A Couple Travelers By The Numbers: Jan ’13 Income – $2925

Some of you may recall that we did a reader survey last week, in which we asked questions about the blog, how often people read, what they like to read, what they don’t like to read, etc. In total we had 21 responses, which is by no means a ton of data but it was still interesting to read the comments and see the results.

I had planned on sharing the results fully in a separate post and was going to include some print screens of the data, but then the damn freeonlinesurveys.com proved awful and no longer lets me view the results (unless of course I upgrade to the paid version, sigh). The good news is that I already saw the results awhile back. The bad news is that now I can’t share them exactly, except for what I remember off the top of my head. Let me run through a few key points:

Multiple Choice:

• Most people who took the survey have been following us since Day 1 (probably a lot of family and friends).
• Most people thought the frequency of posting was “Just Right” a few said not enough, and none said “Too Much”.
• 19 out of 21 people said they didn’t care about the sponsored posts.
• About 33% of people read Vicky’s Food Blog.
• About 75% of people prefer Adventure Stories. Second was blogging related stuff (like this article). I probably should have been clearer with my choices and broken out adventure stories into 2 or 3 different categories.
• About 75% of people like when Vicky and I comment in each other’s articles. A few people find it confusing and a few people didn’t really notice.

Comments:

A lot of people just said nice things and that they liked the blog. A few of the ones I found very constructive were the following:

“Include more pictures of you to make it more personal” – It’s true. As I looked over a few of our articles, sometimes Vicky and I leave out pictures of us almost in an attempt to separate us from the post. We’re going to start including more pictures of us doing the things we talk about. It is our blog after all.

“Add maps to articles” – I think the point here is that sometimes it is difficult to know where we are, as there is a time lag with the articles (usually a few weeks behind) and not everyone knows where Hoi An is. We always include our route in the wrap ups but we’ll try to be more explicit calling out where we are in the articles we write about.

“Logistics are very helpful for us preparing our trip” – We’re glad to hear that and it motivates us to continue to do that.

Summary

Social Media: It was nice to finally have unimpeded access to Facebook this month. In Vietnam, if you didn’t know, it is often blocked. Still, I can’t say we really DO that much with Social Media. Most of it is automated (automated posts to FB, twitter, etc) which works no matter where you are. 

Traffic: We saw the largest traffic this month in the history of the blog, which was great especially after the dip in December. Here are a few hypotheses:

• January is a full month without many holidays or people going on vacation. Statistically, people are most likely to read blogs while at work (go figure). More days at work = more pageviews.
• We had a full month of Social Media access and were able to promote all our articles on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Our articles were better quality and were more likely to be shared by others.
• None of the above i.e random.

Of course it’s pretty difficult to say. If it was the first cause then we would expect other bloggers to have the same seasonal uptick. We did on AvocadoPesto, so maybe that’s it?

We don’t usually get a ton of traffic from Social Media and for the most part had similar access in December so I doubt it’s this, but you never know.

The third point is pretty anecdotal, as a friend mentioned he thought the articles were better quality this month but they would have to be shared A LOT more to increase pageviews by 3k.

Bottom line is we’re not sure, probably some combination of factors and I think the seasonal hypotheses aka January is a good month to be blogging explains it. What do other bloggers think?

Guest posts and interviews this month:

• Interview on The Travel Tester
• Interview on Wez Wanders
• Interview on Flip Nomad
• Top 10 Fruits To Eat In Asia

and the interviews we do on our site

• Simon and Erin from Never Ending Voyage
• Mike and Luci from 1000Fights

Advertising: We had a great month of advertising and also were able to severely limit the number of sponsored posts that appeared on our blog (I think maybe only two). That’s a win-win in my mind. This is largely in part due to our ability and new preference to publish sponsored posts behind the scenes. We haven’t heard any uproar from advertisers about this and I don’t think the audience minds either as they seem to not care about sponsored posts.

We’re still keen on diversifying our income and are currently experimenting with a few new ideas, which I’ll discuss briefly below.

New Blog TravelingThroughFood.com – The first is going to be an entirely new blog. I can hear the groans right now. That’s the best you got? Another blog we have to follow? We’ll that is, of course, entirely up to you! But, as for Vicky and I, it’s been very clear that the blogging has been going well for us from an income standpoint and it seems worthwhile to pursue another one. In this one we’ll be focusing purely on the food in our travels, which makes it somewhat a niche in between the food blog (recipes) and the travel blog (adventure stories). It’s “up and running” though severely under construction.

New Website TripGoggles.com – We’re launching a new website (not a blog) in the next few weeks to help bloggers and trip planners. We hired a programmer off Elance and he’s underway developing it for us. It’s something Vicky and I have been talking about for literally months (>6) and are finally following through with. I’d prefer to wait until it is fully developed before disclosing all the details, not really out of secrecy, but just because I think the explanation will go better with a visual aid. Hopefully we’ll be able to fully announce it in our next monthly update.

Ebooks – We wanted to throw our hat into the ebook ring. We have a few themes we’d like to test, particularly around the combination of food and travel. Think things like, an adventure book with recipes. Or, a cookbook of Asian/European recipes adapted for American products. These are a few of the ideas we’re toying with.

???? – Vicky and I are constantly on the look out for the next thing to get involved in. We’re always experimenting with different ideas, like starting our own tutoring business or language institute. The aforementioned are “mini” projects that we can start on right away and that we think could bolster our income while on the road, but there’s always room for more! Please feel free to contact us with any ideas, etc.

Social Media

Website Statistics

Google Page Rank: 2/10

Domain Authority: 38/100

• Direct Advertising ACoupleTravelers: $2,925
• Direct Advertising AvocadoPesto: $1260

Total Value Received: $233

• Silom Cooking School (Free) – $33
• Time For Lime Cooking School (Free) – $200

Find previous traffic updates:

• May ’12 Traffic Update
• June ’12 Traffic Update
• July ’12 Traffic Update
• August ’12 Traffic Update
• September ’12 Traffic Update
• October ’12 Traffic Update
• November ’12 Traffic Update
• December ’12 Traffic Update

Previous Income Updates (Food Blog)

• July 2012 – $47
• August 2012 – $117
• September 2012 – $128
• October 2012 – $825
• November 2012 – $1019
• December – $837

Share and Enjoy