’s the payoff? How did you invest this 2 hours before you had your blog?
-Ken
Hi Guy, those are some impressive stats. Love your blog and your most recent book, but just a little warning – it is against the AdSense TOS (https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms) to disclose “click through rates or other statistics” (#7). Would hate to have the AdSense police bust you!
Congratulations, Guy! Obviously these statistics mean little to anybody who isn’t already internationally famous. We have little to learn from such things (except to work on that fame bit). But that doesn’t diminish the success you’ve achieved here!
The fact is, if you weren’t famous, your numbers would suck (for a while, at least). But if you weren’t writing great entries, your numbers would also suck.
I’m pleased that you shared the information about increased book sales correlating with your blog. It’s a great example of how blogs can simply raise the awareness factor of a person’s products and abilities. This was part of my rationale for starting one, and I’ve been pleased to watch it gradually prove itself.
And hey, 42 well-thought-out posts in 30 days? I just hope we’re not looking burn-out in the face right now! Don’t feel locked-in to the daily post commitment, if it starts to wear you down.
Great work. I read this in my blog feeds – and at first thought it was from a friend – who also started blogging on January 1st.
I was really surprised (well – almost fell off my chair) when I read that the site was in the Technorati top 500 :)
Oh well – my friends site is lingering at the bottom of the Technorati list still.
It’s great to see your site get so many hits with so much feedback ;) Maybe you owe Scoble (and a few others) a beer …
Guy, one humble tip…
You would have to register the domain ‘guykawasaki.com’ in order to be able to use TypePad´s Domain Mapping feature.
It´s to say, your blog available at www.guykawasaki.com
Greetings…
guy, are you some kind of SADIST or something? yes, your stats did help gauge how my blog is doing. my blog is doing major loads of doody! thanks for reminding me.
btw, i’m kidding! i love your blog (most of the time).
:D
I find it interesting that you used readership as the sole metric of determining how your blog is doing, especially given the thoughts I’ve read in several of your posts, like encouraging your readers to “kick butt!” I wonder if there are other metrics you could come up with to determine how much of an impact you’re making, whether it’s people taking your ideas to heart and pitching their company to VCs differently, or changing their business plans after reading your advice. Otherwise, it seems to me like you’re equating quality with popularity, and I’m not sure those are necessarily equivalent (e.g. the Nielsen ratings on TV). Admittedly, readership numbers are probably the easiest to get, but I’d be curious to hear what, if any, other metrics you considered; given your resources and connections, you might be able to construct some of these other metrics, just as you got kubakounter built for you.
Your stats confirm my belief that this truly a unique and intriguing blog…well done! Also,Google NOW suggests adsense ads be placed at the end of each post…if Big “G” suggests this, it would be wise to at least give it a try.
Half the fun of having a blog is being able to pour over the stats and try to understand what it all means.
these statistics mean you’re a fantastic evangelist and everyone loves you.
simply stated, of course.
That’s quite an incredible start, Guy. Our blog is currently about ~140 in technorati, but it took a year to get it there. That you are already doing so well is special, be happy about it.
Guy, the stats are excellent. And that reflects not only the quality of your writing, but the impact you are making…. But, at the end of the day, it is not about the stats, etc, but about the wonderful opportunity to share, teach, and to make a positive impact on others, thru your great tales and the evangelism itself. I knew it was going to be good, an excellent resource, when I saw your blog announcement… keep it up! :-)
ceo
While stats are good to get a measure on one level, imho, it’s how you impact other people that is the more telling characteristic. From what I can tell, GK, you are impacting others quite positively. Well done sir.
I do have to say those are some impressive stats in such a short amount of time. Glad to see that you’re still making an impact out there. Keep up the good work.
This is great information, Guy, especially on how it improves your book sales.
Now my real questions, spurred by this posting – you present some interesting statistics about your blog readership, but how has blogging made a difference in how you get your message out? Or how does it affects your message? And what do you get out of the process of blogging?
