Catching Up

Traffic and Analytics

We average 4.3 visitors per day. The average time on HopSafari is 3 minutes. The bounce rate is 65%. We average 2.26 pageviews per visit.

Not bad, considering.

Book Sales

Wow, we're in the second week of November and so far two books have sold. The first copy of Crafting Beer with (512) Brewing Company was purchased by a craft brewer I recently met.

One copy of Conquering Your Engineering Internship: Planning, Getting, And Making The Most Of An Internship Or Co-Op was snagged by someone I don't know. I hope he or she will have an awesome internship. 

Selling two books in two weeks doesn't add up to much, but it does make me happy. How cool is it that a brewer bought a copy of Crafting Beer? He must really like the photos since he already knows how beer is made.

Tweaks and Improvements

I modified the website for Conquering Your Engineering Internship to look a little cleaner, feature a testimonial, and to add an email list signup (which gives you access to a sample chapter). The site currently has an a-b test running, so you'll see different content depending on chance.

I also cleaned up the main Moving Average Inc. site. I rewrote lots of text and simplified the design. I also removed references to products that I'm going to drop (a collection of scary stories I collected through Mechanical Turk, a book about real estate values written before the bubble burst, and a guide to Quicksilver for the Mac).

Finally, a few Hop Safari tweaks. I made a mailing list for the site. You can sign up at the top of each page. Also, I removed some of the widget clutter I had along the side of every page, and added a testimonial for the Crafting Beer book.

The Future

I learned a few SEO ideas from Dustin Woodard at the Beer Bloggers Conference, so I'll be doing a few tweaks on all my sites to improve my google rankings. I also need to work on those other ideas that I haven't gotten to yet...

Thursday of Doom

Traffic

We had 5 unique visitors, but 97 page views yesterday. That seems like a lot of page views per visitor, but I won't complain.

Oh, and at least one of the visitors was a viagra spammer. Advertisement via referral logs? That's new to me.

Sales, Twitter, and Affiliates

No sales, no new twitter followers, and no new affiliates yesterday.

Goodreads

I hooked the Hop Safari Journal up to my Goodreads Author's Page yesterday. Will this generate traffic?

Google Analytics

I finally have Google Analytics hooked up to HopSafari.com. Hopefully it will provide a little more detail about the visitors than the built-in traffic monitoring.

Stuff

I got my Hop Safari shirts from uberprints.com. Everyone will be so jealous!

Ideas

I'm still behind on implementing my list of ideas. 

Two Days of Hermine

There was lots of water, but no damage from Tropical Storm Hermine's reign at Moving Average Inc. World Headquarters. We saw lots of flooding in Austin, and Barton Springs Pool and a few roads turned into deadly rapids, so we lucked out.

Twitter

HopSafari is up to 9 followers. We're creeping up.

Traffic

HopSafari.com welcomed 3 visitors on Tuesday, and 10 visitors Wednesday. I think that the Hot Sauce Festival video had something to do with that.

Sales

Still 0 sales, so we're flat. I think we need to grow that number.

Personality

Jennie says I need more personality. Hopefully she means I need to show more personality. By thunder, I need to work on that!

Ideas

I'm a little behind on taking action on my ideas. Here are a few that I've done nothing with:

• offering prints or posters of gorgeous beer-related stuff
• offering training or services around self-publishing
• conversion form for an email list
• registering as an Amazon author
• a video tour of Crafting Beer with (512) Brewing Company

A Long Weekend

Not much happened on Hop Safari this weekend; I was in Corpus Christi windsurfing. 

Traffic

Friday: 7 visitors

Saturday: 0 visitors

Sunday: 3 visitors

Monday: 5 visitors

I'm happy to see that my huge readership was taking their vacation seriously and not surfing the internet.

Affiliate Clicks

We got our first affiliate click this month over the weekend.

Sales

Still no sales this month.

Twitter

We now have 6 followers!

Trada

Remember that one of my ideas was to try Trada? Well, maybe not. Their signup questionnaire implies a minimum buy of $1000 per month. That's a bit much for me, especially considering that there is no guarantee that any click will lead to a purchase. Unless I can pay per sale, or demonstrably improve my conversion rate (so far 0%), that expense level doesn't make sense for me.

Ten Days of Hop Safari

Traffic

I was disappointed by my unique visit count on Wednesday the first of September. The site only had two visitors for that day. Oddly, the system recorded 70 page views. I have no idea how two people looked at 70 pages.

Happily, the visit count returned to normal on Thursday, with 8 unique visits and 34 page views. Friday is off to a good start with 3 visitors so far.

Referrals

The top referrers for HopSafari.com have been Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, in that order. LinkedIn? Who would have guessed.

Twitter

I still have 5 followers on twitter, but I've been listed in the Beer Wench's Beer Rockstar list. Awesome!

Sales

I still have no sales of Crafting Beer with (512). I'm a little surprised at this point, but the book and the Hop Safari name are still quite young. Clearly I have a lot to learn about sales and marketing. Lucky for me, I like to learn!

Equipment

I just ordered a few pieces of video equipment for GABF, including a better microphone. I have a few ideas for cool content, one of which may have me running around GABF asking people about interesting new beers. How does that sound?