A Look at ChurchCrunch Stats: Site Usage, Visits, PVs
To the left is the analytics from December 31st, 2008 to today, December 31st, 2009.
When I look at these numbers I’m honestly a bit disappointed, for a number of reasons.
The first and biggest is that I had as one of my goals for 2009 the goal of breaking one million pageviews. As you can see, I didn’t even get half.
I severely underestimated the growth pattern that I had hoped to accomplish and I have already begun and calculated the reasons why.
The most significant “issue,” if you want to call it that, has been the difficulty of sustained content generation. When I had done my market research and taken a look at other blogs within this field, most of which were secular, I extrapolated my estimate to what I thought was reasonable. The biggest part of the calculation was simply the number of posts per day that could be generated. The mark was 5, and honestly, that was a bit hard to sustain, especially when I’m the primary author and content generator.
My hope was that I’d be able to gather more guest posters in an increasing fashion over the calendar year and establish a robust rotation. I was unable to accomplish this goal as well, and as a result I couldn’t personally continue to pump out 5+ posts a day.
What I did, though, was become more strategic with my publishing and looked at my key metrics for posting times and other factors. It helped a good deal but there was really no opportunity for recovery.
Humbling, to say the least.
I’ve adjusted my goals for 2010, but in a little bit of a different fashion, and we’ll see how this year rolls out.
How has the year looked for you in terms of traffic visits, pageviews, etc? I find it interesting that even though I want to be a champion for openness and transparency, I still get this little pit in my stomach when I start sharing numbers. Maybe it’s my pride or something.
Your turn.
Buzz it!
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27 Responses to “A Look at ChurchCrunch Stats: Site Usage, Visits, PVs”
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What about RSS hits? not sure if that factors into your stats anywhere… if not then there might be a few more hits to be counted…
Got a post about that, in part, tomorrow.
John
Moar guestposts.
Nao.
–
Still, you know your site pwns. It just doesn't quite pwn as hard as you'd like it to. But I doubt there'd be a metric you could reach that would result in satisfaction. You'd always be pushing for more, and higher levels of efficiency/excellence.
As you should be. But your site is extremely important, and has a huge impact on the people that you reach directly and through 2nd and 3rd (and 27th) degrees. And those aren't measurable.
that is true. i like pushing hard. i'm really just reporting a lot here… and i'm not emotional about any of it. it is what is, right?
thanks for your support!
i've been blogging for a year in January…i looked back and September was my biggest month. But one of my main goals is to blog consistently on a schedule. The second is to start paying more attention to measurement.
word up. so how you measuring….?
I agree with Danny, and also: 5 posts/day is crazy. Even for you to edit/moderate 5 posts/day from guest posters would seem suffocating (IMHO, maybe it isn't..).
But thanks for what you've got rollin.
suffocating for the readers or editors?
no not readers, just the editors.
haha. k.
John, I would bet that if you had a room of people who blog the top thing that they would all like to change is their frequency of blog posts. Its a tough balance to feed content to your community, live life, etc, etc.
Your posts on your GA stats have been great for me. Really got me thinking about my stats, what I am doing right, what I am doing wrong. I like to think that if I can provide something to one person that they value, gets them thinking, then all of the work is worth it. You did that for me, thank you!
sure thing bro!
it takes a lot of thinking and consideration to find the best frequency and schedule.
I just started my site in October, and have been very surprised by the number of visits/page views thus far. I had no expectations going in, however, so everything is a positive at this point.
I would like to get a more consistent schedule going for it, though….but not 5 a day.
I also echo the gratitude for this site as the comments above. 2010 will be huge…
I started to "seriously" blog around August and have seen my readership grow from about 40 visitors a day to on average 200 visitors. I have been happy about this, mainly because I am learning so much new stuff daily and am finding more opportunities to connect with others and it has only really been for the past 5 months.
I have set the goal of 1 post each day and then a resource post in the afternoon. I have been able to meet this goal regularly with some exceptions. I do not know what my goals are for 2010. Still working on them.
Obviously I wish I had 3000 people visiting my blog a day, but that is just not possible right now. I am young and have a young blog. Of course I would be lying if I did not care about numbers. But I am excited for the conversations that come with the numbers.
you're killing it son! also… is your goal 2 a day or one..? (i suck at math).
I didn't do a good job of explaining.
It is a regular post in the morning.
Afternoon there is a resource type post (this is now moving from everyday to 3 times a week).
So two in total. Maybe more if people were looking for that, but I am no John Saddington or Carlos Whittaker.
John, I think you're doing a fantastic job here. Even at 2-3 posts a day you are probably the most prolific non-full-time blogger I know of.
One thing I thought of… IntenseDebate comments are submitted via AJAX, right? So, they probably aren't counted as pageviews, and your pageview numbers would be quite a bit higher without ID, right?
i'm actually ditching ID in the new redesign.
shhhhhhhhh. don't tell anyone.
boo
I think it's touch when you're competing fairly directly with sites like ReadWriteWeb and Mashable. I'm sorry you didn't reach your goals for '09. I know you've put a lot of effort into this. Those of us who do show up appreicate it. As was already said, you're probably the most prolific, non-full-timer I've seen, especially in Christian circles. Keep it up, and let me know if there's anything I can to do help.
-Marshall Jones Jr.
oh, well, i'm actually not competing with them at all. I wouldn't even consider this blog in the same universe.
Thanks for deconstructing the web stats here. I do wonder about how people come up with their goals — when is a goal over-ambitious and possibly unrealistic, versus when a goal is more reasonable and achievable?
I confess I'm no expert at goal-setting.
Big hairy audacious goals is one thing; one that's arbitrary and a wild guess would seem to be a whole 'nother category.
Do you have any tips on how to set a goal in a way that it's not a big letdown and disappointment, yet not setting one too low that it's "meaningless" ?
DJ. that's a great question and one i'm not sure i can answer! i typically tend toward goals that I can't achieve….
One tip though i have is asking for help from others. i ask my friends and my wife for suggestions or \”modifications\” to my goals.
"I find it interesting that even though I want to be a champion for openness and transparency, I still get this little pit in my stomach when I start sharing numbers." Numbers aren't so much a concern with me – for now – as it is with content. When I started blogging, I wanted to be much more open about things that I believe and that I struggle with; however, at least once a week whenever I hit publish, I get that same nervous feeling. But I push through it and usually those posts generate the most conversation.
All this to say that I totally get where you're coming from with the nerves even if it's for different reasons, but I don't think anyone that follows this site would say it's been anything less than successful.
Okay, so you didn't get 1 million page views. Not yet, at least. But what about the 8-Bit Network? What about new properties you're getting ready to launch? What about the guest posters that you *did* have? What about the ChurchCrunch birthday party and all that showed up for it?
I know the point of this post was just to do a post-mortem on your goals throughout the year specifically with respect to numbers and that's cool. Just don't let the numbers cast a gigantic shadow over the other huge things that have come as a result of the 400,000 you got this year.
And if you really want, I'll write a script for the site that'll loads views via proxy and get that 1 million for you..
haha. just like techcrunch and CNN… auto-refresh fail.
thanks bro. it's been a good year. looking forward to this one…!