How well has this blog been performing? And has it gained any traction since last month’s performance?

Let’s take a look!

Alexa Ranking

Previous Month, January 31st, 2008 Alexa Ranking of 157,194.

February 29th, 2008 Alexa Ranking of 115,040.

A positive gain of 42,154 positions.

Alexa Ranking 2008 Progress

Starting from this month I will be generating a nice chart from my excel sheets that I keep track of my website stats. This will illustrate the progress of 2008 as a whole. Hopefully by the end of 2008, the line will be an upward sloping line, rather than an up and down wave. For the Alexa ranking 2008 Progress Chart, I flipped the Y axis, so that up in this case is good.

Technorati Ranking

January 31st, 2008 Technorati Authority Rating is 51, With a Rank of 150,747.

February 29th, 2008 Technorati Authority Rating is 64, With a Rank of 114,765.

Technorati Ranking 2008 Progress

Similar to the Alexa Ranking chart that I made, technorati ranking should be going up as a whole.

Top Commentators

Ever since I implemented the top commentators on my sidebar, I have seen the number of comments on the blog in general increase. I have also discovered that there is an exploit in the top commentators, that I will soon be blogging about, and hopefully I will find a way to patch that up. The exploit allows anyone to take over the top commentators spot, with their own website, by just making one post.

The total number of overall comments in the month of February was 137 comments. This is up from a total of in January.

The top 7 Commentators

1. Pat with a total of 8 comments left.

Pat King is a Nationally Renowned Health & Fitness Guru! If you need advise on health and fitness, look no further than Pat King. Pat puts his readers in first place, and helps them achieve their health and fitness goals. He is very open, and will answer any questions you have about your health.

2. Blogzila with a total of 8 comments left.

A blog that provides information on how to increase web traffic, search engine optimization, online advertising, web ranking, Alexa and more.

3. Gary R. Hess with a total of 6 comments left.

Gary is the nerd that gives information for search engine marketing, web development and technology.

4. 1 Million in 365 Day with a total of 5 comments left.

Chris, a blogger who is trying get 1 million people in 365 days to read his blog.

5. Auctionman with a total of 5 comments left.

A website that offers free ebay templates, and among other useful information for people interested in both making money online, and auctions.

6. Shelia with a total of 4 comments left.

Shelia shares and talks about her passion tennis, the blog is unique in that it specifically talks about black tennis players.

7. Blogging Tools with a total of 4 comments left.

This blog is a successful one, and is a place for good quality bloggers to come together and collaborate on one big project.

Will you be one of next month’s top commentators? If you are, then I will at next month’s blog report, mention your name.

Traffic Numbers

In the month of February 2008, there were a total of 3,861 Absolute Unique Visitors.

At the end of January is when I first made the move over to Google Analytics to track my website traffic numbers, so I don’t have very accurate data to report for January, so for the 2008 year in general, I will use February as a starting month for the traffic numbers.

Like I wrote in my goals for 2008 post, I hope that by the end of 2008, I will have a total of 11,000 absolute unique visitors visiting the blog. It’s not an easy feat, but its a reachable feat. Off course according to February stats I am 35% of the way there. And If I am to get to the 11,000 goal mark, I will need to average an increase in traffic of around 714 unique visitors per month. Although not an easy task, but certainly an attainable one.

Income Report

No my current blog doesn’t make any money, as of right now I am doing it just for free, as a way to give some of my tips to the community at large. I did however, plan to write about how my other websites are doing, what I am doing to make them succesful, how much money I make with each, etc. Just a flat out report of what it is I do to make money online. But in all honesty at the moment, I am unsure if I will do this or not. If I do, do it, then it will likely be during the summer time when I will begin talking about it. If I don’t do it, it is because I am not yet comfortable revealing such personal information. Rest assured though, even if I don’t get into the numbers of how much I am making outside of this blog, I will still give good information on how to achieve success online.

After receiving so many well thought out comments on various posts as of late, and especially one of the recent posts where I talked about how I got scammed on Ebay. I just had to do this, and that is to reward my members by installing the top commentators plugin on my blog.

Why am I doing this?

Because, I want to reward those who are adding value to my blog, by leaving their valued commentary. And by adding a Top Commentators on the side bar, it is a perfect way for me to reward them!

My Top commentator Settings

For now, I have set the number of top commentators to the lucky 7! I have set it to reset the commentators count every month.

What do you get out of being a Top Commentator?

Besides the bragging rights, and honor of being a top commentator, what is it that you really get out being one of the lucky top seven commentators? It’s simple you get a link to your website, and you will get both SEO Benefits, and traffic benefits. A free plug from me. In the beginning of every month I will try

Free Plug From me
At the beginning of each month, I layout out my stats for the blog, and what some of my other websites have been doing. Each month, I will give a shoutout to my top commentators in my post.

