Monthly Blog Stats & Helpful Hints #5

ByTammy

Welcome!  Its time for another monthly blog stats and helpful hints post. Just picking up a few helpful hints I hope will make a difference in our blogs growth in the future and keeping them in a Pinterest blogging board for future reference. 

I hope you will also join us in the Personal Goals and Priorities in 2014 linky and let us know how you are doing with your personal and blogging goals.  More information to follow below.

Monthly Blog Stats & Helpful Hints #5

So lets get busy making your blog grow!

I’m sure everyone has heard of the latest virus scare, The Heart Bleed, and the trouble it caused on numerous websites.  Security has been a problem since the internet was conceived.  But, there are ways to fight back.

Monthly Blog Stats & Helpful Hints #5

For wordpress, I really love the plugin Wordfence Security.  A free enterprise class security and performance plugin that includes a very fast caching engine, firewall, anti-virus scanning, cellphone sign-in (two factor authentication), malicious URL scanning and live traffic including crawlers. Wordfence is the only WordPress security and performance plugin that can verify and repair your core, theme and plugin files, even if you don’t have backups. 

The plugin will notify you via email of any plugin which is outdated, anyone who is trying to sign in or has signed in your account, shows you live activity from humans or bots, blocked IPs, scan schedule, etc.   Right after I activated the plugin, it told me of some bad links I had and was able to quickly fix them.  I highly, highly recommend this for your wordpress site.

I also use a plugin called BackUpWordpress to back up my wordpress files.  Some hosts will do this for you and you wouldn’t have to worry about this.  I get an email every week or so, the plugin decides the backup date, and I just safe the file to my computer.  It will backup your entire site including your database.

I’m sorry to say, there isn’t much security possibilities with Blogger websites that I know of.  There are a few settings for readers, but thats it.  If someone has a suggestion, please share with us.

Monthly Blog Stats & Helpful Hints #5

Now for your computer.  I have been a firm believer in having some kind of virus protection on my computer.  I personally have used Norton Anti Virus for over 10 years now and have never had a problem with being attacked by a virus.  I buy a new version each year with Turbo Tax and usually can get a nice rebate back.  Its usually around $50.00 for a year subscription just for the anti virus. So much cheaper than a new computer or having a tech clean our your hard drive.  It updates in the background and will notify you if there is a problem.  I am at ease knowing that any emails I receiver are scanned and are scanned before any leave my mailbox.  I know many internet providers have scanning in their email, but that doesn’t protect your computer while you are surfing the net.  As long as your computer is turned off or on and is connected to the internet, you can be attacked by a virus, trojan horse or spam.

I help neighbors with their computers and it saddens me when I see their computer infected with a virus.  Sadder thing is they had Norton, but didn’t update to the next year.  Norton will start notifying you 30 days before the expiration date.  So, please keep your anti virus protection updated!

I hope these blog extras will help your blog grow!

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Now on to my stats for the end of April:

INCOME
Google adsense:  $1.62 = $27.72 for 2014
Media Net:  $.21 = $2.12 for 2014
Affiliate income: 0
Social Spark: 0 = $50.00 for 2014
PayU2Blog:  $40.00 = $210.00 for 2014
Total for 2014 = $289.84

TRAFFIC
Monthly visits:  1017 = -242
Unique monthly visitors: 766 = -213
Page views: 1731 = -520
Average page views per visit: 2
Average visit duration: 2:31 minutes

RANKINGS & SOCIAL MEDIA
Google: 0
Global Alexa rating: 134,179
US Alexa rating: 29,110
Pinterest: 399
Facebook: 476
Twitter: 451
Google+: 269

My blog is only about 5 months old, by Google standards, and I’m pleased the small ad amount which is still adding up.  I also have to realize that a better Google rating probably won’t happen until after my blogs year anniversary in December.  I’ve also been reading that summertime is basically slow for most blogs and that September through the end of the year is the biggest time in blogging world.  Having to keep that in mind for future posts.  I am really pleased with the sponsorship posts I have been offered the past month. 

If you have any questions about any of the items discussed, please let me know and be sure to check out our past posts for Blog Stats & Helpful Hints.

How are your goals coming along so far?

Keep on bloggin!

Tammy

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Creative K Kids

 

If you have a post about your goals, please join us below and you can also follow our group Pinterest board on Personal Priorities.



21 Comments

  1. I love to read your blog stats and helpful hints. I now just AVG instead of Norton. I also clean it up sometimes with CCleaner and Malaware. I use those two plugins too–I really like them. I am transferring Creative K Kid’s hosting and I paid $1 a month for their backup so that I don’t have to worry about having that plugin and making sure I have it on hand–plus they will restore it for free once every 4 months, so in case it went down they would get it up again for me with the backup. I want to learn how to transfer The Ultimate Linky by myself. If I like this hosting, it is the same price for both blogs and they’ll back them both up for the same price (up to 10 gB? 10 something.) Then I could remove that plugin.

    1. Thank you Tammy. I LOVE CCleaner. It does great work. I might give a check to see what my host would charge for the blog to back up. I don’t mind doing it myself via the plugin but it takes a long time to backup. I don’t have the fastest internet. I understand that Blogolina’s instructions on transferring are suppose to be pretty easy to do.

  3. Great tips! Security issues on the Internet can seem really scary but really there are so many easy things you can do to keep your blog and all of the information on it safe. Thanks for sharing!

    1. Thanks Amber for stopping by. You are right. There are so many things we can do to keep our things secure. Just have to do it.

  5. I love Wordfence and would recommend it. I haven’t written down any goals, but I do want to increase my blog traffic and write more weekly. I’ll check out your blog board on Pinterest.

  6. Hi Tammy! I’m stopping by from #tribedare. Really enjoying your blog. Your stats are great considering your blog is 5 months old. Following you on social media.

  7. I haven’t done an income report since December. I had so much going on. I was just asked today whether I was going to start doing them again. I had planned on doing them quarterly, but with all the changes and sponsor programs I test, I may have to go back to doing them monthly or they are going to be quite long. I hope you will continue the income recap link ups.

    1. Thanks for stopping by. I wanted to really show stats for the 1st year and then maybe every quarter.

  8. great info! We use AVG and CC Cleaner as well. Thanks for sharing the income info, we are just now starting to look into having our blog earn a bit of income so knowing what to expect and where to go is helpful. http://mylifeabundant.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/coffee.gif

    1. Thanks for stopping by. I’ve been blogging for many years now but hadn’t really been serious until recently. And I think all new bloggers want to know what really goes on.

  9. This is a great post! I really appreciate your honesty. I think a lot of bloggers love to see the real progress of a newer blogs following to predict where they will be in the future. I’ve never heard to payu2blog. I’m going to check it out right now! Thanks for sharing!

    1. I noticed mine are going down too. I’m wondering if summer will be about the same. Thanks for stopping by

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