Well, the 30 days has come and gone and our final totals are as follows:
GOAL – 2,000 unique visitors
ACTUAL – 33,038 unique visitors
GOAL – 150 Total posts
ACTUAL – 143 Total posts (Andrew did his part, I was off my 7 posts)
GOAL – $100 Income
ACTUAL – $104.39 (Adsense 50%, Affiliates 50%)
All in all it was a good month, we have a lot of great content that is bringing in a lot more organic traffic this month.
11/2007 Google Traffic: 1137 total
12/2007 Google Traffic: 1458 (through only 12 days)
Huge increase in organic traffic is also helping to sustain Adsense earnings. We’re beginning to focus more on specific call center terms such as call center software, call center outsourcing and giving tips that can help find a call center job. With more call center posts tailored towards jobs we hope to start ranking for a bigger term.
Last month we saw 60,922 page views come from StumbleUpon. So far this month we have 30,850 (through 12 days) so it looks to be another record breaking month for SU as well.
Another interesting stat was that we used 12.45 GB of bandwidth last month. That is a lot of bandwidth for a site not offering downloads and only a rare post with pictures. We did have this post about funny office signs so that probably took it up a few GB’s.
Our goals for this month are completely different. We’re going for twice as much income, 30-35 total posts (5 times less) and focusing our marketing efforts more on link building through guest posts, article writing and social means.
So there you have it, the project was a success in my opinion and our stats show that it was definitely a success since we exceeded the important goals.
Zero to Hero Project Closed!
Congrats on what seems to be a pretty successful start! I’m sort of doing a similar thing with Carbon Fiber Gear.
Two things I wanted to mention:
1) That is a TON of traffic from StumbleUpon! Were you guys the ones submitting the content? Any suggestions/tips there?
2) The 12 gigs of bandwidth seems like an awful lot in my opinion. I would check your server logs and make sure other sites aren’t hotlinking your photos or something. Did you end up having to pay extra for the amount of bandwith?
Hey Dave, thanks for the comment, I saw your Carbon Fiber Gear site the other day and thought it was a good idea.
SU traffic has been great. However, it’s only traffic, no income and few links. Unfortunately it’s really just a browsing crowd that goes from site to site without stopping for long.
I’ll check some logs and see what I can find. As for how to get SU traffic, I’ll defer to Andrew on that one, I just click “Like It” and send it to a few friends. He does the magic! I’ll see if he will come make a follow up comment.
I’ve noticed the same….the traffic hasn’t really done anything for me…but I know it CAN. I’ve personally found things on SU that I write about on my blog if it really stands out to me enough.
I’ve gotten a decent amount of traffic to carbon fiber gear over the last day through SU, but nowhere near enough that would amount to what it seems you got.
I look forward to hearing from Andrew!
Congrats on the success guys! And thanks for sharing the results of your project. It often happens that bloggers forget to conclude a project for their readers, or abandon it without wrapping it all up – it’s nice to see a start to finish project like this one.
Thanks Blaine, it did take me 12 days to get that post up, but at least it’s here now 🙂
Hey guys. I’m glad Brandon has been posting these updates. It’s definitely fun to do a project like this and show other people how it went. Luckily, we had some success!
StumbleUpon traffic isn’t too hard to nail, but (as Brandon mentioned) we didn’t gain much revenue or links from it. The tactic I’ve been using is to write a simple post that has pictures and can appeal to a broad audience. Think of quick surfing material. I found that crazy coworker gifts work out good, especially this time of year.
The other SU tip I have is to find a good group of pals who will help boost things along. If you can get 15 or 20 “I like it” clicks in a few hours, you should be set for a solid wave of traffic.
Also, note that some of our successful SU posts contain affiliate links. We have gotten some conversions through those, but not a ton.
Regarding bandwidth, I think the SU traffic is the culprit. The successful posts typically have images, and we’re getting lots of unique visitors to them. Most of the images are on our server, so that’s a lot of data to serve.
Peace,
Andrew
I agree with Andrew on the bandwidth. I didn’t find any sites leeching our images and the bandwidth was consistent with our SU traffic. Thanks for the update Andrew!
Hmm..your total amount of uniques compared to the total revenue gives me the impression the generated traffic was not interested in the products or services that you offered with adsense of affiliates. Too bad, was fun to see the amount of uniques lower, and the amount of money way higher :)….
Again, 33k unique is very impressive. But all stands or falls with a great traffic strategy…Perhaps the next question would be ‘how to prosper from a i-net hype’ ….?
Is there any benefit to rankings from Stumble traffic, or is just a one off visitor thing?