Humans like to have definitive scales of awesome. Rating others looks on scales of 1 – 10, grading papers on letter scales, even grading our ability to pay bills back effectively with credit scores. We like to have a number or letter that quantifies our existence and our place in the world.
And one isn’t enough. In school we measure our IQ to say how smart we should be. We take standardized tests to measure how smart we actually are…and then to top it off, more tests to measure how much we pay attention and fit in to certain social environments. Our life is a series of numbers that measure our effectiveness as people. Even as I climbed the ladder in the corporate world they forced me to take tests. Personality tests that gave me little letters to judge my personality, management tests that judge whether I’m competent to lead…it never ended. Everyone wants to stick you in a box and label you with a number or letter. Put all the As over there…push all the Ys off to the side.
But, I digress (can you tell I don’t like to be boxed?), the thing about grades and letters are that they can give us something to achieve or reach for. So, while we can feel restricted by grades and numerical representations, we can also use them for something to reach for. I needed to get 25s on all scores on my ACT to get a certain scholarship, so I studied and studied until I finally got that stupid Math score up.
The same thing can be applied to our websites, blogs and social media effectiveness. They have graders and measurements all to judge your effectiveness as a Website Mogul. Basically how to Grade Your Blog. You just have to learn how to use them. Now, we know that it’s not just about the number of likes or followers. It’s about the reach. You could have 10K followers on twitter and very little impact if all of those followers could care less about what you tweet.
Rules of Engagement. What should we look for?
Pageviews – The number one way to measure your blog always comes back to pageviews. How many people are actually coming to your site? Yet, with email subscriptions and Readers delivering your words in tons of different directions, pageviews are not always the end all. If you have a large amount of email subscribers you could just be seeing half of the actual traffic. Yet, when decided to advertise, pageviews count. Because your advertising will most likely be on your sidebar or at the top of your posts. The email subscribers won’t be seeing your advertisements. Yet, how do we measure this? What quantifiable numbers do we put on our blogging goals? There are very many ways to judge our blogs out there…so let’s give it a shot here. These measurements are for our niche group as book bloggers. There is always room for improvement, even for the blogs that we consider the leaders in our niche. A pageview count can mean the difference between charging an advertiser $5 a day to $50 a day. If you want to get an idea of what people charge, take a look at blogads large blogs like Modern Baby & Perez Hilton use blogads and their rates are staggering. But then we are talking about 30K pageviews a day instead of a month. I don’t know if any of our niche group even comes close to this.
The Start-Up – The Sky is the Limit Blogger (600+ pageviews a month, about 20 a day)
- This blog is just getting started
- This blog has just hit the six month mark of blog prosperity*
- A continually growing list of followers
- Active blogger (5 posts a week)
- Blogger could technically do advertising, but the impact would be low. Generally it is recommend that you don’t charge advertisers more then $20 a month
The Break-Out Blog – The I’m Just About There Blogger (3K+ pageviews a month, about 100 a day)
- Other people in the industry know this blogger
- This blog has been in operation for some time
- This blog’s followers continue to grow
- Active blogger and Guest Blogger, probably is interviewed, quoted and Guest Blogs on other sites regularly
- Blogger can now reliably get advertisers
- Rates of advertising should probably stay below $50 a month
The Trend Setter Blog – Am I there Yet Blogger? (15K+ pagviews a month, about 500 a day)
- This blog has been recognized by it’s peers and industry professionals as a Top Blog
- This blog has been in operation for 2+ years
- This blog’s followers continue to grow by substantial rates
- The blog has very active social media promotions in different outlets
- Very Active blogger, Guest Blogger, could even had interviews and posts on substantial media outlets even outside of their niche group
- Blogger should be advertising
- Rates of advertising should be about $100 a month
The Pinnacle Blog – Is this what the top looks like? (50K+ pageviews a month, about 1700 a day)
- There will only be a few that reach this status
- This blog has been in operation for a considerable amount of time. It usually takes years to reach this status and consistently keep the traffic coming
- This blog will be recognized throughout the niche group as a leader
- This blog’s followers continue to grow by substantial rates
- The blog has very active social media promotions in different outlets
- Very Active blogger, Guest Blogger, even had interviews and posts on substantial media outlets even outside of their niche group
- Consistently quoted, linked back to and recognized throughout the community
- Blogger should be advertising
- Rates of advertising can range from $10 – $25 a day
The Google PageRank.
