Monthly Roundup : Mobile Marketing Watch - The Pulse Of The Mobile Marketing Community

2007 Mobile Marketing Watch Review

Posted by victor on Jan 4, 2008 in Monthly Roundup | No Comments

Normally I do a Monthly roundup so with the new year I think it’s appropriate to post an annual roundup though I’ll file it under the monthly roundup tag OK? If you’re new to MMW then you don’t know that this blog is less than a year old and my involvement really got started in June. So, to that end here are some of the traffic stats and top stories. Oh and these aren’t huge numbers but so what. All blogs have one undisputable thing in common… we all started with no traffic or readers whatsoever.

Visits

March - 672
April - 3,140
May - 2,766
June - 3,814
July - 3,569
August - 3,943
September - 6,251
October - 9,485
November - 9,576
December - 10,180

Page Views

March - 3,379
April - 7,751
May - 6,881
June - 15,992
July - 21,343
August - 24,255
September - 38,581
October - 66,050
November - 57,676
December - 61,231

Referrals

March - 194
April - 525
May - 569
June - 891
July - 904
August - 1,133
September - 2,013
October - 4,444
November - 5,794
December - 6,178

Top 10 Referring Sites

Google - 6,399
Stumble Upon - 5,463
Windows Live - 2,660
Google Images - 613
Google Cache - 198
Yahoo - 196
MSN Search - 170
AOL - 35
Delicious - 25
Ask - 20

Other weird and interesting tidbits.

This blog was read from 109 different Countries which has enabled me to make new contacts in 9 different Countries.
Tuesday, on average is my largest bandwidth day.
Wednesday, on average is the day with the largest page view average.
The busiest reading hours are 5AM, 11AM-1PM and 11PM (note to self… post just before peak reading times to get the most eyeballs).
I published this blog post at 10:56PM. Come and get it
The Yahoo Slurp bot crawls this blog more than any other robot by far yet it doesn’t translate into noticeable traffic. Why is that Yahoo? Heck, I bought a Directory listing, show me some love will ya.
The average user session is 7 minutes 31 seconds.
80% of you are using a Windows operating system.
Less than 3% of you are using Linux.
1.5% of you are using an Apple (my Dad is one of em).
47% of you are using an IE browser.
38% of you are cruising with FireFox.
5,054 spam comments were stopped by the Akismet Spam Filter.
Because this post contains the word Vacation or Light Posting in the title the spam bots have relentlessly attacked it with 1,356 attempts at comment spam. All of it was automatically trapped by Akisment! Thanks Automattic!
In October I hired SoloStream to make this blog over, they did a superb job. Given the need I’d hire them again without question.
Counting this post there are now 263 blog posts and 326 comments.

Top 5 Pages Viewed

Things I didn’t do that I said I’d do.

Send Jeff Judge his Mobile Marketing Watch shirt. It’s sitting right in my Desk.
Review Giffs Mobile Messaging Service and Company.

Reasons why? My fault entirely, I’ll try harder to follow through better in 2008.

Lastly, as of this writing there are 306 readers. So thanks to you the reader, I really appreciate your support!

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Monthly Roundup November 2007

Posted by victor on Dec 2, 2007 in Monthly Roundup | No Comments

Goodbye November, hello December! November was a funky Month and I’m glad it’s behind me. I was extremely busy, Google dinged my page rank for no reason, the Berggren triumvirate (daughter, wife, me) all got colds and sick at one point or another. Oh, and my wife was bitten by a dog to top it all off.

I declared in November that I was going to lose 43lbs and so I’ve been spending 3 to 4 days a week with a personal trainer (my trainer) and running on my off days. I set a goal to get under 190lbs from my current weight of 232lbs. To make it happen I had to make some diet and time adjustments. My time with the trainer comes before anything that I’m not doing with my Family which means I’ll be a little slower putting words into the blog while I’m cranking out the push-ups and stuff.

If you’re looking to hire a personal trainer and you’re serious about sticking with it let me give you a tip on negotiating price. If you know for certain that you’re truly serious then talk to the trainer about bulk discounts before agreeing to price… like pre-pay for 35 to 50 sessions with 50% down and 50% at the half way mark. I saved $27 per session plus I took advantage of another special to snag 3 more free sessions.