Traffic Benefits
Its quite simple, someone can click the link, and visit your website!

Seo Benefits
You get a quality link to your website, and you help increase your link popularity.

But Jean, Aren’t you worried about that the Search Engines might penalize you?

No, to be honest I am not worried. I pride on putting the readers of my blog first. I write for them, I try to please them, and not the search engines. I try not to worry about the search engines, and instead I work on creating real value for the readers.

Should you put this on your blog?

By all means, yes! Using a top commentators plugin is a great way to increase blog activity, and comments. Readers are more compelled to leave a comment on your blog, if they know they will be receiving a benefit. Is it a guarantee that your blog comments will increase? No, but it can certainly increase the chances of someone leaving a post, over the long run.

So, will you leave your comments?

Enjoy!

First of all let me start off by saying that I love eBay. I have always been a buyer on eBay, and I have never had a single problem. I even made some pretty HUGE purchases on eBay. How Huge? How about three cars purchased on eBay. If I have a purchased a car in the past on eBay, you can tell that I am a loyal eBay user, and I have the confidence to bid.

About one month ago, my mom asked me to purchase for her a Dani Johnson DVD package that was being sold at the official website for $299, she asked for me to purchase it on eBay, so that we could buy it cheaper. My mom received the items normally, all was fine, after my mom had finished watching the DVDs, she had an idea for me to put it up for sale on eBay, since she no longer had anymore use for the DVDs, as she had already watched it.

I had never sold anything on eBay, I have always been a buyer. So I decided to finally sell on eBay. I also had some books that I needed to sell, that was just lying around the house, that I was never going to need again. So I put those up for sale too.

The official first item for me to sell on eBay was a book, and that went well!

Back to the DVDs…… We originally purchased the DVD set on eBay for around $110 dollars. We lucked out to get it for so cheap. The person selling the DVDs had a feedback rating of (0) as he had never purchased or sold anything on eBay. Its always risky to purchase from those, and thats why most people are afraid to bid on them, I believe. So we got a cheaper deal on the DVDs.

Here is the link for the eBay auction that I put up for the Dani Johnson DVD set.

I was shocked and happy that the item had sold for $172.50 plus 15 dollars for shipping, I wasn’t expecting a profit gain from the sale. I would have been happy to break even, or fall a little short of profit. To my dismay, the auction winner, was someone from Israel. I had specifically stated in the auction sales, that I wanted to ship to USA and Canada Only.

However me being the nice guy, I did not complain, or send an email to the guy telling him that I wouldn’t ship it to him. I went to the post office, and even though it cost more than $15 to ship it, I still went ahead and shipped it. I was happy enough that my mom was getting her money back that I did not care to pay extra for the shipping. And off it went to Israel!

I received an email message from leskovshalosh@gmail.com eBay from the buyer from Israel , his username is leskovshalosh.

Heres the message I received

Hello.
Receaved DVDs todays. its low quality burned copy’s.
Not original, bootled DVDs.
Before I left negative feedback and open claim in PP - wish hear your commen

First off, disregard his horrible English. As you can imagine, I was shocked that he had claimed that the DVDs were burned and bootlegged. I had personally seen the package, and the DVDs and they were very much authentic.

Here was my reply to him.

I purchased the DVDs from someone else on ebay. I watched the dvd’s myself. The quality seemed fine to me. The person I purchased it from said that they bought the dvds from the Dani Johnson seminar.

In the past I have purchased Joel Bauer’s dvd set at a live seminar, the quality of the dvd was actually worse than that of the Dani Johnson.

Thank you for contacting me about this before making a negative feedback.

He never did reply back to me, and later I saw that he had charged back on his credit card. So What do i see now? A red -$179.89 USD on my paypal account.

Have I received the item back?

No, he still has the items in his possession, and acknowledged it in the email that he sent me.

Some Thoughts

It really is just too easy for this buyer. He purchased the DVD set, obviously has watched them. Now he has successfully made a charge back on his credit card claiming that the DVDs I sent him were pirated and burned copies. So he has already consumed the goods, and now he gets his payment back too. Do you see how I lose out on this big time?

I don’t have the DVD package in my possession, and I am short changed $187.50 dollars!

How could I have avoided this?

The truth of the matter is I should have never shipped to the buyer. Yes he sent me the payment via paypal, but the shipping address on the paypal internet was unconfirmed. According to paypal, by sending to an unconfirmed address, I as the seller lose the seller protection. Meaning that, in case of a scammer, I would not be protected.

Even if the buyer had a confirmed paypal address, I don’t believe I would have gotten my money back, because under the seller protection rules it states that, The transaction must be between a US, UK or Canadian buyer and a US, UK or Canadian seller. Meaning that, by sending to Israel, according to the Paypal seller protection, I have absolutely no protection at all.

