How Long Until My Blog Reaches 1,000 Daily Visitors?

This is a question confronting many bloggers and whilst some achieve this goal faster than others, many never do. However, it certainly depends a lot upon the topic of the blog and how much time is put into it.

One observation of mine is that design plays less of a role than you would imagine. Internet users are familiar with all kinds of Web site setups, and some very successful sites don’t offer fancy designs. Just have a look at Google: personally, I wouldn’t give them any prizes for design! Therefore, a pretty layout is certainly pleasing on the eye, but it’s not the key to attracting thousands of visitors.

What guests need is user-friendly navigation to find their way through a site, especially when the article count is growing quickly. Articles obviously need to be unique, nobody likes reading the same stuff everywhere. But what came as a surprise was that short articles are perceived better than longer ones. Therefore, we have started to split relatively long articles into shorter chunks which are easier to digest.

Of course, the total number of articles matters. Soccerwidow.com now has around 140 articles in both of its languages (German and English) making a total of 280. Experience with blogging is another important factor. With time, the penny has dropped and we have begun to understand what attracts readers and what turns them off. The learning curve is steep and information overload has been a problem.

It took 18 months for Soccerwidow.com to reach 1,000 daily visitors. Hundreds of hours went into the development of this Web site. The hardest and most time-consuming task was (and still is), mastering all the technical challenges of blogging, rather than producing content for the site. Of course, the main objective of blogging is to write articles and it is very rewarding to know that people are reading and appreciating my work.

Blog maintenance, PHP programming, design, database administration eat more than half of my time at the moment. The other half is divided between odds calculation and developing/evaluating betting strategies. Only 20% of the total time available is left for writing articles. For me, this is unsatisfactory and honestly, quite unexpected.

Hopefully this pivot will change in the near future when I reach a stage where my technical blogging knowledge is so advanced that only a few hours a week need be spent on learning new skills. Currently, much time is spent reading and understanding various blogging tutorials and searching through forums to find technical solutions for the blog.


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If you are thinking of starting a blog from scratch, with limited resources and no real knowledge of blogging, then please be very, very patient. Your progress will undoubtedly be extremely slow.

The following figures represent Soccerwidow’s readership benchmarks:

In January 2011 (the blog’s beginnings: primordial soup!): 340 visits, 1,081 page views
In June 2011 (half-year stage): 810 visitors, 1,829 page views
In January 2012 (month 13): 4,238 visitors, 10,515 page views
In May 2012 (month 17): 13,150 visitors, 25,125 page views
1st-21st June, 2012 (last 3 weeks: after almost 18 months of blogging): 14,861 visitors, 28,972 page views

In the last few weeks Soccerwidow.com exceeded for the first time the threshold of 1,000 visitors per day. Hurray!!


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The 21st June, 2012 (day 537 of blogging), was the first day with over 2,000 page views 🙂

I wish to thank all the loyal readers who have kept me going with their comments and input. Sometimes I felt like giving up, but kept going thanks to the encouragement of others.

Image: Mopic (Shutterstock)

Also, many thanks to everyone who has ever pointed out technical flaws in the site and/or given tips on improving the blog. This was another important factor helping to achieve the goal of 1,000 daily readers.

However, the greatest “thank you” needs to go to my most reliable supporter, the person who never fails to believe in me, my loving husband. ‘Soccerwidow’s Bloke’ has not only helped translate and publish many articles into proper English, he has also added a flavour of subtle humour (it’s his fault if you find any grammar mistakes in this article!), and he also now writes match previews independently using the Soccerwidow statistical approach.

This is an exciting time. Soccerwidow is growing on a daily basis meaning that the actual blogging is becoming more and more rewarding.

Thank you all so much and best wishes from Soccerwidow – Hopefully this blog will be here to provide you with more valuable betting advice both now and in the foreseeable future!