The blog was slower than I expected but taking 9 days off had a lot to do with that. Considering that I was dinged by Google and only posted 18 times the blog actually showed growth in almost all categories with the exception of Google Referrals and Page Views. I normally hit nearly 40 posts per month. Here’s some of those details:

22% increase in unique visitors
13% decline in page views
30% increase in referrals (yeah baby, who needs Google page rank!)
26% increase in readers
20% increase in inbound links to the blog (over 1,100 now)

For some reason this page got stumbled hard last Month, it received 2,700+ stumbles. SadPanda says that I’m getting paid from JumpTap for this article. Your wrong SadPanda. JumpTap doesn’t know me from a can of paint and I don’t get paid to write about the companies I cover; says so right here under this little thing called Full Disclosure.

Here are the top 10 blog posts viewed in November.

November marked the first Month that my readers used FireFox more than Internet Explorer, 45.6% of you read my blog with FireFox and 41.9% of you are using IE. One of you is rockin the web and reading my blog with an Amiga system, cool!

Last but not least, thanks… to the readers. I really appreciate your continued readership!

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Monthly Roundup October 2007

Posted by victor on Oct 31, 2007 in Monthly Roundup | No Comments

Mobile Marketing Watch Readers Here we are again, end of the Month time. If you’re new to Mobile Marketing Watch then you don’t know that I take time each Month to thank you the reader for subscribing. My readership is up 43% from September and I really appreciate you finding a way to get me filtered out in front of the information overload that we’re all faced with, so thanks! When I took the blog over at the end of May there were 29 daily readers, today I have 212. It’s a start!
Across the board everything that I’m tracking is showing growth for me, the blog has not taken one step backwards on the traffic.

4,200 unique visitors 76% growth over September.
9,500 visits - 51% growth over September.
67,000 pages viewed - 70% growth over September.
4,400 referrals - 119% growth over September.

Google Referrals - October 2007 Google referrals account for 1,900 of the 4,400 which makes my Google referrals up 115% over September. Google, who I am angry with for unfairly accusing me of selling links is fueling my growth. I’m still dumping AdWords unless they restore my PageRank. I feel like they slandered me to a certain degree, I wonder how many other bloggers feel that way?

If you’ve read my About Page then you know I’m a software developer… I also like to write which is one of the primary reasons that I blog. I’ve got some interesting things that I’m beginning to collaborate on with a Mobile Marketing firm that I can’t elaborate on right now. I can tell you that I’ve been looking for a mobile type software development project that I can sink my teeth into and I’ve found something that should be pretty exciting so look for more details on that in November.

OK, I know you’re just dying to see my Top 10 read posts in October and here they are <insert drum roll please>:

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Monthly Roundup September 2007

Posted by victor on Sep 30, 2007 in Monthly Roundup | No Comments

It seems like it was just last week when I published the August Monthly Roundup. In actuality, that was 42 posts ago.

Like we do every Month it’s time to thank the readers for subscribing to the Mobile Marketing Watch blog, the readership grew 17% in September, so thanks for checking us out and providing feedback, your readership is greatly appreciated!

September 2007 Mobile Marketing Readers

We’ve seen the traffic increase every Month and September was no different, we realized growth across the board.

49% increase in unique visitors
58% increase in visitors to the site
57% increase in pages viewed
82% increase in bandwidth used by the site
81% increase in referrals from Google

I pay close attention to the referrals from Google (who doesn’t, right) and I’m happy see the strides we’re making there. Last Month we reported just under 500 Google referrals and in September we realized nearly 900 not counting Google Images or Google Cache.

Mobile Marketing Watch Google Referrals

While we’re at it, hat tips to BlogRush, Blog Catalog and Brad from Network World! Outside of the search engines these 3 sites sent me some noteworthy traffic in September. Oh and if you missed it, mobileStorm made some really nice comments about us, thanks!

