On my own sites I could tell the referrer was Amazon. Most of the traffic was coming from Seattle, Washington and Fresno, California. There were one or two hits originating from other cities, but the majority came from Seattle. On Suite 101, the traffic referrer was listed as [direct] but I suspect it was Amazon too.

A Suite 101 side note: I find it comical that we, the Suite 101 writers, must wait a year before we can post our Suite articles elsewhere, but plagiarists get to use our articles right away.

Unfortunately, the traffic surge was the equivalent of being Stumbled, a lot of traffic but no clicks.

I did a quick search online to see if I could find any info to shed light on the situation, but couldn’t find anything.

Out of curiosity, did anyone else notice such a traffic surge and if so, do you have any idea what caused it?

Internet marketing 101 states:

• The money is in the list. If you don’t have a list, stop now and build one.

Internet Marketing 102 states:

• Create a squeeze page. Give ‘em something free so they’ll sign up.

NJFM is a No Pressure Zone

Internet Marketing 101 and 102 might work for other sites and other niches, but I’m opting not to squeeze or pretend to give away things for free. When I give away things for free, it’s just that, free. No strings attached.

I gave my first ebook away for free, I share info here for free and the information I’m sharing in my newsletter is also free. I don’t feel a need to give away anything else in an attempt to get folks to sign up.

Here’s the scoop. I’d like for you to sign up for my motivation for writers newsletter. Here’s the link. Don’t look for free give aways such as another book, a report or anything of the kind. Sign up because you want to. You can always unsubscribe if you so choose. I’d like you to stay because I believe the info is worth it, but if it’s not for you, I understand.

About the Squeezin’

I’m sure you guys have been squeezed before. My question is, once you’ve been squeezed, did you stick with the newsletter or did you drop your subscription after the 2nd or 3rd mailing?

Don’t get me wrong. Squeeze pages work. Folks have doubled, tripled and quadrupled their email list by creating effective squeeze pages and email campaigns. If that’s your thing, by all means, squeeze on. As for me and NJFM, we’re a no squeeze zone.

In reviewing my numbers I see that my overall traffic is down. I did a quick analysis of my top 6 sites and have found an average decrease in page views of 15% and a 17% decrease in visitors.

The lower traffic could be a result of the Panda algorithm change or it could be the result of old content. I haven’t spent much time posting new content on my sites this month. As a matter of fact, I’ve added 19 new pieces of content to my sites. 15 of the new pieces of content were posts here on NJFM, and I’ve shared in the past that NJFM is not my road to riches (far from it).

I’ve been spending my time working on projects that will help to shield me and my income from Panda fluctuations and other search engine modifications.

Effects of Less Traffic

Now that I’ve analyzed the lack of traffic and the cause thereof, it’s time for me to look at the income from my top 6 sites to see if the income trended accordingly.

Much to my surprise, the income didn’t follow the traffic. The income from my top 6 online properties is up 14% over last month’s. To what do I attribute this? Well, I believe a large portion can be attributed to adding the authorized sites to my AdSense account.

The rest I’ve got to attribute to changing some of the AdSense ad blocks. The first modification (authorized sites) took a total of 5 minutes or less to implement. The ad block changes took a little longer because I had to change each site. In total, it took a couple of hours to implement.

Sharpening the Sword

I’m reading several books by Dr. Steven R. Covey. If you have time, I strongly suggest you pick up his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I’ve got to warn you, this book is not mental candy. It will cause you to think, reflect and change.

In his books he talks about sharpening the sword, which means retooling, sharpening your skills, learning new tools and taking care of the items/tools used on your journey to success.

Although it is my goal to reduce my reliance on Google and Google AdSense, it is a tool in my online writing arsenal. While I’m creating new venues and working on new projects, it is to my advantage to sharpen my AdSense tool to make it work better for me. I truly believe that if it were not for the sharpening of the sword, November would have been much worse. Instead, it’s my best month for online residual earnings.

If you enjoyed this post, why not sign up for NJFM’s Motivation for Writers Newsletter. A dose of motivation will be sent to your inbox every Monday.

Well, when I clicked on my statistics page for my page views, one of my sites had “that look” while the other sites were playing nicely and didn’t even notice that I walked into the room. The site with the guiltiest look was my Tidbits and Stuff site. That’s the site that is prone to get into trouble.

Cause of the Look

I noticed in the past three days my Google earnings were off the chart. The last time they were that good, it was because Panda was about to strike. So I did a bit of snooping and found an October 5th tweet from Matt Cutts in which he advised of Panda changes over the next few weeks.

The Panda Update and Site Reaction

As I looked at my children, er, I mean sites, their response to Panda was expected. You see, Tidbits and Stuff is sometimes shunned by Google and then picked back up again. This is because I gave birth to Tidbits and Stuff before I knew anything about web parenting. I made the majority of my mistakes there.