“Inquiring minds want to know…” :-)
Keep up the good work guy!Thanks for sharing the stats.
The blog’s rise in popularity is a credit to Guy and the quality of the material. I’ve been reading this blog for about a week and it was engaging to read every time.
I’m not going to aspire to generate more traffic, I’m going to aspire to write a better blog! If this blog is any indication then the traffic will follow.
If form follows function is it also true that traffic follows (quality) content?
JR,
At the risk of traffic whorring, I did a similar analysis of my blog’s statistics, only geared it toward the articles. The article that generated the most hits was about Ed Hochuli, the ultra-buff NFL official (“guns of steel”).
It was a complete joke post (spoofing www.chucknorrisfacts.com), but it has far outranked posts that I put far more time and energy into.
I agree that a better blog will draw more users, but don’t discount that sometimes, people just want to laugh more than they want to be educated/informed.
Tim
P.S. On the other hand, it could just mean that the other things I’ve written are just trash. :D
Wow…Gk, you have sunk to a new low. I can’t believe you considered this as part of your topic. These are just numbers…out of all of your topics that you’ve blogged here. I think this is the worst blog of them all. No hindsight, no info, and definitely not very educational. Plus all of the numbers are fake…you have to multiple it by 0.1 to get the real numbers. I hope you’re more inspired by tomorrow.
Yeah… that helps me gauge my blog’s success… how does 1,300 unique hits in 2 months compare?
Do the math… carry the two… round off… oh.
Not good.
Thanks anyway Guy. Keep up the good posts… as in not the ones that just toss out your blogstats…
I agree there is an ‘underlying magic’ in all your posts. That is only pulling the readers to your blogs.
Well. With my given background I do not give much credence to statistics as they do not entirely reveal the acceptance / rejection / utility of the posts or the ideas covered in them. Hence statistics are to be taken with a pinch of salt. Hence let us not attach much importance to them
Definitely a study of the comments received will reveal the success of any (post / thought / idea / sharing) blog. In this area, you will agree with me, your blogs score very well.Please keep up the good work of sharing your ideas and knowledge with all of us. That is a rare quality in these competitive days.
Guy,
Ultimately the consistent quality of the posts is what keeps me reading. Hopefully you can continue to maintain that level because they’ve been great so far.
Thanks for sharing.
Eric
Guy,
You need to check out alexa.org. Here you can graph traffic versus other blogs.
I just compared you Seth Godin’s Blog, and Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasion – you’re doing well comparitively.
It’s a great blog, and I think it is fair to say that you are an A list blogger – Pretty good going for one month. Beep up the good work, Ben.
Here’s the link (quite a long one)
http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup?site_url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.guykawasaki.com+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.micropersuasion.com+http%3A%2F%2Fsethgodin.typepad.com%2F&range=1m&widget=g&style=c&submitted=true&mode=graph&range=3m&amzn_id=&site_url=
What all those stats mean is that you are breaking blog records, making history and you deserve my congratulations. That’s more or less what they mean
Regards :)
http://niquel757.blogspot.com
How much time do you need to prepare your posts?
I think this is the key point of blog success: the more you prepare post the better they are ;-)) (obviously)
I´ll continue learning from your blog.
THANKS!!!!!!
and, guy, how many emails to you did the blog generate?
:)
These two stats don’t seem to tally:
Sure you’re not reading “hits” instead of unique visitors?
Otherwise over 30 days you’re talking about nearly 9,000 uniques a day, which would probably generate approx. 15,000 pageviews per day.
Or did I misread something?
Either way, it’s a blog filled with great information and well deserves it’s audience share. Got it blogrolled at Platinax.
Re:
According to StatCounter, the site had 268,060 unique visitors.
Traffic to my web site, www.guykawasaki.com, increased from about 400 page views/day to 800-1,200 page views/day
I think this is because the page counter on my web site doesn’t count the blog hits. It’s only those who go to guykawasaki.com.
