The reach of the internet
I think one of the best things about the web is the ability to reach an audience that is spread far apart geographically. So even though fans of a product may be pretty rare, you can reach all of them, and that makes the product viable, while also allowing those odd-ball consumers to buy exactly what they want.
The artist of Dinosaur Comics attributes a lot of his success to this factor. For those unfamiliar with the comic (I'm a big fan), the concept is that the comic uses the same exact visual layout, but different dialogue in each strip. The author posts a strip every weekday, and has more than 4 years of comics, which all manage to maintain originality and hilarity. However, it's a comic than many people find weird and different, and not at all what they're interested in.
Twenty five years ago, Dino Comics would probably have been a 'zine photocopied and distributed in local used book stores. The comic likely would not have been popular enough with mainstream readers to ever get syndicated in a newspaper. Thanks to the internet, those of us who do like this type of comic can easily access it, the author has access to as many fans as possible, and no one who dislikes it is forced to read it (by having it show up in their daily newspaper.)
As an avid consumer of words, I love the access the web gives me to other people who like to put their thoughts down in writing on their blogs. It assuages some of my yearning for a world where we would still write handwritten letters to each other - really putting some thought in before writing. E-mails are a great way to stay connected, but they are more like a quick phone call than a letter.
So, what has the web allowed you to do that would be unimaginable without the far-reaching tendrils of the internet? What would you like to use the web for more in the upcoming year?
I'd like to use the web more to connect with people this year. I was better at developing lasting relationships with people online when I was 14 and the internet was a place where I could share my (awful) poetry and art and be inspired by other people who were interested in those same things. I guess I was ahead of my time then, haha. But I would like to get involved in more communities of things that interest me, and learn from them. All I need is a little time to practice my hobbies in, once I've learned more about them online...
October Blog Performance
As many of you may have noticed (or even participated in!) I held a series of weekly giveaways during the month of October to celebrate the one year anniversary (or blogoversary) of AccountantByDay.com.
This graph shows the visits (blue) and page views (red) by month to AccountantByDay.com from January to October. Traffic has been steadily on the rise since April, but you can see the jump in October from the giveaways. You can also see how traffic dropped from January through April (last year's busy season.) The tricky bit will be maintaining posting and interacting with other bloggers through busy season this year.
The giveaways' effect on traffic was quite large while it lasted, but as soon as the giveaways ended, traffic dropped down to more usual levels. I think the benefit of having giveaways may come from hosting them with some frequency, thus having more people come through your site every month. I imagine this is good for rankings, which means that when people search for a keyword you write about, your website will be more likely to pop up.
That's just a theory though, and I imagine it may not be the most productive way to build traffic.
From January to October, about 39% of traffic came through search engines, and about 33% through referring sites.
The top 10 referring sites from January to October were:
- careers-in-accounting.com
- wikijob.co.uk
- online-sweepstakes.com
- cpazone.com
- iwanttobeaca.com
- onlineaccountingcolleges.com
- patheticallyawesome.wordpress.com (former fellow public accountant)
- mortgagedlife.blogspot.com
- krupo.ca (fellow public accountant - Canadian style)
- cpablogger.com
The same chart for the month of October 2011 only shows about 48% of traffic from search engines, with 34% from referring sites.
The top 10 referrers for October 2011 were the following:
- online-sweepstakes.com
- wikijob.co.uk
- iwanttobeaca.com
- careers-in-accounting.com
- onlineaccountingcolleges.com
- nicoleandmaggie.wordpress.com
- yakezie.com (through the forums I'm guessing)
- onlineaccountingdegree.org
- patheticallyawesome.wordpress.com
- spanishteachingissues.blogspot.com
It seems like half of my referring traffic comes from sites that I never even go to myself, haha. I'm glad to see that some of those top referring sites are my favorite blogs. Some of my other favorite blogs are close to the top of the referrers list too, such as retireby40.org, bravenewlife.com, buckinspire.com, youngandthrifty.ca, thesavedquarter.com and firstgenamerican.com.
Hopefully I'll be able to keep traffic up all busy season, and if I keep making money I'll start posting some blog income updates for the curious 
.
What did your blog growth look like? Did spikes like the one I've seen this year plateau? Or did traffic just keep growing - the snow ball effect?
October First Anniversary Giveaway – Week 4
This is the FINAL GIVEAWAY celebrating the first anniversary of AccountantByDay. This week features a $50 Amazon Gift Card prize. Please use the RaffleCopter widget below! Good luck!
If you're a new reader, start here:
October Give Away Week 2
Welcome to the second Accountant by Day October give away! I am giving away prizes all month to celebrate the first anniversary of Accountant by Day. Last week we gave away $25. Thanks to generous sponsors, this week’s prize is $75.
If you're new to Accountant by Day, start here!
