PageRank 4, 80k Alexa and 20k Visits – All In 3 Months. Detailed Report.


Some say it’s “AMAZING!”… For others it’s just “OK”… For me it’s “ACHIEVABLE” and I think you can outperform me quite easily if you want to.

This post is nothing else but my monthly report of the progress with BloggerJET. (Here are the past ones: 1st week, 1st month, 2nd month.)

The third month is closed and half of the challenge is behind my back now. As I turn around to look at it I have to admit I could do so much better, but that’s a different story. Let’s look at the stats!

Traffic Overview: 3rd Month of Blogging

During this month I’ve only published 7 posts on BloggerJET, 2 of which were guest posts actually. I did not promote my posts the way I should and did not submit any guest posts to other bloggers, yet I managed to almost double the traffic of the previous month:

There are 3 “viral” spikes you can see on the graph and I’m sure you want to know what caused them:

So basically, this month was a success mostly because of the traffic from StumbleUpon, and it’s not an accident actually. I think I’ve developed my very own (dead simple) StumbleUpon Ads strategy, where you can generate tons of traffic at miserable budgets. I’ll share it in my future posts. Subscribe and you won’t miss that.

Top Content This Month

I find it quite amusing that my “hottest” post this month was the one I’ve published a week before that. Again I attribute this “success” to the smart StumbleUpon Ads strategy I’ve mentioned earlier.

Must say I’m a bit disappointed that the “success story of PassivePanda” didn’t work so well – “Zero To Hero: How To Get 120K Unique Visitors In Just 8 Months [Infographic]“. The research took me quite a while and I even paid a designer to create the infographic, hoping that the post will get tons of attention. Yet it didn’t. Perhaps the “success story” that I’ve shared wasn’t outstanding enough. Or else…

Another post that I’ve expected to skyrocket was this one – “99 Dazzling Blogs Every Blogger Should Dream Of Guest Posting For“. Despite the countless hours I’ve spent on it and the trick with “pay with a tweet” button it didn’t generate enough tweets to satisfy me.

All I can say at this point is that producing viral posts like “50+ Amazing Steve Jobs Tribute Artworks” where people don’t even have to read is a hundred times easier than compiling the so-called “valuable” content and spreading the word about it.

Top 25 Traffic Sources This Month

If you compare this report to the one from the previous month you won’t find any new “secret sources” responsible for traffic growth:

The difference lies in the growth of each individual traffic source:

  • StunbleUpon – 470.17% growth
  • Direct – 20.35% growth
  • Twitter – 25.48% growth
  • Google – 220.88% growth

Finally my Google traffic is improving! Though I’m quite good at SEO I didn’t do anything special to improve my traffic from Google: didn’t optimize my texts or headlines for particular keywords, didn’t use any dodgy SEO plugins, didn’t build links, didn’t comment on dofollow blogs. This growth is 100% natural and I’m quite happy with it!

Similarly I didn’t do anything special to get such a high PageRank for a 3 months old blog.

What next?

After studying the success of James Clear with PassivePanda.com I no longer think that I have to grow my traffic each month to reach my goal of 100k visits on the 6th month.

There’s a major traffic drop in the center of the graph and I can clearly see that guest posts is what made PassivePanda skyrocket “from zero to hero”.

That said, in the next 3 months I’m going to focus on hardcore guest posting and as usual I’ll be sharing all my wins and failures here at BloggerJET.

Other than that I have a crazy idea that should help me to reach my goal, but I’ll keep it a secret for now :) Stay tuned and you won’t miss it!

This is it for now! Wish me luck and feel free to email me if you need any advice on growing your blog – I’m ALWAYS happy to help!

Tim Soulo is the Chief Marketing Officer and Product Advisor at Ahrefs, a leading tool trusted by hundreds of thousands of SEOs and marketers worldwide. His SEO-related data research studies have been cited by media giants, including Inc, TechCrunch, and VentureBeat. He's also a regular speaker at some of the largest industry conferences around the globe, such as PubCon (US), BrightonSEO (UK), and the Digital Marketers Australia Conference (AU).