The StatCounter stuff only counts what goes to blog.guykawasaki.com–which is really hosted at Typepad.
Thanks,
Guy
I bought “Career Guide for the High-Tech Professional” today because you had a blurb on the back. Mostly, I though “Ohh. Hmmm Covey, looks decent. Hey Guy Kawasaki! I read his blog (via RSS at Newsgator- 326 subscribers) and it is full of really useful stuff. Looks like he thinks it is good so I’ll give it a go!”
So count me in the group that bought something because you said something good about it. I swear I’m putting your books into the “To Read” bucket right now.
Thanks for the valuable info and lessons. Hope you keep the posts coming!
Another blindspot: advertsing-based services
Being a FOG (Follower of Guy) for many years now, I now get daily doses of his wisdom on a regular basis. A recent post on his website stats has a few great gems in it, but one comment on
Simply stated: wow. Congratulations, Guy!
So, what are the takeaways here?
1. Celebrity clearly helps ramp syndication efforts.
2. Existing brands realize rapid results from syndication marketing.
3. Products in later stages of their life cycle (arguably decline) may be pushed back up the curve through syndication awareness.
4. Links from successful syndication content drive significant web traffic increases for those fortunate to be referred.
There’s lots for marketers to chew up by thinking through the numbers and their meaning. Powerful arguments for the relevance of syndication marketing in the mix.
I subscribed because of the brand name and stayed subscribed because of the content. Keep up the good work.
I think Scoble mentioned your blog, which is probably what got me here in the first place.
Lies, blasted lies and statistics.
Guy Kawasaki has been reviewing the results of his blog in terms of hits after a month. By the end of January, we’d been running this blog for 20 days.
We’d made 38 posts.
According to our statcounter, we had 33108 hits and served 313 Megabytes. We…
Very interesting reading. I go through all stats several times per day to pick up on tendencies in the traffic of our sites.
I’ve just discovered your blog. Great reading. Congratulations
Hi Guy,
I believe the key to a good post is whether or not the person could print it out and hang it on their wall as art.
See The Bill Cara Rules for Successful Trading,
http://www.billcara.com/archives/2005/12/the_bill_cara_r.html
Quite a few of Bill Cara’s articles are worth a bookmark. Almost every article I have read here is worth a bookmark. Why? Maybe it’s the format? Executive Summary, Numbered Bullet Points, Conclusion and Reward. It’s hard to believe every post is as good as it seems. There has got to be some hidden psychological factor here… :)
I’m curious too – how long does it take for you to work these posts? Do you work with them online?
Your blog and its rise does strengthen my heuristics:
1. brand plays more value than the credit it is given. it basically acts as the meme.
2. content is the one that sustains the value of that brand.
and finally its definitely humbling to see what definitely GK & its value __is__ really like.
The last time I saw you was at a startup conference 8 years ago, your brand has continued to grow, awesome!
Here are my own hypotheses about your site and its popularity:
• Prime the Pump –I don’t know how big your original mailing list was but suspect that your blog announcement went to a large circle of Guy fans. People tend to post comments when they know the blogger personally.
• Content beats Fame — Tom Peter’s blog has far fewer postings than yours though he is, arguably, more widely known in the American business mgmt community. I suspect your content has broader appeal, changes daily, provokes reaction, is sometimes irreverent, and always quite engaging.
• Gravity Well Accelerates — The more people comment, the faster search engines react to the phenomenon that something’s up at your website and the more they give you greater visibility in search results. That only attracts more visitors and the virtuous cycle builds.
• Marketers like to Talk — Marketing people are talkers by nature. I suspect that many of your avid commenters are marketers themselves who appreciate what you have to say and can’t help themselves from commenting. Plus it may help their own website traffic (link/trackback to their site)
Your fan too,
Sridhar
Your information strongly has helped me, thank you for it!