The Open Source Marketer

Which is better, BlogRush visitor traffic or StumbleUpon? This is a good question and one that has several possible answers. Let’s look at the traffic types for both visitor sources and then compare them both to get a better understanding.

BlogRush was launched over the weekend and I signed up as soon as I heard it was open. Immediately I started seeing visitor traffic to my blog, OpenSourceMarketer.com. The result was a sharp increase in mailing list subscribers, RSS subscribers, and blog comments. In fact, I am continuing to get visitors from the BlogRush widget on the blogs, though it has slowed down just a bit. Some of the slow down might be due to the overwhelming response that BlogRush has received. I bet John Reese didn’t anticipate such a great response, even though he founded the project.

BlogRush has enjoyed great success so far because it is context sensitive so it display blog posts from other blogs that are relevant to the content on the page. That means if your blog is part of BlogRush then your blog posts will show up next to relevant keywords on another blog. Ultimately that means that if someone is looking for information on a specific topic and they are searching blogs for that information then a link to your blog posts are going to show up near those relevant keywords. This is how Google runs their entire Adsense program so you know this is a proven method of getting readers to click on links. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay gang, BlogRush has been online for about 60 hours now and apparently the response has been overwhelming. John Reese, the founder of BlogRush, had to release a statement to let all the site members know why they don’t have stats in their members area. These stats were suppose to show up after 24-48 hours. But as of this writing they still are not available.

So, what’s a blogger to do if BlogRush doesn’t produce stats? Well, no worries. From the beginning I have been using StatCounter.com and Google Analytics to track all blog activity.

You might be asking, “Why use two separate analytics tools?” And the answer would be, because not all analytics tools are created equal. Google Analytics is a very useful tool that has slick reporting features, but the numbers are only updated on a 24 hour cycle and sometimes you just want a quick look at how things are going on your site. This is where statcounter.com comes in.

StatCounter.com offers a free account that lets you track multiples sites. The stats are constantly updated so you get more of a real time view of what is going on with your blog and all the common information you are concerned with as a blogger is presented right at the top.

So, if you don’t want to wait for BlogRush to work out their reporting issues, then visit StatCounter.com and setup a free account. The process takes two minutes. Put the tracking code in the footer of your blog and your done. You will have stats to look at within minutes, as long a there is traffic on your site.

So what’s next? If you are getting traffic to your blog then today should be about creating more quality content and working on ways to reader conversions. Use the stats from statcounter to understand where people are coming from, how long they are staying, where they are leaving from, and what keywords they are using to find you. All these things create a story and that story should end with a desired result that makes your online business stronger.

Enjoying the BlogRush,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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