1st Year Of Blogging: Success And Achievements
Dainis Graveris
Oh, well when people say blogging changed their lives – they are absolutely right!
It has been one amazing…really amazing year with you guys! Blog grown from nowhere to quite impressive size in one year! Read further and I will share all last year statistic numbers, my works, successes – everything I have done on my first year being in this online design community! I am also creating big surprise for you free *.pdf document with roundup of all the posts done in the last year, only I am recreating articles with only the best of the best selections. I hoped to get finished and release it now, but it was bigger job than I thought, so you’ll have to wait a little bit. Now read a little about past and present, but get ready to be back tomorrow for new inspiration, resources, tutorials about everything design related! Thank you for being with us!
I started at August 30 by choosing domain name 1stwebdesigner.com – to choose this domain I wrote down full A4 paper with different names, phrases, adjectives. I really don’t know how good this domain name is by I got lucky and it was registered at first in 2003-2005 and then it was free for 3 years, when I picked it up. Interesting anyways – I found it out because of WayBackMachine (wrote a post about this webpage some time ago too – Wayback machine – history of Internet).
I guess that’s one of the reasons, why this blog ranked so fast and so well on Google search engine at first at least I guess so.
And yes, again – this is my first blog, so I think I am not optimizing and maintaining it good enough still, but at least trying my best. And you know – this blog is only half visible part of whole work, there must be done a lot of networking, marketing to get noticed in this already overwelmed blog world. I will be totally honest here with you (I won’t share only my income just now), so read and do the same if you want to get similar success as I am getting now.
Okay, let’s get started with visible part – blog, numbers and little statistics, shall we?
Public Stats:
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10,780 Alexa Rank
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18,538 Compete Rank
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950 Del.icio.us Bookmarks
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25,382 Inbound Yahoo Links
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14,666 RSS Subscribers
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5,174 Twitter Followers
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5/10 GooglePage Rank
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2,420 Technorati Ranking
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more than 400,000 unique visits in August 2009
Below you can see last year’s timeline – slowly, slowly, but all the time growing!
I think not bad first year achievements:
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Unique visits – 2,295,383
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Pageviews – 4,904,173 (almost 5 million pageviews wow!)
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2.14 average pages per visit
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2:25min average time on site
A little bit unbelievable for me, but trending is good!
Here you can see my top 10 traffic sources:
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Google (organic) – definitely my TOP 1 traffic source and by the way I am already sharing and will continue article series, explaining how did I achieve very high results in early days using simple SEO techniques. Start to read from this article – How To Create Popular Blog With Keyword Research, Heatmaps And SEO? and stay updated for future articles.
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Direct Traffic – my guess is that a lot of direct traffic comes from Stumbleupon someway.
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Images.Google - with simple SEO techniques also images can be nice traffic source.
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Smashingmagazine – this is the biggest design blog and somehow I got their sympathies and they often link to my articles. Thanks for that, I still haven’t done my guest article there, due to lack of time I guess. But this year I will definitely become their guest writer too.
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Good-Tutorials – tutorials are excellent traffic source but also article creation takes a lot longer and requires special knowledge and ideas.
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DesignFloat – did well in early days, now I really believe DesignFloat is past, if they will not rapidly change their approach.
Top 5 keywords:
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photo fun
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illustrator brushes
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high resolution wallpaper
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photo editing websites
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high resolution wallpapers
Top 10 Countries, where visits came from:
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United States
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United Kingdom
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India
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Canada
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Spain
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Germany
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Brazil
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France
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Japan
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Mexico
And about my blog.. Through this year there are 134 posts (+1 this one) written, where 6 of them are made by guest writers Srikanth AD (5 posts) and Andy Walpole (1 post). My biggest thanks to them for contributing and I hope in this year we will do even better. If you want to contribute too, read the details on Write For Us? section.
Blog also has 4 pages, 10 categories, 261 tags, 6,215 approved comments (a lot of them are trackbacks though) and 2,258 different nicknames were represented in the comments.
Huge thanks to my top 10 commentators:
- Sulumits Retsambew (81)
- joyoge designers’ bookmark (62)
- Ecommerce Website Design (44)
- Dicky (40)
- Luis Lopez (38)
- Johnson Koh (33)
- Stop Dreaming Start action (33)
- BunnygotBlog (24)
- Sulumits Retsambew show (23)
- Wallpapers (21)
And here are the most popular last year’s articles I’ve made:
Okay, so much about blog statistic numbers, but how did I manage to get that traffic? Ah..here comes not so visible part..social networking..