The winner will receive:
$25 Amazon Gift Card from Accountant by Day
$25 Amazon Gift Card from Retire by 40 – follow Joe’s plan to quit his day job before he turns 40 by investing in real estate, making income online, and building a portfolio of dividend stocks. Pay Joe a visit - click here.
$25 Amazon Gift Card from Prairie Eco Thrifter – Miss T has put together an incredible resource for people interest in going green on a budget. Prairie Eco Thrifter is chock full of great ideas, tips, and resources for the frugal, yet environmentally conscious reader. Head on over to Prairie Eco Thrifter - click here.
How to enter the contest:
IMPORTANT: If you entered last week’s give away by liking on Facebook, following on Twitter, or subscribing to the RSS feed, these will count as entries again this week, but you MUST post a comment here saying that you have done these things in order to get counted for this week’s give away.
You can enter the contest by doing any or all of the following tasks, and leaving a comment saying which tasks you have completed:
1. Like the Accountant by Day page on facebook (1 entry)
2. Follow KellenABD on twitter (1 entry)
3. Subscribe to the Accountant by Day RSS feed (1 entry)
4. Support a sponsor – leave a good, thoughtful comment on a post at Retire by 40, and link to the post in the comments here. (3 entries) – I get to decide whether your comment counts – the key will be to show that you took the time to read the post and respond with something meaningful and relevant that adds to the conversation.
5. Support a sponsor – leave a good, thoughtful comment on a post at Prairie Eco Thrifter, and link to the post in the comments here. (3 entries) – I get to decide whether your comment counts – the key will be to show that you took the time to read the post and respond with something meaningful and relevant that adds to the conversation.
Contest entries close at Midnight EST on Friday, October 14th. Good luck!
Sunday FINCON and Giveaway Round Up
I missed it this year, but I hope to be there next year - the Financial Bloggers Conference was held from September 30 to October 2, 2011. Since I couldn't be there, I've been eagerly reading the posts by those who could attend, and I thought I'd share some here:
Financial Bloggers Conference 2011 Links
Thousandaire writes about what he learned about all the bloggers he met at the conference. I hear Ninja from Punch Debt in the Face is rather painful to look at??
Financially Consumed shared his 10 takeaways from FINCON - all great tips that I'm going to put on my to-do list!
Frugal Beautiful posted about the first evening at the conference, where blogger volunteered their time to work with Love Drop at Phil's Friends, an organization that works to send out cards, carepacks, and hope to families in need all over the country.
Money Talks Coaching shares her experiences with the workshops and overall impression of the conference.
Romeo Clayton writes about what he learned about the Power of Twitter at FINCON.
Free from Broke has a huge post about his adventures at the conference, and everyone that he met there!
Blogoversaries and Giveaways in October
Retire by 40 and Buck Inspire are hosting a huge joint giveaway in October to celebrate their 1 year blog anniversaries! Enter to win a Kindle Fire, Mango Software, and many giftcards and other prizes!
Squirrelers is giving awage $75 in prizes this month! Head on over to fill out the entry form and have a chance at a $50 or $25 Amazon Gift Card!
Thousandaire is making a splash with his $683.90 giveaway this month. First prize is a $275 Amazon Gift Card, so go ahead and enter now - you have 12 ways to get entries, so make sure you get in as many entries as you can!
(If you're having a give away this month and you're not on this list, don't be shy! Let me know with a comment or an email.)
First anniversary giveaway results – week one
After processing 174 entries to my first giveaway, I am pleased to announce that the winner of the $25 Amazon Gift Card is Andrea from Nickel by Nickel! (Specifically, your follow on twitter won!)
Congratulations! I will be sending you an email shortly with your gift card attached!
Look out for next week's giveaway on Monday! There will be more prizes next week, and some new entry opportunities, so keep an eye out!
Reactions to first giveaway:
In the past week AccountantByDay.com had 996 visits and 3,295 page views. The prior week (with no giveaway), we had 736 visits and 2,194 page views. Online-sweepstakes.com sent 208 visits my way. So there were 788 visitors not sent by online-sweepstakes.com. I think for next week's giveaway, I will not post the giveaway on Online-Sweepstakes, since I think the people who showed up from that website are close to 0% likely to stick around after the fact.
Accountant by Day's brand new facebook page has 62 "likes" now. (And I suppose I should start using it to post some kind of updates??)
I now have 124 followers on twitter now, up from 73 from last week! This is still 121 followers fewer than my old twitter account (@AccountingElf) has, so I am working on being a more active social media user from now on.
Thank you all for participating, and stop by on Monday for more chances to win!
Welcome to new readers!
Don't miss the Accountant By Day one-year anniversary give away! Your first chance to win $25 is on Monday! Entries for this week close at midnight EST on Friday, so check out the contest rules and enter!
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Welcome to New Readers!
If you're a new reader this month here for the giveaway, or a current reader who has missed a few posts, let me introduce you to this blog! My name is Kellen and I am a 20-something public accountant, about to begin my second year as an auditor, and in my free time I am the author of Accountant by Day.
