This post was written by Jennifer
My Blog’s Stats After Adding A Co-Blogger
My previous two posts about co-bloggers covered the potential positives and negatives of having a co-blogger. Today I’ll share some results.
Background:
The blog I’ve been discussing in the last two posts is Tree Hugging Family. It launched in August 2007, so it’s somewhat new. Being a green family blog, it’s in a smaller niche, then say, pop stars or tech. Being in a smaller niche was one reason I was worried about getting a co-blogger; I wasn’t sure a co-blogger would reap large enough traffic benefits to make a difference.
I blogged at THF solo for about 5.5 months and then decided to find a co-blogger. Peggy has been co-blogging with me since February.
Stats:
THF is a network blog, so I won’t be giving away exact stats, since it doesn’t belong to me. That said, I figured the best way to illustrate the difference between me blogging solo vs. the co-blogger addition was to create a graph. I only included unique visitors and page views to keep it tidy.
Tree Hugging Family Stats: August 2007 - April 2008
From August to January, I did a decent job growing both traffic and unique visitors; even though I was blogging solo. However, in February when Peggy started, you can see a sharper increase in traffic. Obviously in March and April traffic and unique visitors have increased extremely fast - faster than that slow and steady pace I was moving at.
Would THF have gotten this much traffic without a co-blogger? Sure eventually, but I wouldn’t even be close yet. That is, unless I became super blogger. The thing about having a co-blogger is you’ll have a lot more posts. Not simply because you add a second blogger either. I post more now that Peggy’s co-blogging. Mainly because since we have two of us it seems lame to not aim for top stats, and two her posts keep me motivated. I’d feel like a slacker if Peggy was posting 3 times a day to my one. It’s not a contest by any means, but it is a motivator.
Post & comment frequency:
In September, blogging solo, I had about 34 posts and 152 comments. This was typical of a solo THF month for me.
In March, blogging with Peggy, we had around 115 posts and 561 comments. One variable in March is that a contest we held got 193 comments, so comments may be inflated, but had Peggy not been co-blogging, who knows if I’d have had the time to even run the contest.
Pay differences:
Since we do split traffic bonuses (see this post) my initial monthly pay at THF decreased. Now, my pay is almost back to where it was previously, and since traffic is growing faster, soon I’ll be making more at THF with split pay, then I would have been blogging solo and receiving all the pay.
For me adding a co-blogger was the right choice for this particular blog. It’s been nothing but beneficial. Hopefully, you can take these results, plus the positives and negatives and decide if one of your blogs could benefit from a co-blogger.
What’s next?: Peggy has nicely agreed to write a guest post for this co-blogger series. She’s going to talk about what it’s like to be hired onto an established blog as a co-blogger. Her perspective is really interesting because not only was she coming into a network blog as a co-blogger, but this was also her first network blogging gig - so stay tuned.
Now tell me what you think? Could a co-blogger benefit your network or client owned blog, or would it not be worth it?
Comments
6 Responses to “My Blog’s Stats After Adding A Co-Blogger”
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Yeah, if you don’t stop splitting the RSS feed I think I’m going to unsubscribe. Having to click in to see the post is hella lame.
…perhaps there’s a post in there: the pros and cons of a split feed.
@FatB - I tried using the “excerpt” code so post could shorten on the page but it wouldn’t split the feed - but it wouldn’t work properly. So our options are to let a single post take up a good chunk of the page or shorten it. We don’t intentionally shorten the feed.
Now, we do hope the content here is so good it’s not to much trouble to click to read more. We understand if you don’t feel we’re worth the effort.
Well it’s just annoying. I have everything pumped into my feed reader so I don’t have to open up each web page. When you want to monitor a hundred blogs it’s necessary to have one place you can see them all.
And I’m 90% sure there’s a solution. I’d check the feedburner forums, because you can’t be the first person to encounter this.
I have a tangentially related question. You said that when Peggy started blogging on THF the number of posts increased (makes sense).
I try and keep my reader empty just as I try to keep my email inbox empty. It annoys me when a blog has 15 or 20 posts a day. To me, it feels like the fried who forwards 15 chain emails a day and also sends 2 or 3 personal emails. I have to sift through all the crap to get to the few emails I want to read.
I won’t name names, but I subscribe to a couple of blogs that do this (don’t worry, I am not talking about this blog or any blogs even remotely related to it). When I get too far behind in reading the posts in my reader, the first thing I do is go to those blogs and mark all their posts as read without reading them. I also tend to skim their posts more often than other blogs because more often than not there is only one or two good quality posts a day from those blogs and a whole lot of stuff that is uninteresting. The blogs I am thinking of all have many co-bloggers and appear to be network blogs.
Do you think there is a point where a blog posts too much in one day? If so, do you think this is usually a function of having too many co-bloggers? Of not exerting enough editorial control? Of…?
@FatB Sorry - we’ll look into it. I have 300 plus blogs in my feed so I get it. I will click on something interesting though.
@Sandy Ha ha. Funny. Make lemonade out of lemons.
@Fern I’ll do a quick post to answer your question a little later. It’s a really good question - one that I’ve had experience both ways with.