Since the middle of this year, I have been thinking about starting a finance blog. And exactly two months ago, I handed almost $200 bucks of cash to Bluehost to create this website. This was my first attempt at blogging and I had to justify my purchase to Mrs 15HWW. After all, I could have easily opted for free alternatives with BlogSpot & WordPress, right?
I bullshitted my way through. I told her that readers wouldn’t want to be spotted reading a blog with misleading chat-line ads showing pretty and scantily clad women being just a call away. I also reassured her that in time, the whole Singapore would be reading this blog (reach for the stars, man!) and only a self-hosted blog would suffice for this new hobby of mine.
So after two months (and just nice, 30 posts & pages), here’s the report card to the Mrs.
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With WordPress, I am provided with a nice little statistics page that tells me the number of people visiting each day, how they got here, where they came from and which articles they have been reading. So if you’re guilty about stalking me, don’t. There’s a good chance I am doing more stalking. Oops. There was a period (2-3 weeks ago) when I was pretty much addicted to that page and refreshing it every hour. I have gotten past this particular OCD though.
Here’s some snippets of this page and my comments on them:
Viewership
General
- Really close to 10,000 views in total after 2 months
- 427 views on the day with the highest traffic (25th Aug – 160 links from thefinance.sg)
- 317 views yesterday
Top Referrers
- More than 2,000 from thefinance.sg. Really grateful to Derek for publishing my posts on his popular blog aggregator. It’s more than fair to say that at least 50% of my viewership came from this channel. And I am proud to be part of this community.
- Second on the list is foreverfinancialfreedom.blogspot.sg with almost 300 clicks. He’s probably the first blogger to add my blog to a blogroll and his is really comprehensive and well-updated.
Search Engine Terms:
- Telok Blangah Parcview (or similar variants) is 1st in the list with about 15 searches that led to my site. Seriously, I can’t believe it’s not “15hourworkweek” or “15HWW”. There’s nothing on “early retirement in Singapore” too.
- This metric doesn’t really tell the full story since there’s 112 (>70% of searches) classified under “unknown search terms”
Views By Countries:
- Obviously, Singapore’s tops with >90% of the views.
- Although I have had 247 views from Americans, there’s only 1 coming from my beloved Canada!
- Also interestingly, Egypt is 9th on this list!
Top 3 Posts/Pages
1. 3 Reasons Not To Pay Off Your Mortgage Early – 546 views
2. My Passive Income – 520 views
3. Passive Income Update – 501 views
Number 2 and 3 are almost exactly talking about the same stuff. I will look at it from a positive angle and take it that many people are interested to know how near (or far away) I am to early semi-retirement. =p
Point taken that most people are interested in articles that are directly useful to readers. (POSB article was a close 4th.)
Bottom 3 Posts (excluded pages like Disclaimer & Contact Me)
1. Recording Your Expenses – 99 views
2. Boglehead Or Buffettology? Do Both! – 102 views
3. Mr Fredricksen Should Have Saved More For His Trip! – 127 views
Let me reiterate that learning to record your expenses is one of the most important steps towards financial independence. The act in itself is likely to reduce one’s expenses.
From the moment I clicked on “publish”, I knew that I was being too harsh on Mr Fredricksen, who was such a lovely old man. (Hidden Agenda: Perhaps by putting these 3 posts here, more people would read them too!)
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To be honest, Mrs 15 HWW isn’t even half as concerned as me about readership. There really isn’t a need to report to her. I just wanted to point out that the main thing that causes a blog like this to sizzle or fizzle is readership. If readers click “like” on my facebook, it does provide me with further motivation to write more articles. And if you share articles you liked on facebook, twitter, or any other social platforms that you are a part of, this can potentially start a positive cycle and bring in new readers.
After all, if readers aren’t important to me, I might as well have written a personal financial diary instead.
Hi 15 HWW,
No wonder your blog “looked” different when I first came here.
I stumbled onto “free” Blogger as I’ve read it’s the easiest to “play” with 🙂
“Free” was a great inducement!
LOL!
Hi SMOL,
Haha. Is that a “veiled poke”?
I thought $200 bucks was ok since I get to use the domain for 3 years. Perhaps it also acts as a pre-commitment device to sustain it longer than a 3 minute passion.
But on hindsight, maybe I should have just saved the money and go with something “easier to play with”.
Oh, you committed with 3 years of hosting and domain. Towards the end of year 3 you may be interested in doing your own? Will need to renew the .com domain name, only fee.
I use a subdomain, free hosting customized over colorlib’s theme. The slightly tricky bit is point correctly to the .com domain. Otherwise importing/transferring past blog posts, installation of theme, getting plugins is fine.
Yup first time will be time-consuming, so its money spent that saves you time. To use any of Colorlib’s themes you would need access to a host web server.
Can help if you don’t wish to spend a second time, f.o.c hosting forever.
I only use a subdomain which is for a non-published blog.
Hi 15HWW,
Glad to know that my site has achieve its goal of helping you reach out to more readers and I believe readers also stand to gain from your valuable insights.
The hardest part comes now and that is to maintain it. You may meet several hiccups along the way, and if you do, there is a whole community of financial bloggers which you can count on.
Wishing you many years of good returns.
Cheers!
Hi Derek,
Thanks for your encouragement and indeed, fellow financial bloggers have been really kind dropping comments (easily the majority) in my humble blog. It’s fun and stimulating to qie cuo with so many of these qian beis too.
Hi HWW
Yay, I am 2nd on the highest list of your reader. Do I get a prize?? 😀 😀 hehee just kidding.
I really thought your blog is well maintained and your posts are well written (in fact all of them) and it is much enjoyable to read them whether at home or at work (uhm uhm…). I hope you keep maintaining the standards high because that’s what you are capable of.
Looking forward to more posts from you 🙂
Regards
B
Hi B,
First of all, thanks for the glowing endorsement!
Perhaps when we reach the FIRE stage, I can treat you to a cup of coffee in the late afternoon on a chill weekday. =p
Hi L,
Apologies for the mistake. I received quite a bit of spam during this period of downtime and wrongly assumed that it was one of them.
Thanks for the suggestion and your comment pointing out my error. Will definitely go through your suggestion when my subscription expires?
Have to admit that I really ain’t really savvy with the tech aspects of running and designing a blog. Probably only know the very very basics at this stage.
Hi you may delete off above comment, it wasn’t meant to get too carried away. It came off a bit too strongly posting online.
Sometimes I know it isn’t hard & happen to write it but its ok since I know not everyone has an interest.
Hi L,
It’s ok. To be honest, I don’t really find it that strong. Thanks for the heads-up again. =)