Giveaway – First Anniversary of Accountant By Day
During the month of October, I would like to invite you to join in celebrating the 1st anniversary of AccountantByDay.com.
During the month of October, I will be holding a giveaway each week. Every Monday (10th, 17th, 24th and 31st) I will announce the winner from the prior week. As of right now, I will be giving away $150 $200 over the month! This includes a $25 prize sponsored by RetireBy40, $25 sponsored by Write and Get Paid and $25 sponsored by Maximizing Money. So if you want to sponsor a prize, it's never too late (until the 31st!), just send me an email at admin@accountantbyday.com.
To Enter:
Sunday Breakfast Links
Things I've been reading, in the blogosphere . . .
Retire by 40, who plans to become a stay-at-home dad, interviews another stay-at-home dad and blogger, Hunter from Financially Consumed. Read about what it's like to be the only dad on the playground.
EngineerYourFinances gives some tips and encouragement for negotiating your salary in a down economy. If you're looking ahead to an annual review soon, don't forget to read this post and negotiate your pay increase!
On a related note, Broke Professionals brings us a post about how to be successful at moving up the career ladder. They take a look at some archetype managers they have worked with, and compare which strategy translates best into managing a whole department.
I loved this post from Money Mamba that questions where his money goes after being spent at Chick Fil A - he decides to respect the value of his money by not spending it at Chick Fil A, and inadvertently promoting political agendas carried out by the restaurant.
How much would this house cost to maintain?
How would you save Yahoo!?
I have been thrown back into using Yahoo! services lately, since they took over Flickr, which is a favorite site of mine, and also Associated Content (now Yahoo! Contributor Network), which is a website I've written a few articles for over the years.
Yahoo! has just fired their CEO, who was supposed to revamp the whole company's image but failed to do so during her 3-year tenure.
We all know Yahoo!'s issue . . . it's just not "with it" (aka "cool"). I mean, they have a ! in their name. That is so 1990's.
Personally, I associate Yahoo! with the times where we weren't allowed to use internet sources and had to use books. Now that it's okay to use the internet for research, I never think of Yahoo! as the place to turn, but go to Wikipedia and Google instead. Basically, Yahoo! hasn't managed to keep up with the changing web, and despite switching CEOs a couple of times in the last 5 years, they haven't captured the spirit of being new and fresh and up to date.
So if you were to take over Yahoo! what would you do to make it more appealing to the internet users of the 2010's? How would you bring Yahoo! out of it's funk as a throw back to the 1990's?
Here are some of my ideas, but please post any of yours in the comments!
Social Media/Blogging
I remember being all about some Yahoo! Geocities as a kid. Man I loved having my own website. But there weren't a ton of design tools provided with the free option. Today, such a limited supply of free tools would be ridiculous. Look at WordPress's free platform, and all the beautiful themes you can choose from.
Where is Yahoo!s answer to WordPress and Blogger? Sure it's already been done, but it had already been done when Google took over Blogger too, and it seems to be doing extremely well with Etsy artists and other folks who want a free, easy to manage blog.
I'd say there's room for Yahoo! to get people on a blogging network, and offer some sort of different features. Maybe some kind of good categorization system, so people who are all blogging about a particular topic are all easy to find and rank? Ideas for a new free blogging platform alone could be a whole 'nother post (or even series.)
Acquisitions of existing cool sites
Yahoo!s acquisition of Flickr and AssociatedContent got me logging back into things with my Yahoo! user name now, which makes me that much more amenable to exploring other Yahoo! services, since I'm already logged in. However, Flickr was around and established for a long time before Yahoo! stepped in to take over. How about acquiring some sites that aren't quite established yet, are "up and coming"? (Like my up and coming neighborhood?)
Of course, Yahoo!s negative coolness could backfire on developing sites and cause them to lose any cool reputation they were building . . . But I'm sure there's a way they could make it work.
Provide features that are useful to businesses or schools
When people are obligated to get a Yahoo! account for work or school, they may be more likely to use other Yahoo! services. (But if the features they're using in the first place are frustrating, they will just hate it.) We used Google Docs quite a bit in college when working on group projects, which forced the few holdouts in the class to get a Google account and start discovering the wonder of Google. There is plenty of room for improvement in shared work sites like this too, so Yahoo! could capitalize on that.
They could provide an easy way to set up a password protected web page if a teacher wants to use it for a class project and have only students in the school able to access it. There are tons of possibilities.
Start something new
Google isn't the only one who can hire creative engineers. Yahoo! needs a way to encourage their engineers to spend time thinking of new ideas and have a good system set up for those ideas to be communicated, evaluated, and rewarded.
This article I read explained that Yahoo! falls short on maintaining reader attention. Plenty of people access the site, but they don't stick around and spend much time on it. If you had Yahoo!s formidable resources to draw on, how would you convince users to stay on the site longer?
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