Ok, this is the question on everyone’s lips these days: Why are my pageviews down? You were hoping to double your pageviews or hit that million this month and then you look & see the reality of your goals: lower views.
I’m not going to sit here & write out why they are down because I don’t know you or your blog (I might, but since this is a blog post & not an e-mail, I have no idea who is reading this! lol!!), but I do want to tell you a few things about it:
1). Don’t focus on the numbers, focus on the audience.
This is hard for me… really. I can’t tell you the number of times that I click that little ANALYTICS app on my phone, but I try not to. Why? My blog is more than the numbers, that’s why.
What does this mean? It means that a fanbase of 5,000 that is engaged & clinging to your every word is MORE valuable than a fanbase of 50,000 that doesn’t care what you are doing.
Two days ago, I deleted 25,000 subscribers from my newsletter list... did you hear me weeping from your house?
Well, I decided that I no longer wanted to pay for cold subscribers, so I decided that if they hadn’t opened my email in 3 months, they weren’t doing me any good staying on my list. I would rather have fewer readers that were more ENGAGED and more interested than a LOT of so-so readers that didn’t care. Plus, I use my newsletter to figure out what is working and what isn’t working. I use it to see what my readers are interested in. My newsletter list is a really great way to interact with my readers. Thanks to ConvertKit, it has gone up about 70% since switching to them.
(& to be honest… my newsletter readers are the ones writing back, which just makes my day!)
2). Look at your income.
The downside to lower page views is lower ad sales. The good side is that your ads don’t make up all of your income. So, when my pageviews are high, I make a lot from ads. When they are low, I make less, obviously. However, I am still making a lot from my book sales, affiliates and from sponsored posts, because my readers are engaged.
3). How can you bring them back to get your PV’s back up?
When my views are down, I look at my content. What have I been writing about? I look at Google Analytics. What is doing well & what has gone downhill? I have realized something: If I can have a viral post every quarter, it will keep my views up in the 3-million monthly view range. If I don’t create a new viral post, that quickly drops. What does this mean? It means that I need to remember that CONTENT IS KING. It means that I should understand that no matter what else comes around if I am not writing good material, they are not coming to read it.
I hope that this was helpful!
Leave a Reply