NotSoBoringLife Month in Review - April
March was a good month for this blog but April has been the best yet. See anything peculiar about the Google Analytics graph? A couple of days ago I hit the front page of Digg! I'm going to write a more detailed post about this experience later this week, but it's definitely the highlight of the month. If you missed the parasite article you should check it out. Some 800 diggers thought it was worth while.
Quick Statistical Overview:
- 287 links from 138 blogs (Technorati Rating = ~29,000)
- ~276,000 Alexa ranking
- Averaging 80 unique visitors per day
- ~80 Feedburner subscriptions
March's Goals Vs April's Results:
Goal #1: ~60 uniques per day
Result: pre-Digg I was running ~80 uniques / post-Digg ~600 
Goal #2: ~40 RSS Subscribers
Result: ~80 subscribers
Goal #3: SEO the site for 'Recreation' type keywords
Result: I changed my mind about midstream in the month how I wanted to optimize the site for search engines. I released a series of guides that are highly optimized for keywords. For example check out the Shark Fishing Guide. This goal is significant in that this type of content is what I've always been shooting for on this blog. It's so much easier for me to write when I have a template to go by especially for this type of content.
Goal #4: Release the Custom Theme for Wordpress
Result: I rolled out the Field of Dreams theme last weekend. I hope to release it to the public once I nail down any other bugs that are lurking about. Look for this release sometime in May.
Goals / Plans for May:
- Complete Shark Fishing Guide
- Complete Pipe Smoking Guide
- Release Field of Dreams
- Begin Monitizing
Oh! One other little detail. Google decided this blog was worth a whopping PR4! I'm really hoping this helps secure sponsors / advertisers as well as my ranking in the serps. Was Google as good to you as he was to me?
Looks like a good month, be prepared to go cold turkey though after Digg
Yah. Hopefully 1 or 2 will stick around.
Sorry to hear about your PR dilemma
Congratulations Nathan on that! Both of my sites were given four’s as well! With the new guides you are pushing out this site is improving a good bit, get those SEO words down and you will be set.
My review didn’t influence you to write more guides now did it? haha j/k, keep up the good work. Did Wallhogs hook you up yet?
Congratulations on.. wow… I would think 18,000 visitors and pageviews in 1 day? crazy!
Nick: The guides were always something I wanted to do. It’s really the whole reason I started the site. I just didn’t know how I wanted them to flow. Wallhogs did hook me up. I’ve got to take some pictures of my pictures, but the quick story is “WOW!”
2Perfect: Thanks! 18k visitors was pretty intense. I had to reset the server once but other than that it handled the digg pretty well.