February 21st, 2009 | 
Author: Traffic is slowly getting better again after last weeks dip but I still need some massive improvements over the coming few weeks. Thankfully, I am starting to see some great CPC on some clicks and CTR has improved slightly which has boosted my income from the blog. I am still hovering between 5 and 15% of my target income.
Which begs the question, can I still reach my target income for the blog by March 31st? I am ever hopeful but I really am in the hands of the great google as to whether I get the rankings for my target keywords or not. currently I am not ranking for them and until I do, I won’t see the massive increases in traffic I need. Most of the search engine traffic is for long tail variations of my target keywords. Yahoo and MSN are also starting to send me more traffic as well now and I am also seeing a slight increase in traffic from ezine articles.
I am starting to post more articles now as I get them back from my freelance writer. The interesting thing now is that I have a much better idea from my stats of which articles are performing better so I tend to use those as ideas for new articles targeting similar keyword phrases in the hope that they will catch on as well.
Onward and upward and I really hope that I start to get some good traffic over the coming week from my main keyword targets..
Steve, I really hope you succeed but do you have any concerns that you picked a relatively competitive niche which is highly dependent on the economy – which we all know is in the global toilet right now. I did a quick google keyword tool search on “european cruises” and it came up with an average search volume of 22,000/month. Then I did a regular google search of “european cruises” and it came up with 190,000 results. I know the numbers are not exact, but it seems like it’s going to take much more than 3 months to rise toward the top of this niche. Godspeed my friend.
Hey Steve,
Good luck with your targets. Is it possible for you to share with us your incoming traffic (percentage wise) from all the different sources.
And if you could maintain a log on when you add more articles to the site (for all the articles that you have uploaded till now and those which you plan to add in future) and compare it line by line with the awstat results and google serp. That would make a great post.
Good luck again, all the eyes are on you.
- John W.