33 Comments

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  1. Man, I am excited to watch this site grow! I can’t wait too see you fly past that mark of 100,000 visits in one month! 3 things you might consider trying (as I’ve seen my blog benefit significantly from):

    1. A contest that isn’t like every other contest that bloggers run just to get tweets. (My latest contest idea drive my traffic through the roof.)

    2. Get you a good Google+ strategy. I’m willing to help with that– it has been the reason for 20% of my traffic, above twitter & Facebook.

    3. Get me to guest post on here. ;)

    • Hey, Dustin! thanks for the feedback :) I would love to get a guestpost from you! :) on other two – can you drop me an email and we’ll discuss those ? :)

  2. Looks like you’re doing great! Looking forward to seeing how you got those stumbles. :)

    • Thanks, Ava! :) In short – I got them for money :) But the trick is to get those stumbles for less money :)

  3. Many times over we put our effort in certain things and don’t work as expected. The good things in learn what went wrong and do better next time. I think is awesome all the progress you are doing. keep it up Tim!

    • Hey Ricardo. Yeah.. I think there’s no such thing as “negative experience”.. If you’ve learned something (be it good or bad) – thats always a plus!

      Thanks for support! :)

  4. Hi?@timsoulo:disqus. I had PR3 after the latest Google update, and you’ve zipped past my tech blog. Great job there. Like?@DustinWStout:disqus??I would also like to watch this site grow. Let me guest-post too!

    • hey Marck! Thanks! Feel free to pitch me a guest post by email! :)

  5. Hi Tim,

    I think your results are actually quite amazing considering that your blog is only 3 months old. Can’t wait for your Crazy Idea, mate!

    Oh, and thanks for helping me out with my latest blog post title!

    • No problem, Kris! :) The cat is HILARIOUS :)

  6. As already mentioned here Tim I think you’re still doing fine, the fact that you are staying on your hustle assures me that you’ll reach big numbers even if you don’t hit 100,000, you are always switching it up over here and I like how transparent you are with your strategies.

    It may sound boring, but trust me, guest posts are the way to go. I have some really specific data on my guest posts if you are interested (some blogs have awesome clickthrough rates, and some suck, feel free to ask).

    • thanks a lot for support, Gregory :)

      I’d love to see that data on guest posts! :) can you please drop me an email if you have time for it? :)

  7. This is really great improvement.
    I am blogging for last 2 years and my improvement was not so rapid.
    By the way thanks for sharing the secrets.

    • you’re welcome! See my previous reports, there are some “secrets” there as well :)

  8. Hey why don’t you make the comment section Dofollow??

    • I don’t want people to comment just because of the link :)

  9. Well done, I’m eager to see the stumble upon strategy.? I’m starting to get consistent hits from it, but nothing crazy big yet.

    • thanks, Bryce! :) I think I’ll submit it as a guestpost for Triberr :) I’ll let you know! :)

      • Wow, talk about ask and you will receive.? The post I published yesterday had over 1,500 hits from Stumbleupon.? All organic.?

        I’ve been following you from the start and I have you to thank for keeping me working on my game.

        I’m still not really getting a great spike in traffic from Twitter like you are, so maybe that’s an area, I’ll start to focus on soon.? I need to reread your Twitter guide.

        • Bryce, I’m totally glad my blog is helping you to improve yours! :)

  10. Hi Tim
    That is very impressive work you have done here. You must really have some great blogger and SEO skills. I will go and check out some of your other posts right away :)

    • Hey Thomas! thanks for feedback :)

  11. Just wanted to share that I’ve been using your “creative title” idea for more than just blogs and newsletters. I’ve found I get a better response from co-workers too when the subject line is catchy. Maybe others will consider that these ideas have value outside of just blogs. Looking forward to more…

    • that’s awesome, Doug! Happy to hear my tips are effective :)

  12. Your current alexa rating is 347,012

    • I know :) that’s because BloggerJET was shut down for like 6 months :)

      • Why was it shut down? It was rising up to its glory and then shut down for 6 months? Now how are you going to get that 6 months back.

        • well I thought I could re-open it with a stunning viral coming-soon page.. but I failed :) there’s a post about this actually :)

          • Well using the same techniques and approaches, i believe you can catch it up again. Good luck.

  13. smirk

    good post, thx

  14. Annur Diana

    nice post, thk

  15. It was amazing post. Great work dude..