Month 3 ended with a question: was the blog 31 real people or 816 IPs? The honest answer was 31 humans and a lot of crawlers.
Month 4 (September 1–30) is smaller on traffic and clearer on one number I care about more than pageviews.
September at a glance
| Metric | Month 4 (Sep) |
|---|---|
| Active users (GA) | 14 |
| New users | 14 |
| Avg. engagement time | 36 seconds |
| Event count | 82 |
| New email subscribers | 9 |
Fourteen people. Not fourteen thousand. Same rule as always: the small number is the one that gets published.
Compared to the earlier months
| Metric | Month 1 | Month 2 | Month 3 | Month 4 (Sep) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active users (GA) | ~58 | 57 | 31 | 14 |
| Avg. engagement | — | ~10s | 22s | 36s |
| Email list / new signups | 0 → a few | 7 | 7 | +9 new |
| Returning readers | — | low | 1 | still rare |
Traffic went down. Time on site went up — from 10 seconds in Month 2 to 22 in Month 3 to 36 seconds in Month 4. Fewer people, longer stays. That is not a growth chart. It is a signal that the ones who show up are reading further than they used to.
The list moved for the first time since Month 2. After sitting at 7 through Month 3, September added 9 new subscribers. That is the first real step since the “seven subscribers” post. It does not make the list big. It makes the flat line wrong.
Where the 14 came from
First-user source / medium (September):
| Source | Active users |
|---|---|
| Direct / (none) | 9 |
| chatgpt.com / ai-assistant | 3 |
| gemini.google.com / ai-assistant | 1 |
| perplexity.ai / ai-assistant | 1 |
Sessions told the same story: direct 12, ChatGPT 4, Gemini 3, Perplexity 1.
No Google organic line worth listing. No Pinterest line in this snapshot. A chunk of the month was people (or tools) arriving from AI assistants, plus direct. That matches a site that is still early: some humans type the URL, some ask a chatbot, almost nobody is mid-funnel from search yet.
Cities were scattered (Dublin, Boardman, Braunschweig, Charlotte, and others) — no single metro carrying the blog.
What they opened
Top pages in September:
| Page | Views | Active users | Bounce |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homepage | 12 | 6 | 66.7% |
| Amazon KDP coloring book scorecard | 5 | 3 | 80% |
| Pinterest algorithm post | 3 | 3 | 66.7% |
| Etsy coloring book scorecard | 2 | 2 | 66.7% |
| Other scorecards / kit page | 1–2 each | 1–2 | mixed |
The homepage still does most of the work. Old scorecards (KDP, Etsy, Pinterest) still get a few hits. The brand-new August/September reselling lock post went live October 1, so it is not in this September window.
Bounce on the main pages is still high. Thirty-six seconds average engagement means some people stay; a 67–80% bounce rate means a lot of one-and-dones. Both can be true in a 14-person month.
New vs returning
September was almost all new users. Returning showed up as small spikes, not a base. Month 3 had one returning reader in the honest read. Month 4 is not yet a habit loop. The list is the main tool for changing that — which is why nine new names matter more than the active-user drop.
What this does not include
Closet numbers. August and September reselling profit ($1,348.60 after fees and pickup) is a different scorecard, already published. This post is the blog only.
Revenue from the blog. Still not the point of Month 4.
A claim that “AI traffic” is a strategy. Three users from ChatGPT is a curiosity, not a channel plan.
Verdict
Month 4 was a quiet traffic month and the first list month that was not flat.
- Active users: down (57 → 31 → 14)
- Engagement time: up (10s → 22s → 36s)
- Subscribers: unstuck (7 → +9 new)
I would rather have 14 people who stay half a minute and a list that finally moved than a vanity spike with ten-second bounces. The job for Month 5 is the same job Month 3 named: mid-post CTAs, a reason to come back, and distribution that is not only “hope Direct shows up.”
Next month update will use the same four columns: users, engagement, list, top pages — and whether anyone returned on purpose.
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