Did you notice, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Digg, Designfloat are in top10 traffic sources? And there are a lot more social networks in top 50 traffic sources.
And yes, again I started on social networks one year ago too and I’ll show you my accounts to show you at least idea how much work hides behind the scenes:
Twitter – I started to use Twitter just on September, when I had 60 followers.
Now… I have 5,131 followers, while I am following only 2,260 people (I follow only designers in the same niche – I add them directly or find through MrTweet service), through last year 1,405 tweets has been made. Twitter is not about how many followers you have, but how many targeted followers you can get. That’s my explanation about Twitter as my Top6 traffic source. You can view my Twitter account and follow me here.
StumbleUpon - I joined to StumbleUpon on Aug 5, 2008 and when I started to blog it was definitely my best traffic source for my new blog.
Now I consider myself as StumbleUpon power user with more than 29,000 favorites, 2200 reviews, 218 subscribers and 360 friends. A lot of effort and time has been put here, but believe me it’s paying off! You can view my Stumbleupon account here.
I joined Digg on August 28th, 2008 and at first didn’t know how to use it right and didn’t make any traffic at all. Now I have 138 active friends, 722 fans – who help to get my stories popular. I worked hard on my digg profile – almost 11,000 diggs, 100 comments and currently 7 stories I submitted made popular. Not really Digg power user, but trending is good and network also is very powerful. You can view my Digg profile here.
am Top1 user on Designbump now too, look at statistics and view my profile.
Top1 user here as well, look at statistics on the bottom of page and view my profile.
Gtalk IM – here I have more than 100 friends, whom I can ask to help me on Digg, Reddit – my networking list.
To get better I also joined to Yaro Starak’s Blog Coaching Program – I really have to give credits for my knowledge to him too!
I really didn’t want to impress you, but I just wanted to show at least part of the job behind the scenes. Really now I hope you will understand why 50% of my time goes writing article and other half 50% goes promoting, networking and sharing that one article over the blogosphere!
Right and finally few feedback articles I made this month..and screenshots from history:
The First Month Of 1stwebdesigner
First 132 RSS readers and ~45 000 unique visits!
The Third Month And Time To Talk!
1362 RSS readers and more than ~100, 000 uniques per month!
New Things Happening At 1stwebdesigner Website
And here you can find out what’s happened just month ago – big changes and still a lot of work must be done! But now I must say..redesign really put this site to another level!
What can I say, stay with us, because I promise – I will work even harder, I also learned a lot in this year – hoping you did too! Let’s get started – Year 2 stage comes! Cheers!
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web page designer
Posted 893 days ago 27Congrats, looks like you’ve had quite a bit of well deserved success! And it’s very kind of you to be willing to share all the things you did to achieve that success, much appreciated and great read!
Ben Rama
Posted 893 days ago 26congrats dainis thats good stats considering your at design school aswell like having two jobs
keep it up mate b
vtw gonna find your digg pg
.-= Ben Rama´s last blog ..An new site and design =-.
VOF
Posted 893 days ago 25Impressive stats you have! Good luck in your blogging!
.-= VOF´s last blog ..Old Fashioned Phone (Ai) =-.
Bariski
Posted 893 days ago 24Happy Birthday 1stwebdesigner. Hope you do more awesome in this coming year. Keep rocking!
.-= Bariski´s last blog ..Mega Giveaway From Best PSD to HTML Service Worth 897$ =-.
Dainis Graveris
Posted 893 days ago 23Ah, I will say just one, big HUGE appreciation thanks to you all! I cannot explain how much I evaluate you being here and keep coming back!
Stay with us in the next year too!
Thomson
Posted 893 days ago 20Happy Birthday! Congrats for achieving this within an year. I still remember the days when you send me the digg requests. You blog has come a long way from there.
Keep the good work. Looking forward for more impressive blog posts going in the future.
.-= Thomson´s last blog ..11 High Resolution Free Fabric Textures =-.