Just like any good parent, you never give up on your kids. I kept Tidbits & Stuff but realized it would always be vulnerable to Google’s algorithm changes unless I did a total overhaul. Not wanting to do the overhaul, I use Tidbits as my online playground in which I continue to make mistakes.

Problematic Characteristics

As I analyze Tidbits and compare it to the rest of my sites, Tidbits has two characteristics that my other sites don’t:

1. The focus is not single subject. You’ll find information on cooking, health, finance, pets, writing and more when you visit Tidbits and Stuff. The rest of my sites are focused and single subject.
2. I used content from free article directories. I’d say about 50% of the content on Tidbits comes from free article directories while the rest is original. Some of the articles were from writers who requested to write a piece for the site and the rest I wrote myself.

What Am I Going to Do?

As far as Tidbits and Stuff goes, I’m not going to do a thing. I’ll write articles and place them there when the mood strikes. I’m sure Google’s algorithm will change again and Tidbits may find favor. If not, so be it. I’m used to the bumpy ride on Tidbits and Stuff. It taught and continues to teach me a lesson of what to do and what not to do.

Similarities with Other Sites

I see that Suite 101 and HubPages have also taken a hit with Panda this go around (again). The one thing I see that Tidbits, Suite and HubPages have in common is that they are not single-subject sites and they have a wide variety of authors. This is just my sitting at the kitchen counter observation.

Going Forward

Writing is an inside out sport. You learn a few rules (i.e., grammar, spelling and in the case of online writing SEO) and then do what your gut tells you. I’m going to keep on doing what I do and allow the Panda to do what it does.

After visiting Lis’ Passive Income Online blog and finding out about a free book writing tool called Scrivener, I’m motivated to get back to writing my books. Between ebooks, a few sites and Suite 101, I think I’ll be okay. Hopefully Panda was nice to you guys.

I thought I’d write this post because every so often I receive comments about driving traffic to a blog or site.

I’m not so crazy about the term driving traffic, because when you’re stuck in traffic, the only vehicle you can control is your own. On the internet super highway, your blog is your vehicle and you attract visitors with content. You can’t force them to come (and please don’t trick them into coming), but if they happen upon your blog make it worth the trip so they will come back again.

There are many ways to attract traffic to a blog, but you must realize the only thing you can do with internet traffic is attract it in the form of writing quality content and place signs of direction. By signs of direction I mean letting other people know that your blog exists. It’s sort of like placing street signs and billboard ads.

A Few Traffic Attracting Methods

Search Engines: Early on in the freelance writing game, every time I created a site I would go to the major search engines and use their “Submit a site” form and wait for the search engines to find me. Over time I realized that was an unnecessary step because the search engines always found me sooner or later. With Google it was always sooner and the rest of the search engines later.

Submitting RSS Feeds: Back then I always submitted my brand new RSS feeds to RSS directories. The more directories the better, or so I thought. Now I don’t bother with that either. Since many of my sites use WordPress, I have my new entries pinged (not so warm and fuzzy about how it works, but I do it anyway). The ping services I use are:

• http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
• http://api.moreover.com/ping
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://ping.bitacoras.com
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
• http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
• http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
• http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
• http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
• http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

I don’t remember where I got this lists from, but I use it for each of my blogs. For WordPress bloggers, this list is inserted on the Writing page under the Settings menu option. Scroll down to Update Services and insert the list there. Don’t forget to save your changes.

Article Directories: I shared my opinion on article directories in my last post. I tried them early on in my online writing career but quickly discontinued the practice. Not only did I not like submitting free articles, but in my experience, it wasn’t worth the effort.

Social Networking: I find social networking such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit and the like a little too busy for my liking. Some people do extremely well with social networking and if that’s your thing, I encourage you to do what works for you. It just doesn’t work for me (one of my personality quirks).

Forums: This is a great way to let folks know you exist. The trick with forums is finding the right ones. Be careful because some forums are a free for all of negativity and not necessarily a good place to be. On occasion, however, I come across interesting forums when researching information or trying to solve a problem (usually a tech problem). They can be a wealth of information and a place to encourage quality traffic as long as your participation is real and helpful.

Blog Comments: Similar to forums, with the right blog and the right group of people it is a great way of encouraging readers to visit your blog. CommentLuv  enabled blogs, give commenters a link back to their latest blog post. I’ve found a wealth of information by clicking on the blog links of my commenters.

Quality Content: In my opinion, this is the best way to attract traffic to your blog. It’s not as quick as some of the methods listed above, but with quality content you’ll get repeat visitors and word of mouth visitors. Those are the best. With quality content, your readers will take care of the backlinking, social networking and forum posts for you.

One from the Vault: While I was writing this post, I decided to do a little search here on NJFM to see if I’ve written on the topic before, and lo and behold I had. So, I’ll quit yakking and link to last year’s post: Blogging, Writing Articles, Social Networking and Traffic