Last month I said the number that actually matters isn't views — it's whether traffic sticks and converts. Month two gave me a real answer, and it's a mixed one.
Views doubled: 156 to 318. Subscribers ticked up from 5 to 7. And I found my actual problem, which isn't traffic at all — it's that people show up, click around, and don't stay. Revenue is still a clean $0. Here's the whole receipt.
(These are my last-28-day numbers, Jun 4 – Jul 1, reported exactly as Google Analytics shows them.)
The numbers
Month 1 vs. Month 2
| Metric | Month 1 | Month 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Total views | 156 | 318 |
| Active users | 58 | 57 |
| Views per active user | ~2.7 | 5.58 |
| Email subscribers | 5 | 7 |
| Blog revenue | $0 | $0 |
Views doubled. The audience didn't.
This is the part worth understanding, because it's easy to misread.
Total views went from 156 to 318 — but active users barely moved, 58 to 57. Same-size crowd, twice the page views. The honest read: I didn't get more people this month, I got the same people looking at more pages each. Views per active user went from about 2.7 to 5.58.
That's genuinely good — it means the people who find the site explore it instead of reading one page and vanishing. The content is interlinked enough to pull someone from one post to the next. But it also means growth is coming from depth, not reach. To actually grow, I need new humans, not just more clicks from the same ones.
One more honest flag from the acquisition data: most of my traffic is Direct, not organic search. For a blog this small, "Direct" usually means it isn't ranking in Google yet, plus some of it is me and people I've shared links with. I'm not fooling myself that this is a search-traffic machine yet. It isn't.
The real problem: 10 seconds
Average engagement time was 10 seconds. Some of my most-viewed pages are worse — the homepage holds people for about 4 seconds.
That's the number I care about most, and I'm not spinning it. People are arriving and skimming, not reading. Ten seconds isn't enough to reach a call to action, join the list, or care about the next post. All the doubled views in the world don't matter if nobody stays long enough to do anything.
This is month three's job: stronger first paragraphs, clearer next steps on the pages that pull the most traffic, and cutting anything that makes a page feel like work to read.
Subscribers: 5 to 7
Two new subscribers this month, from 5 to 7. My goal was 10, so I missed it.
The /subscribe page got 26 visits and converted 2 of them net. That's a low completion rate, and it's a fixable one — 26 people cared enough to visit the page and most didn't finish. Better copy on that page and a clearer reason to sign up right now is a concrete month-three task, not a mystery.
What's actually getting read
From the page data, the posts pulling real traffic are the specific, searchable ones:
- The Amazon KDP scorecard is my top-performing post (21 views) and one of the few pages with any real engagement time behind it.
- The exam-prep origin story and the Etsy coloring book and Facebook Marketplace scorecards are all pulling steady, if small, numbers.
The pattern holds from month one: specific beats generic. The posts that name a real platform and show a real number get found and get read.
The income line: still $0
No revenue again. The one live affiliate link — my Appalachian Folklore coloring book on Amazon — still hasn't earned a commission, which is exactly what you'd expect at this traffic and engagement level.
I'm still not adding more affiliate links until people actually stay and read. Monetizing a blog nobody lingers on is backwards, and it's the move I started this site to call out.
Did I hit my month-2 goals?
Setting them in public means grading them in public:
- 10 email subscribers — missed. Got to 7.
- 500 total views — missed, but nearly doubled to 318.
- Publish 8 more posts — 7 live posts, but that fits the timeframe.
- One more affiliate approved — Still waiting on Canva.
What month 3 looks like
- Fix engagement — get average time meaningfully past 10 seconds
- Convert the
/subscribetraffic I already get; goal of 12–15 subscribers - Earn real organic search traffic, not just Direct
- Keep publishing specific, named, numbered posts — they're the ones that work
Two months in: views are climbing, the audience is loyal but small, engagement is my weak point, and revenue is zero. That's an honest starting position, not a finish line. Month three, same receipt.
Two months into something slow and quiet? Tell me where you are with it. Hit reply or drop a comment — I read every one.
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