Finances & Money

Thanks for the Hits! June 2008 Traffic and Referral Numbers

June was a rough month for traffic, mostly due to summer vacations kicking in. But I don’t mind because I’m still maintaining readership, advertising revenue and a few decent articles here and there 🙂 Also, I still have over double the traffic compared to June 2007.

According to Statcounter:

June 2007: Hits: 11,911; Pageviews: 18,853

June 2008: Hits: 24,837; Pageviews: 36,475

My hits are down about 8,000 compared to last month, and down 20,000 pageviews, but I was also pretty low-key during June because of all our home renovations. I thank all my guest writers for their contributions. You really kept this site going!

Making Some New Friends

Not all was a loss in June, as I made 5 other new friends and we even formed The Personal Finance Network (PFN for short)! We’ll be sharing ideas and have group writing projects, so keep a lookout for the first one coming soon!

Subscribers

I’ve maintained a level between 1650-1800 subscribers throughout June, but I don’t think I’ve been back up above 1800 all month (I’m too lazy to look at the Feedburner stats). I had hoped to see more of a jump with my book giveaways, but I got the same number of entries via email as through regular comment contests so I’ll probably stick with the subscription method.

Top Keyword Searches

The searches that bring people to my site haven’t really changed since last month. However, “Millionaire by Thirty” was added, while “Clothing Donation Value” (or variations thereof) have dropped from the list since tax time is over:

1. Free Laptop Nation
2. Free Laptop
3. Car Fax or “Free Carfax Report” (although I’ve never written about one)
4. Clever Dude
6. Technical Service Bulletins (or TSBs)

Traffic Sources

At a high level:

Search Engines: 46.17%

Referring Sites: 36.88%

Direct Traffic: 16.91%

Search engine traffic went up about 11% from last month, and I’m seeing the results in my Adsense earnings. If you didn’t know, search engine visitors are the ones who click through on the ads, at least compared to regular readers/subscribers.

Top Personal Finance Blog Referrers

So which Personal Finance site sent the most traffic my way in June? How did they compare to last month’s rankings? Well, you’ll see last month’s rank after the new rank in (). If they weren’t ranked last month, you’ll see a (-). As a note, I’m not considering major multi-author blogs like Smart Spending or Lending Club in this list (see the next section) as I consider them more “commercial” sites:

1. (1) My Money Blog
2. (2) Five Cent Nickel
3. (10) The Simple Dollar
4. (3) Frugal Dad
5. (9) Free Money Finance
6. (8) I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…
7. (4) Cheap Healthy Good
8. (-) My Good Cents
9. (5) Mighty Bargain Hunter
10. (-) Quest for Four Pillars and (-) No Credit Needed (tie!)

How many hits does it take to be the top personal finance blog referrer? 565 (much less than last month’s #1). How about number 2? Well that one’s a littler easier at just 348.

Also, congratulations to 2 new entries: My Good Cents and Quest for Four Pillars (a fellow PFN member) are top-10 referrers for the first time! And thanks to all of the 476 referring sites (seriously). I can’t believe this site has that large of a reach!

Worldwide Reach

I first blogged about how many countries have seen CleverDude.com in early June. Since then, I’m able to knock off the following countries from those who haven’t witnessed the power of the dude:

• Uzbekistan
• Tajikistan
• Guyane
• Mauritius (uh, who? Welcome anyway)

Top Non-PF Blog Referrers

Here are the search engine, group blog, non-PF blog and other referrers for June. For the first few sites, their total traffic is in parentheses:

1. Google Search (41%)
2. Direct Traffic (17%)
3. Bad Control (4.42%) – This was basically a repost of an article at LendingClub, but I’m not sure how this referrer got so much traffic. Either way, I appreciate the referrals!
4. Google Reader and Homepage
5. MSN Smart Spending
6. Lending Club Blog
7. Yahoo! Search
8. AOL Search
9. StumbleUpon
10. Lifehacker

Again, thanks to all my readers, fellow bloggers, commenters and scrapers for making this site such a success!