Tracking and monitoring your new website

It just occurred to me that while it is great that I'm getting new pageviews, and going down the road to getting new visitors, but I have to admit that Blogger's "Stats" section is pretty weak.  If I'm really going to analyze my traffic, Google Analytics is really the only way to go -- instead of getting very thin metrics, without even knowing what the search keywords that were used to find the site or exact referring pages, I'll get all of that info and then some.

To do this for Blogger, the steps to get started are very simple:

1. Sign up for a Google Analytics account.  (Duh!)
2. In the Blogger control panel, go to Settings<Other and then add your GA Web ID.
3. Click the Save button.

That's it!  You should immediately start seeing that data flow in in real-time.  I should mention though that for Analytics, you don't usually see most of your metrics until the next day at earliest.  Up to 139 pageviews for today so far, which is better than yesterday -- going to try and promote and SEO this site some more and get one more revenue source for today before I'm finished. One million dollars, here we come!  I'll know I'm on to something once I've made my first dollar -- that is where the rubber meets the road.  For now I'm going to simply try and fix all the little quirks that I'm seeing in this blog -- I'm going to turn the "About" section into a "Metrics" section so that you can follow my progress in terms of both eyeballs and money.  If you have any questions, comment and I'll be sure to respond!  All feedback good and bad welcome.  If you prefer to send me a private email, the.painted.llama@gmail.com is your best bet.

-Fred

Revenue Source #2!

Time to go for the low hanging fruit... let's look at ads!  Pageviews are really no good unless you monetize them.  So its time for:

Now the big question is, will it actually be approved?  Google is notoriously picky, and it is easy to be "Google slapped" ..  meaning Google does not like the way you blog, look, or smell and denies you putting up ads... as in forever.

No time to wait around!  There is all kinds of money waiting to be made, and I better do some research now and have a Google ad alternative if my account is denied.  As of this moment, I see the following message:

So I shouldn't just take it for granted that everything will work out.  No matter what I ultimately use, I'll post the result today!  More promotion ideas and a new revenue source coming up soon.  It has almost been 24 hours so far, and no money made yet, so time to get cracking.

UPDATE:  DENIED!  AdSense has "disapproved" the account.  No reason was given -- like I said, if Google doesn't like your smell, you are banned for life.  I will march on -- I'll find a new favorite ad source and update very soon with the results and how I did it.

Secondary Update:  Approved?  Apparently I did something stupid and did not link to an existing AdSense account.  I've linked accounts, and now it says that ads are set to "display" in the earnings section of Blogger.  I'm kind of stuck in this weird no man's land where ads are not appearing yet in the blog, but hopefully they will for users not coming from my IP.  I do see an earnings dashboard, so I'll hang tight and see what happens.  Pageviews keep going up and up, so hopefully over the course of the weekend I can at least earn my first penny.  For now, I'll hold tight and focus on working on fixing errors with this blog, and then SEO for the second half -- I'll setup new posts about the SEO process as it happens shortly.

Final Update:  Was ultimately approved, AdSense online.  At least I'll make a bit of coin for sure once I start the pageviews going.

-Fred

Promotion and Pageviews

So, I woke up this morning and saw the following:

Not very impressive, but a little bit impressive considering this blog has been online for less than 24 hours so far and I really haven't started seriously promoting the site yet or done any real SEO.  Marketing is definitely going to be integral to this little "free" enterprise, so from now on I'm going to be publishing pageviews on a daily basis as another little metric so that I can see how I'm going to reach my one million dollar goal and win this stinking bet I've made.

I've been promoting via G+, Facebook, and Twitter, which are the "big three" social media platforms, but will eventually spread the promotion love to other platforms.  I'll start looking at other promotion avenues today.  Someone recently messaged me saying that I have to get the SEO community involved, which I'll look into also.

So out of 113 pageviews, I've gotten one visit to my donation site which was just setup.  This gives me a good ratio to start assessing how many pageviews per donation view I'm going to get.  I'm going to start graphing this average daily and see how I can actually drive more eyeballs to that donation site -- tax-free income (at least under US law) is very appealing!

What's next today?  I've already figured out what my next revenue source is going to be, and I'm going to post it shortly.  Stay tuned!

-Fred

Revenue Source #1!

What to do for my first revenue stream?  So e-begging, aka donations.

Did some quick research online to find out what the best donation sites were, and setup a donation page at http://www.gofundme.com/44rdq4.

Seems a bit ridiculous, as it is a bit of a negative value proposition for the person (a.k.a. you, the reader) to donate to, but if this blog amuses you, donate -- it will add towards the total of this experiment and perhaps will make things interesting.  Maybe this is not so ridiculous.  Did you know that in the US, donations are not considered income and are completely tax free?  That'll sure be nice if anyone actually gives a thin dime to that page that was just setup.  That does it for today -- going to head off to sleep now and come up with a new revenue stream tomorrow that actually offers a naked exchange of value for the person providing money.


Revenue Update: 2013.08.29:

Go Fund Me Donation Site - $0

And that is it so far.  Going to turn this thing into a giant money siphon and circus for the general public and see what sticks!  Good night!

-Fred

First Post!

I *hate* first posts.. but because of laziness, I'll post this way anyways.  Someone bet me that it was impossible to make one million US dollars via a free blog, as it is "not a real business", and because "you know nothing about business."  This is very true!  You, the reader get to go along for the ride and watch me flounder as I prove them wrong.  Or, maybe I'll crash and burn and return nothing for my efforts!  No matter what happens, the outcome will be very entertaining to watch.  I'll be back in a bit with my first idea for a revenue stream.

-Fred