1.25 Million Visitors To My Humble Collection Of Websites During 2009 – And Counting!

Towards the end of each year, I like to take stock of what I’ve achieved during the last 12 months and then put together a plan of what I’m going to be doing during the coming year to see my business grow. In 2006 I even went as far as producing an eight page report for myself, a sort of “state of my nation” type document, briefly describing my developed websites, their strengths, weaknesses and potential for the future.

It’s really pleasing to see that some of what I predicted has come to fruition. For example, a site that I started in April 2006 attracted 2,917 unique visitors four months later in August. A site that is always going to do better during the Summer months, I noted during my review that although traffic came almost exclusively from search engine listings, Google derived traffic was non-existent. I knew that meant that visitor numbers would be between 25,000 and 30,000 once Google welcomed me into the fold – and that’s exactly what has since happened. In fact in August 2009, there were 39,716 unique visitors to the site. One thing I see that I still haven’t got right though is how to properly monetise the site and that’s something that I hope to do more successfully in 2010.

Total traffic to all my sites in 2006 was around the half million mark. At the time I thought that was quite a milestone to reach. Half a million unique visitors finding their way to one or more of my ragtag collection of websites! Looking at the statistics for just six of my most successful sites during 2009, I quickly realised that I’m now well over the million unique visitors a year mark. In fact, the total for 2009 across my 50 or so websites is likely to be more than 1.25 million unique visitors. Not bad going when you consider I don’t spend a penny on marketing (I do spend something far more valuable on marketing though – time).

My plan for 2010 is to not only break through the 1.5 million visitor barrier, but to also turn more of those visitors into customers – and I know only too well there’s plenty of scope to do both. I’ve earmarked sites that really do deserve more of my time and effort (something that I’ve known since 2006 according to that eight page report) and I’m currently going through my list of domain names, looking for ones that I can develop alongside my existing portfolio.

I’ve now got well over 3,000 domain names to my name. Some are successfully redirecting traffic to the relatively few that I have developed, but most languish doing very little and I am now at the point where I have far more domain names than I’ll ever know what to do with. So yet another job for 2010 is to sort out those domains that I won’t be getting around to developing any time soon and to find buyers for them. Seeing that I will continue to add to my portfolio during the coming year (and I’d be a bare faced liar if I told you otherwise), my aim is to end the year with less names than I started it with. This could be my toughest challenge yet!

And my other big task for 2010 is to finally publish my book, Get Out While You Can. The good news for those who are eagerly awaiting a copy is that both of you will be reading it sooner rather than later. I’ve got about 80% of it completely finished now and am working on the remaining 20% in the hope that I’ll have a finished version sometime in January. I’ll then read through it one more time in book format, make any last minute changes and then publish and be damned.

It is quite a personal book in many ways because it lays bare my beliefs that working for a living is rarely a path worth taking and it details my alternative, my Plan B, that I have developed over the last 25 to 30 years of working from home doing whatever I’ve wanted to do. I’m not sure if it will make me a role model to the few who get the opportunity to read it or a laughing stock, but time will tell. As always. If you’d like more details about my book you can visit the Get Out While You Can website and sign up for my mailing list. Those on it will get first dibs on the book when released.

I hope 2010 brings you everything you too are working towards. Despite the economic uncertainties of today, great times lie ahead.