Dainis Graveris
Posted 893 days ago 21Ah, thank you..I still got friends who help me with digg..:) But at least slowly evolving – thanks, we’ll what will happen in future!:)
Satbir
Posted 893 days ago 19congrats and thanks for all the good stuff!
.-= Satbir´s last blog ..25 Incredibly Useful CSS Tricks You Should Know =-.
Adelaide DJ
Posted 893 days ago 18congratulations, some really nice stats there, stumbleupon is an amazingly powerful tool ime! twitter(at)locspoc
Grafpedia
Posted 893 days ago 17Congrats. Your blog is very useful and i read it each day. keep up the good work.
.-= Grafpedia´s last blog ..Design a breath-taking portfolio layout =-.
Donfuxx Web PM
Posted 894 days ago 16Happy Blog-Birthday Dainis!
Impressive how succesful your blog is already in the first year! Congrats!
cheers,
Thomas
.-= Donfuxx Web PM´s last blog ..The 15 Worst User Experience Design Mistakes Ever =-.
Luis Lopez
Posted 894 days ago 15Congratulations Dainis you already have an excellent blog in just one year, That’s awesome, and inspiring, in fact, I’d seen your articles about 1 and 3 moths when I started blogging and I have them as reference (now this one too) because one day I will do such statistics, “I hope so”.
Anyway, keep working as you are doing, because you have a great present and a most even excellent future for you and this blog, you can be sure.
Last, I can beleive I am in the top commentators as I really know and comment on your blog since some months.
Ps: I would like to see more about your personal projects.
Congrats again!!!
.-= Luis Lopez´s last blog ..500 Custom Greeting Cards Giveaway From Digital Room =-.
Dainis Graveris
Posted 893 days ago 22Thanks, Luis! I don’t know if blog is that good as you call it, but for one man’s job it’s pretty hard:) Sure, just work a lot and I don’t see why you couldn’t be even better!
Yeah, you are doing a lot of commenting – I really appreciate your good words and time!
About personal projects, I’ll see how I get my work managed and let you inform about future plans, I definitely want to evolve in the next year.
Javo
Posted 894 days ago 14Happy new year.
Many congratulations on the success and all the people and information that exists on your website.
Ben
Posted 894 days ago 13Great Job with your site! I visit it often and it is one of the best design blogs:)
.-= Ben´s last blog ..Nature Wallpaper Set 10 =-.
Frank Stallone
Posted 894 days ago 12Happy Birthday! =)
.-= Frank Stallone´s last blog ..What is your favorite TED Talk? =-.
Dave Sparks
Posted 894 days ago 11Some awesome stats there, really nice for you to share it.
Happy birthday to 1stwebdesigner!
Andy Walpole
Posted 894 days ago 10Congrats on your first birthday! Very impressive stats
.-= Andy Walpole´s last blog ..How to dramatically compress your CSS and Javascript files by using PHP =-.
aravind
Posted 894 days ago 9Congrats buddy… Keep rocking!
Iflexion
Posted 894 days ago 8Great work! And the right strategy of promotion. Blogging and social networks are inseparable.
Catalin
Posted 894 days ago 7Hey congrats man! You rock!!
.-= Catalin´s last blog ..The Most Creative 10 Websites and Apps Built on Top of Twitter =-.
Johnson Koh
Posted 894 days ago 6Congratulations Dainis! Keep rocking buddy~
.-= Johnson Koh´s last blog ..Interview – Georgio Xanthos =-.
Mars
Posted 894 days ago 5congratulations to 1stwebdesigner, you may have a good year ahead
.-= Mars´s last blog ..Talent Shout Business Consultancy =-.
Dicky
Posted 894 days ago 4Happy birthday to 1stwebdesigner! Through this blog i had learned a lot of things and i hope your hope continue to grow and also bring you more income :)
.-= Dicky´s last blog ..10 Easy To Implement Flash Based Mp3 Players For Your Website =-.
Sherry
Posted 894 days ago 3Congratulations & happy birthday~
love ur blog, thank a lot :)
Pablo Lara H
Posted 894 days ago 2Happy birthday and thank you for all the amazing resources.
Feliz Aniversario¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡
AREA 1
Posted 895 days ago 1Happy birthday! And great stats :p
Keep on doing a great job like you did until now ;)
.-= AREA 1´s last blog ..Bookmarks of August =-.