Traffic

August was another month that was similar in traffic to last month, but still different in a few key ways. While this month I had higher uniques and pageviews, the sources of traffic dramatically changed. Last month I saw a monstrous spike in search engine traffic, this month that dropped by close to 11%, as well as a 20% drop in direct traffic. The difference was a 28% increase in referral traffic.

Monetization

There were three sources of advertising this month:

Text Link Ads: $7.44
Kontera: $11.89
AdSense: $33.95

Total: $53.98

Last month I brought in about $10 less, but had also spend $20 in advertising??this month there was no advertising expense, so it??s 100% profit. A nice little jump, but still not too much. I have been working on a new look in the background, and expect there to be some major changes in this over the upcoming months once launched. At this point, I??m not too worried about monetization, but I think once the blog goes to around $500/month, I will start to care more and worry about getting the numbers even higher. In the meantime I will continue to concentrate on writing good content, and increasing traffic.

RSS Subscribers

Last month the number of RSS subscribers was slowly crawling up. I mentioned that I was hoping to hit the magic “100 subscribers” number in August, and I did!? I peaked at 104 subscribers, and am definitely averaging in the 90??s now. This goes to show you that if you keep the consistency of your blog, over time it will continue to grow…but you have to keep at it.

Search Engine Goodness

This month search engine traffic decreased by 11% to 2,813 unique visitors. I had a strong feeling I was going to expect a decrease because I was getting a ton of traffic last month in regards to the Virginia driving law articles I had written. This news was starting to get out of the news, therefore traffic was expected to come down. Even though this was the case, I still generated much more traffic that I had thought I would. Let??s see how traffic from each top engine differed from last month:

Google: -11.41%
Yahoo: +86.79%
MSN: -29.27%
AOL: -31.25%

Lets take a look and see which keywords were used most to find my blog last month:

1. best blog designs
2. mercedes blk
3. e92 m3
4. 10 dollar plane tickets
5. blog title ideas
6. penis
7. rip hangers
8. best corporate websites
9. atlantic city
10. infiniti g37

Popular Pages/Content

Here was the most popular content in June:

1. April (Month)
2. David Pitlyuk (Homepage)
3. Hot Import Nights 2007, Washington DC Pictures
4. New Virginia Civil Fee For Traffic Tickets Is Nuts
5. Mansion Hunting In Northern Virginia Part 3
6. Internet Comments In A Real Life Boardroom
7. Installed 19″ Volk SF Challenge Wheels On My Infiniti G35 Coupe
8. Picture Gallery of Mansions In Northern Virginia Part 1
9. The 45 Best Technology Sector Corporate Web Designs: A-G
10. Tech Sector Corporate Web Designs: Best Of The Best

April is the most popular page due to Google Image search showing a ton of referral traffic for a lot of car things that I had posted that month. It’s nice to see the homepage being the #2 page, I would like that to takeover #1 at all time in my opinion.
Top Referrals

Referring traffic took a huge jump in the overall percentages of how people got to my blog. This is mainly because I’ve been more active in forum communities and linking some of my content. It’s a great source of traffic, and I will continue to do this.

Here’s a list of the top referrals that do not include search engines:

1. Google Images
   
2. G35 Driver
3. My350Z
4. YoungGoGetter
5. ShoeMoney
6. ActiveTuning
7. Digg
8. Anandtech Forums
9. SEO Blackhat
10. Smashing Magazine