The Google PageRank is the most recognized of the “Google Algorithm” parts in SEO circles. But, most SEO gurus think that the PR is usually not updated regularly enough to be a major factor within the algorithm that Google uses to drive search results. There was actually just a PR update a few days ago and a few bloggers, including this one, reported an increase in rank.
You gain PageRank by being “popular”. Basically having other blogs and sites link back. If you get a link back from bigger and bigger sites, your pagerank increases. It’s all about who you know 
What is yours? Check here.
Grade it how?
Like anything else, there are always sites out there to make judgements for you. Just like the Google Pagerank, there are other companies that can put numbers on your site and tell you if you are doing a good job.
Alexa.com is one of them. They rank your site based on pageviews, sites linking in and other fun analytics. They are considered the top in their class, but– some claim that is generally garnered form people that use their tool bar only. Alexa claims this in only one way they gather information. They also use “other traffic sources.”
Besides Alexa there are a ton of sites that will grade, number and analyze your sites. Sites like SiteScore and Hubspot’s Marketing grader (which replaced their website grader). I personally like HubSpot’s Marketing Grader best because it gives you a run down on how you rock. This is how I found out I was on USA Today’s Book Section blogroll. Freaked out there, heard me? And that a silly comment on People of Walmart is ranking me also higher in their estimation.
All of these numbers and letters will give you something to think on. I put most of my stock in pageviews right now, but once I reach my numbered goal consistently I’ll move on to focusing more intensely on SEO. It’s all a big process. There are steps I take with everything, but I find that to focus on everything at once will lead to a big slump in general, or a burn-out. It’s all about what you want to accomplish with your blog. You set your limits, you set your own goals. If you are okay with being somewhere in the middle, stick to it. If you want to reach for the stars and be THAT BLOGGER there are tons of ways of accomplishing it. Good luck.
Let me know what goals you’ve set for yourself.
Reader Question of the Week:
Unfortunately you can’t hold on to ideas. Like if you told a friend you were thinking about inventing a pair of pants that change colors depending on your mood. Fantastic idea, but if they take that idea and roll with it, market it and begin selling it, unless you patented your idea, there is nothing you can do about it. We all have ideas, some are great ideas, some are terrible ideas. Unless someone copies your implementation, you have no basis for screaming “Foul”. There is always the court of general opinion. You could email or tweet everyone and tell them that XXX stole your idea and then have them decide. But, really the only way you could get them to “Cease & Desist” is if:
- They took a graphic from your blog
- They copied your title or words (what you called the “idea”)
I’m sorry this happened to you, just know it happens a lot. There are only so many “new” ideas that regurgitated subjects are very prolific in the blogger community, especially for bloggers that are trying to consistently come up with ideas and original content. There are some bloggers that find their inspiration within other’s content. This is generally not considered wrong, we find inspiration in everything…but just hopefully they will change up the idea enough so it is not recognizable as yours. If you can recognize it as yours…then email the blogger and let them know that they are stepping all over your original work.
Submit your BB101 Questions Here.
*six months is considered by some to be the first milestone in blogging. Once you’ve reached six months vendors, publishers and potential advertisers gauge that you are ready to hang.
Book Blogger News
Random & Penguin are becoming Pendom? Ranguin?
Two of the TOP publishers in the world are about to merge. Galleycat stated on the 14th that the DOJ stepped out of the way of the proposed merger and now the publishers just have to wait for the Europeans and Canadians to back away. The companies are expecting to get a thumbs up and become a big happy family sometime in the second half of 2013. {source}
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS gets closer to becoming a movie. Josh Boone who has 1 title under his name (Stuck in Love which will not be released until June) has been hired by Fox to direct. {source}
SHADOW AND BONE on the big screen! Pause. Okay, freak out. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Christopher Kyle is being wooed by DreamWorks to adapt Shadow and Bone for the big screen. They already have David Heyman (Harry Potter) to produce along with Jeffrey Clifford. {source}
Barbara Vey wrote a great piece on Separating Negative Reviews from Personal Attacks on Publisher’s Weekly and I thought I should share it. Her advice is “do not engage”, I think a lot of people, both reviewers and authors need to take that in stride. {source}
Happy Thursday. Talk Less. Read More. Blog with Integrity.
