Today celebrates one month of blogging for BigManta.com! As with many things, the getting started and taking your first steps are the keys to becoming successful. Looking back on the first 30 days I am very pleased with the results and look forward to growing the site further as each day progresses.
Since this blog is about how to make money or grow your business online, I thought sharing my results would help others who might be interested in the types of results to expect when you’re just starting out. After looking through my stats I have found that BigManta.com’s progress so far is similar to other sites or blogs I have started in the past.
An overview of the first 30 days of BigManta.com
While there are many things that tool place during the first month of blogging, I wanted to outline some of the major steps I took to get BigManta.com to its current state:
Purchased a Premium WordPress Theme
This site is powered by WordPress and one of my first steps was to purchase a premium theme in order to give it a professional design. There are dozens of premium theme designers and sites that you can choose from – but I purchased a theme and then modified it to suit my needs.
Set up plugins, social profiles, RSS, and mailing list
I am running about a dozen different plugins that allow me to have various features and functionality on my site that make administrating and managing my content easier, as well as optimizing for SEO and promotion. In addition to the plugins, I also set up a Twitter account, Feedburner (for RSS subscribers), and MailChimp for building a newsletter.
Content & Features
As the first month always tends to be the hardest to push through – I forced myself to push out a lot of content to get started (113 posts in the past month), I may have gone overboard on the content creation – but I’m pleased that the site has a lot of content when people come across it. Also, I integrated two daily features: “Quote of The Day” and “Tip of the Day.”
Looking in my Google Analytics reports, the 5 most popular articles by views are:
- The Top 3 Reasons Why People Fail at Making Money Online
- Making Money Online is a Marathon – Not a Sprint
- How to Create a Cartoon Pic of Yourself – 9 Cartoon Generators
- Create a Persona to Connect With Readers & Convey Personality
- 19 Affiliate Marketing Case Studies & Examples That Can Help You Get Started (or Further Your Knowledge)
Some of the most popular content was a little surprising and it’s interesting to see what people are visiting the site are interested in.
Promotion & Socializing
For promoting BigManta.com I have become somewhat active in a couple internet marketing forums that pertain to the subject that this site revolves around, as well as done about $20 in StumbleUpon advertising (which I will post on later), and have tried to interact with other bloggers and sites in my realm.
BigManta.com by The Numbers
Alright, on to some of the numbers and statistics. Since I am not currently focusing on monetizing the site, we’ll take a look at some of the traffic statistics and other performance indicators.
- Visitors - 976
- Page Views – 1,781
- Referrals from other sites – 568
- Search Engines – 231
- Direct Traffic – 177
- RSS Subscribers – 5
- Blog Posts – 113
- Comments - 71
Wrapping up the first month
So far, I am extremely pleased with how the site has come along in the first 30 days. As each week and month goes by, the results should get better and better in terms of revenue, visitors, and overall performance of the site. I would like to thank those of you who have helped promote the site and please feel free to tell your friends, subscribe to my RSS feed, or join my newsletter to stay up-to-date. 
Going forward there are a few things that I’m working on to enhance the site (a professional logo, enhanced features, etc.), so be sure to check back often!
Additional resources
One of the main reasons I put this post together was to share with others a little insight into what they can achieve in a month’s time. I’ve also collected a few other posts of people that recapped their first month of blogging. Hopefully, with these examples, you can see the type of results that you might be able to achieve in just one month’s time. But please keep in mind that each site and topic is different, so your results can vary wildly compared to mine and other sites:
- First Month Blog Stats, My One Month Anniversary
- My 1 Month Old Blog’s Journey So Far
- Eight Things to Avoid in Your First Month Blogging
- First month blogging
- 10 Things I learnt from my first month of blogging
- My First Full Month Blogging: Special Thank You Video And Complete Stats!
Let me know what you think, and if you have just started out it would be great to hear how you’re coming along as well. Leave a comment below so that others who have just started a blog might benefit from hearing your results, or if you have any questions – please feel free to ask.
Hi BigManta,
Keep up the good work and great content. I enjoy reading your stuff.
Cheers,
Place For Bloggers
Thanks a lot, it’s amazing how fast time flies!
I appreciate you dropping by, and think you have a great site as well! Thanks again for the suggestions and comments along the way too, it’s a great motivator
Wow, I actually cannot believe that you wrote 113 posts in your first month.
Great start though, you’ve got some decent content there, that made me stick around and read for a while.
Keep up good work and thanks for including my link.
I know, it’s kind of ridiculous – but I wanted to fill the blog so it had other things when people were visiting the site and the daily quotes and tips inflated that number as well – so some are very short posts.
Thanks for the compliments and I’m more than happy to share your link with visitors.