As you all know, I sold my last major blog at the start of the year. Since then I have been working on a new one called WP Mods – a blog which is dedicated to WordPress themes, plugins, news and views.
I thought it would be interesting to show you some traffic stats to give you an idea of the growth of traffic with a new blog. As I noted a few weeks ago, the first few hundred subscribers are the hardest to get with a new blog.
This is particularly true for WP Mods. I believe it’s much quicker to get subscribers in some other niches. With a WordPress related blog it’s perhaps a little harder to get subscribers at the start. This is mainly due to my target audience.
Target Audience
So who is my audience? Well, for the most part it is people who are looking for an answer to a WordPress related problem.
Some examples of the type of articles on WP Mods:
Problem-Solution type blogs are different from blogs which post about the latest news. Generally speaking, people who have a problem search for a solution and then move on. This means that compared to other blogs, more of my traffic will come from search engines rather than repeat visitors (i.e. subscribers).
If someone is looking to integrate bbPress with WordPress they might find my site. Similarly, if they are looking for a beautiful WordPress theme or useful plugin, they will probably stumble across WP Mods at some point. Though when they do most will move on with what they are doing until a similar problem arises in the future.
I do post about topics which encourage people to drop by regularly, such as the latest news and events. Though with a subject like WordPress there isn’t much to talk about. Sure, there are new releases and updates every other month, however they are few and far between. This is certainly the case when compared to a subjects like Movies, Entertainment or Technology; where there is breaking new every day of the week.
It is important to encourage people to subscribe to a problem-solution type blog as there is a market for it, though I think that it’s important to remember why people are subscribing at a slower rate.
Feedburner isn’t 100% accurate though for most blogs the number of RSS subscribers is still the best way to gauge the popularity of a blog. However, with a site like WP Mods I truly believe you need to bring traffic statistics into the equation more than you would normally do to give you a true picture of what is happening (I’m not just saying this because subscriber growth has been slow haha).
The Stats
OK, let’s look at the stats from the last few months. Please bear in mind:
- Whilst the domain was registered on January 18th 2010, the blog was not launched until March 21st 2010.
- Traffic stats for June are only up to June 9th
- All stat programs differ in the way they track traffic which is why I have shown traffic from 3 different scripts/services.
Webalizer
According to Webalizer, unique visitors have grown from around 150 a day in March to 300 a day in April and 425 in May. June stats are incomplete but I believe that the average will be around 700 at the end of the month as there has been 729 and 884 daily uniques so far with most days being around 600.
AWStats
The average unique visitors per day according to AWStats was 76 in March, 159 in April, 254 in May and 345 in June (so far).
Google Analytics
Analytics is showing the same sort of pattern as Webalizer and AWStats with average daily visitors approaching 150 per day.
RSS Subscribers
As I write this post the site has 43 subscribers. I am hoping to break the 100 mark within the next 4-6 weeks . I know that doesn’t seem a lot but I’m trying to be realistic.
I’ve got some great posts lined up over the next few weeks and posts are being retweeted and shared more and more, though it still did take me 2 and a half months to get 43 subscribers, so to get more than double that in 4-6 weeks would actually be a good achievement.
The Growth of a New Blog
The traffic stats for my new blog aren’t ground breaking. Many new blogs have been launched and surpassed my traffic level in a matter of weeks rather than the 2 and a half months mine has been live. Though it is perhaps a good representation of the growth of an average new blog which is updated weekly.
As I noted on BloggingTips a few weeks ago, it takes time for a new blog to be established. This demotivates a lot of new bloggers as it takes so long to get a return. However, I know from experience that the most difficult part of a blog is getting it launched and establishing it. Therefore I know that it will start to make money within the next 3-6 months.
Although RSS subscriber growth has been relatively slow, I am not too fazed about it. Partly because of what I spoke about earlier about most of the sites visitors finding a solution to their problem and then leaving, and partly due to the consistent growth in traffic every month.
I will do a follow up to this post in a couple of months to show you how the site has progressed. 
Thanks for reading,
Kevin