Have a question? Fill out the form by clicking here. This will go into a spreadsheet to be looked over at a later date and hopefully answered on this blog. This is completely anonymous, you do not have to leave your real name. Urls will not be included in your question unless it pertains to the question.
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Ha, I checked some of those rank sites and boy mine suck. LOL. But actually it’s fine. I decided to become a middle of the road blogger at the end of 2011 as the stress on trying to keep and build an audience, plus meet those review demands was too much. While scaling back may have hurt my pageviews it has increased the likelihood that I will be around doing this thing for awhile. Plus it gives me more time to read!
And as I’m an ad-free blog, unless book blogging becomes such a lucrative endeavor that I’d be able to be self-supporting, I suppose those numbers only matter for ego purposes.
I used to hide my email subscriber link as I wanted people to visit the site and interact. It’s much more fun that way. But I suppose what counts is that someone is reading your content even if they never become a “hit” on your page.
Thanks for the great information week-after-week. You are sharing your marketing wisdom for free, which isn’t something people in the biz often do! I for one really appreciate the insight and advice.
This post really has been food for thought for me, so thanks Rachel. I checked out my blogs Hubspot’s Marketing Grader on your recommendation and it was really interesting reading. I normally tell myself I’m blogging for fun and don’t really need to get concerned about page views or advertising but maybe I’m not being ambitious enough? Anyway, I’m not sure I’ll ever get my head around SEO but I will be considering some of the Hubspot’s recommendations.
wow, so much great information here! I bookmarked this post to come back to about the blog stats.
I’m so excited for those YA books to become movies. I can’t think of two more deserving books to be adapted (although I can add one: Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens!)
Informative Post, as always! I din’t even realize that there was a way to grade my blog.
Thanks!
Rachel, I only had time to glance at this, but I wanted to thank you for summarizing so succinctly. I think bloggers sometimes struggle with “why not me” type feelings when it comes to publisher approvals, etc. and I’ve struggled with how to say something about that tactfully in the blogger survey results which I’m posting soon, so that people have a better understanding of the vast range in audience reach. Now all I have to do is link to this post! I think it will be illuminating to a lot of people.
Ugh, and that above comment came from me!
Great post, I am a new blogger and I appreciate the page view categories. Helps me be realistic about how much traffic I might see.
This is so interesting, thank you for posting! I checked out my site in terms of being “graded” and in some ways it makes me feel small, but also shows me places to make changes.
Thank you for the Hubspot Link, it is a source of invaluable info. I love that site.
How do you find out about your “Unique Visits” and what is the diff between them and page views?
Wow! What an incredibly helpful blog post. I just spend the last hour dissecting what wisdom HubSpot had to tell me. Thanks
Thanks. This post has a wealth of information.
What do you know, I am exactly between Trendsetter and Pinnacle. That’s pretty exciting.
You rock. This was an EXCELLENT post!
Great job and thank you so much for the tips and information.
Terrific post once again. Thank you for the great information. Every once in a while I stress about ratings and rankings, but then I realize that’s not the reason I want to blog. And like you mentioned, I just don’t want to put the time in!
Wow, this is a kick ass page. You’re a social media and blogger ninja. Great advice for a rookie like myself who’s trying to grow my web presence =)
Really interesting post – thanks for sharing that info and the ranking tools. I came over via Cuddlebuggery’s link. I really admire bloggers who have goals and focus on meeting them (especially those who commit to increasing page views over time). I figure that I still do this ‘for fun,’ and I try not to be bothered by jealousy/envy. I may try to get a little more structured and take some of this into account, though – it would be nice to have a little more blog name recognition!
so glad i saw the link to this post on another blog. i just started out a month ago and everything seems so overwhelming. pageviews, followers, subscribers, etc… stresses.me.out. thanks for all that information. really helpful. my blog is definitely a fun hobby… but it was interesting to view things from this perspective.
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