Our top ten most popular blog posts in September 2007 were as follows:

The Starter Kit series continues to be popular, the two chapters mentioned in the top 10 list above received over 800 reads, naturally we’ll continue to add more to this series as time goes on in addition to opening up the series for other mobile marketers to publish their own Starter Kits here on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Changes At Mobile Marketing Watch

If you’re looking at the site in your web browser then you’re seeing big changes. We’ve been telling you that the brand is going to change and it did earlier this afternoon. LogoWorks was hired to create a new logo and SoloStream WebStudio was hired to build us a fresh and unique WordPress Template. Both companies did a great job and I’m happy with the way things have shaped up. SoloStream also upgraded our blog platform to the latest WordPress release which I wasn’t even expecting… a little extra value for no added charge, thanks Michael!

At some point in the fourth quarter I’ll be opening up some site wide sponsorship opportunities. These will be in the form of 125×125 pixel badges that will display on every page plus some other goodies.

Lastly, we’re looking to expand. I’m going through the process of establishing publishing fees, so if you know someone interested in getting paid or if you yourself are interested in blogging about things going on in the Mobile Marketing space and wanna get paid for it please drop me an email, I have nothing concrete yet and I am open to some sort of advertising share on top of the publishing fee.

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Monthly Roundup

Posted by victor on Sep 1, 2007 in Monthly Roundup | 1 Comment

Another Month is in the books! Last Month I started with these Monthly Roundups and I like the idea of posting how I’m doing and where I’m going so I hope you enjoy them.

So, first things first. Thanks to the readers. Without you folks I’d basically be talking to myself, I’m grateful, and it looks like I picked up 30 new readers in August so for those of you that are new, welcome to the Mobile Marketing Watch! It’s hard to believe but back in May I had something like 30 readers (max). This morning, FeedBurner is reporting that I have 126.

Mobile Marketing Watch Readers

Though it’s taking small steps, my web traffic here continues to grow. I’m starting to plug-in in some advertising and paid directory listings to see if I can begin to get eyeballs from new areas. You should see my Blog listed in the Best of the Web Blog Directory and the Yahoo Directory within the next few days.

Here’s how my last 90 days shakes out and I can’t complain, things are moving and that’s positive. In May the site had 808 unique visitors and that’s nearly doubled since that point.

Web Traffic Header
June, July and August Web Traffic for Mobile Marketing Watch

I’m starting to make some headway in Google too! Google, StumpleUpon and Yahoo are my three best referring sites and Google is really starting to show signs of growth.

Google Traffic Overview

I would highly recommend a Google Site Map for your Blog if you don’t already have one. Once I installed mine things started getting indexed right away and I’m even beginning to appear on the radar for such phrases as mobile marketing which returns nearly 300M results in Google. On Wednesday I had reached 29th position in a search for that phrase. I’m noticing that it changes several times daily though. Since Wednesday, I’ve been ~~bumped~~ humbled back to 71. If you’re running a Word Press Blog you can pick up a SiteMap Plugin here.

Lastly, here’s my top article roundup for August.

Enjoy your Labor Day Weekend everyone.

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Monthly Roundup

Posted by victor on Aug 1, 2007 in Monthly Roundup | 4 Comments

Wow, where’d the Month go? It’s been two Months since I took over Mobile Marketing Watch and I’ve been wanting to provide a Monthly roundup. I’ll do these at the end of every Month.

First of all, thanks to all of my readers for reading, engaging and sending me ideas! I must be getting something right or perhaps the jokes on me :) Either way, the traffic is growing, this site launched in February:

February Web Traffic for Mobile Marketing Watch

Here are the recent numbers, I know they’re not huge numbers but they’re moving upward and so I’ll take that.

May, June and July Web Traffic for Mobile Marketing Watch

I really tried to get more done this Month but vacation with my family was more important to me. In August though, I’ll be delivering more installments in the Mobile Marketing Starter Kit series. I received some really positive feedback on that and I’m looking forward to continuing with more mobile goodness.

My top 3 referring web sites in July were StumbleUpon, Google and BlogCatalog in that order and SU referred a number 50% greater than Google! Though I suspect that will change real soon now that I have my Google SiteMap in place. Oh and in full disclosing fairness, I have a sponsored listing in the Mobile Category on BlogCatalog. The top 3 referring movers and shakers (moving up) were Mobivity, NetVibes and RSSMicro… thanks for the link love folks!