Monthly Traffic Report: April/May
By in
April Vs May
So April is when I actually published this site. I had the idea to do in-depth reviews of the first episode of podcasts, but had nowhere to do it.
After creating the site, I only reviewed one show. It was The Citrus Room podcast. In April, that got 7 views. My homepage got around 13. In all, I got 3 visitors and about 23 views. I’m sure these numbers include me because I kept testing the site.
Anyway, fast forward to May and in total, I got 186 visitors and 238 views. These numbers are a little skewed (see explanation below), but still accurate. It also reflects that I’m doing something right.
Where All My Traffic Comes From
My primary source of traffic is Twitter. It is currently the ONLY place I advertise this site. When I started, I thought to myself “why not go where the podcasters go”. I have an IG account, but I haven’t posted anything yet. What I’m trying to do is nail down my Twitter strategy first and THEN move to other platforms. So that’s why it’s always a pleasant surprise when I see traffic coming in from non-Twitter sources. In May, I had traffic come from Twitter only though. It wasn’t until this month (June) that I saw traffic from Facebook (I’ll talk about that next month).
The Power of a Retweet
So as I mentioned, I was able to get 186 visitors to my site in May. The bulk of that was from a retweet. Lily from the At Home With podcast read my review and retweeted it to her over 200K followers. When I saw the numbers rising that day, I was like “wait…what!?”. I was stupid excited! I didn’t get an email subscriber or much activity outside of that one post, but I’m OK with it because at least people were visiting the site. That means people took an interest in what I was writing and felt compelled enough to click something for more details. This is exciting to me!
What I learned
I learned a few things in May.
1 – A Retweet is valuable – I’m aiming for RTs on Twitter. It’s a nice way to drive traffic because I can get in front of an audience by way of someone they already pay attention to. I typically just write the post and tag the creators of the podcast when I promote it on Twitter. If I wanted to be more intentional, I could say “can you retweet this if you found the review helpful”, but then I’d feel like THEY feel like my review was self seeking. In other words, I didn’t do the review because I genuinely wanted to help, but instead I just wanted retweets. So, for now, I’m not gonna ask. I’ll just review, publish and tag.
2 – I can’t leave people hanging – When I got all that traffic from Lily’s retweet, I noticed everyone was just reading that post and leaving. I didn’t have anything for them to do once they got to the bottom of the post. It wasn’t until the initial traffic from the retweet had died down that I decided to add “would you like your podcast reviewed” to the bottom of the post. I linked it to my email page (I don’t think that was a good idea, because my email page talks about MORE than just getting a podcast reviewed). It didn’t get any clicks so there’s even more to think about there. Did they read that far down the page? Are they not aspiring podcasters looking for some help? Was my copy not compelling enough? Was I not aggressive enough? I don’t know, but the beauty of doing all this on the internet is that I can test test and test some more.
3 – I have to figure out my audience – I need to figure out who the people are that visit my site. Do they fit in my target audience? The reviews I do specifically serve those that have already taken the step to start a podcast. Those folks are in the “post-launch” phase. What I do is come in post-launch to help them refine their show. With that said, I don’t know if that’s the primary person I should be serving. Should I also serve the person who hasn’t published an episode yet? These are the “pre-launch” folks. I wonder if those in pre-launch phase would read the reviews for help or would they prefer a stand-alone resource (example: 10 of the best beginner microphones). I basically need to figure out if I should serve those in pre-launch or post-launch phase. Update: I got some advice from Pat Flynn. He said I can absolutely serve two markets. He also said that both markets are roughly the same, but one is further along than the other.
My Plans for June
1 – I’m going to create a basic resource. Something a pre-launch podcaster could use to prepare for their first episode. It shouldn’t take long to create, but it should be something that provides value. It has to pack a punch in a short amount of time. I’m also going to make it 100% free simply because I feel like I need to prove my worth before I can start asking for email addresses. I can come up with something for a post-launch podcaster at a later time, once I start coming up with ideas AND I see a need for it. Right now, I’m serving post-launch folks with in-depth reviews. Actually, if I create this resource for pre-launchers, after they’ve used it as a guide to publish their first episode, I can provide value with a review!
2 – I’m going to post more reviews than I did in May. I published 5 reviews in May so once I hit 6 in Jun, I’ll hit my goal. Too easy.
3 – I definitely need to blog more. I have a TON of blog ideas written down in Google Keep. I’ll pull two of them off the shelf and get them published.
Hope this helped
If you’re someone trying to provide a service online with the hopes of eventually earning an income from it, I hope you found this helpful. I enjoy helping folks out, but I can only do so much right now. Only 5 reviews in all of May!? If I did this full-time, I could help WAY more people, but the only way to get to full-time is to earn enough money outside of my day job.
I’ll continue to post these reports monthly along with strategies and processes that I employ. If you think that’s something you might be into, follow me on Twitter or join my email list so you’ll know when it drops.
Thanks for reading.