This week a small change caused me to go back and have a look at the growth of this website. It was a small change, good only in a geeky way: My google page rank went up to 5.
I know, I know – not very interesting. However it caused me to have a look at the Analytics page (is there anything Google doesn’t do brilliantly?) and see who’s visiting and why. Since the WBC the readership jumped up, and I was pleased to see we had retained quite a few of those readers – about 10,000 more visits a month in fact, pushing me up to an average of about 25,000 a month. This seems a lot, but then I don’t really know what to compare it to except what I had before.
One thing I’ve noticed is that my higher page rank in google means that when you search for roasters or products that I’ve rambled on about, my blog is often on the first or second page of results. Not sure how I feel about this, though I do notice a lot of clickthroughs from these sorts of google searches.
People have asked if I’ve considered making money from it, and I have. However I am a long way from generating enough traffic to seriously bother my bandwidth allowance (for which I pay very little) and whilst this may not be the most beautiful site it would look much worse with ugly ads running through it. Maybe when I hit 100,000! I’ve had occasional e-mails from people asking if they could pay me to promote something on here and I’ve turned them down. What started as a place to post thoughts and progress back in 2004 seems to have become something else, and I confess that keeping it interesting does play on my mind from time to time.
To try and do just that I am hoping for a series of guest posts over the coming months, as well as some more trip reports from my future travels.
Also despite never having to compete again my brain hasn’t quite shut down on the signature drink front so I will probably continue to post various ideas and recipes in the future. There will also probably be the odd article on science-type stuff whenever I get long enough sat down with a serious book or two (I am thinking plane flights probably!) though if there are any requests I’d be interested in hearing them.
Overall I just want to say thanks for reading, and in many cases contributing. Whilst this isn’t really a community, it has been great that so many people have argued, corrected, schooled and helped me over the years. I hope you keep coming back.
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7 Comments
James,
Like most bloggers I’ve done the ‘what if’ about money making from the blog, and yes, like you that might come at some point in the future, but there is something refreshing about not doing it as well and I have found that I have learnt an awful lot more than I imagined that I could from the comments of readers – and from blogs like yours. Thanks for all the hard work.
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James,
I’ve been appreciating your blog for a while and, although this isn’t completely related to your post, was wondering what your aeropress method is. You seem to use it a lot and I was wondering if you had any hints and tips for us now that it’s year on or so? Not to promote the aeropress or anything of course…
James too
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quoting;(is there anything Google doesn’t do brilliantly?)
well, coffee as you do James!
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highfive.
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innit.
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Hello the post is stunning.
I like your site..
Thanks
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you can use small ads if it give you good return , but if it hurts your readers please don’t use it .
i heard that Google punish sites which sell much links ” most sell links if they have high rank ” so i advice you not do this .
if you have good readers , so don’t bother of google and page rank because we are here .
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