Lesson Learned

Do not sell to outside of the USA or Canada on eBay, as you will have no protection at all.

How to protect yourself as a seller on eBay

1. Be sure to purchase an item shipping tracker.
2. Be sure to send only to verified paypal addresses.
3. Seller protections are only covered for packages sent from US to US, or US to Canada.
4. Familiarize yourself with the Seller\Buyer Protection Policies from eBay and paypal.

What do you think of all this, Please leave your comments below!

If you have any suggestions on how I can get my money back, please leave them below!

If you didn’t leave a comment on my blog post about the new theme, you missed out on a great opportunity to receive a free link or a free 125×125 ad.

By the deadline I set there were a total of 11 unique author comments, excluding me. This was not bad for a first contest for the blog. The key is to create trust with the readers of the blog. I feel that with the results. Now what should happen, is the next time I do another contest of similar circumstances, there should be more comments left.

Feedback Received

Some readers stated that they have missed the old picture of me being in the header image. As it was a way of identifying me, and standing from the crowd. I would have to agree that having a photo of yourself, personalizes the website. And certainly by putting a photo of myself in the banner would be a way for me to brand myself. I will be trying to experiment blending in a photo of myself in the top left of the banner, hopefully it works out.

There were some suggestions regarding using more css on the website. If the appropriate changes are made, it will shave off precious seconds off of the website load time.

Overall, everyone has been pleased with the new website, and I have received mostly positive feedback. See all the comments left by the readers.

The Winners

In my post, I stated I would give the 2 best blog comments, a choice at a free 125×125 or a free blog roll link. I could have decided the 2 best blog commentators, but I feel like being generous. Therefore, out of the 4 best comments, I have chosen to reward all 4 comment authors.

And they are…….

Mariam from Money Relations, who chose the 125×125 ad.
Pam Hoffman From Seminar List, who chose the 125×125 ad.
Margaret From Eye Spi, who chose the 125×125 ad.
Gary R. Hess From Imp nerd, who chose the 125×125 ad.

But wait theres more….

I also drew 2 random comment authors from the blog post. I did not choose these, and the drawing was a true random drawing, where I input the list on random.org

And the winners for a free blogroll link for 1 month are….

Jason Bates from http://www.lushable.com

And

Sean Morris of http://www.2009gtr.com/

I have already contacted the winners of the best comment, and I will now be contacting both Jason, and Sean via email.

Small Hint: If you are subscribed to my RSS feed via feedburner, I may be giving a totally random giveaway in the near future. I am a very “giving” guy as you can tell from the results of this contest.

It’s that time of the month again, where bloggers, blog about how well or not so well their blog has been doing. This will officially be my first progress report on my blog. I have had this domain since December of 2006, but it wasn’t until as recent as late December of 2007 that I started taking it seriously. You can see by the stats, that by putting a decent effort, the blog stats have been getting better and better, and the blog continues to grow.

Alexa Ranking

December 31st, 2007 Alexa Ranking 451,327.

January 31st, 2008 Alexa Ranking 157,194.

A gain of 294,133 positions!

I realize that Alexa Ranking is not a direct indicator of traffic, but the number still holds some meaning. I do find though, that Alexa ranking can be accurate for websites that are in the top 100.

Technorati

December 31st, 2007 Technorati Authority Rating was an 8, With a Rank of 962,510.

January 31st, 2008 Technorati Authority Rating is 51, With a Rank of 150,747.

A 43 point rating gain, while advancing 811,763 positions in the rankings.

Traffic Stats

If you click on the image above, you can see from the calendar visitors chart, I have highlighted in red the day the with highest traffic. And on the 9th of January, there was a total of 349 unique visitors. In all the history of my website, this would be the highest unique visitors day ever.

Thursday Reviews

Since I have implemented my Thursday Reviews, I have had a total of 3 websites review me. I hope that this will continue to grow, and that I will continue to have a blog to review every Thursday. Maybe you will be the next person to get a free constructive website review, and in the end its free exposure, and a free backlink, so how can it hurt?

January Conclusion

All in all January was a great month, and a step into the positive direction. The hardest thing will be to be able to keep the momentum going. It is so hard to get that momentum, and once you have that moment going for you, it is easy to lose it.

You are probably wondering where are the earnings report for the jeancosta.com website. Well to be honest, there is none, because I am not yet monetizing the website. I would rather concentrate on gaining users trust, before attempting to make money. I value my visitors more, than making a few quick bucks.

February Goals

I thought about this one, and I think it would be appropriate to set a top 100k goal for both Technorati, and Alexa Ranking. I do think these goals would be achievable.

How did you do last month with your website and or blog?