After a strong start to the month, my stats started to dive off a cliff.

Daily Clicks from Google Search Results

Okay, that’s not really reason to panic. The above graph from the Google Webmaster Tools, and shows the organic search clicks on my website. I also use Google Analytics, which showed a 44% increase in users in the past 30 days compared to the prior period, further supporting my theory that my business was growing, not shrinking. Diving into the Google Analytics metrics I see two to three times as many organic search clicks from Google than reported in the Google Webmaster Tools, which indicates Google Webmaster Tools may be under reporting. Besides, even if traffic was down, I already had a likely culprit: the switch from http to https and know I just need to ride out the storm.

It turns out that Google Webmaster separates out traffic by protocol, so I needed to create another property to capture the https data.

No reason to panic.

At least not over that.

When I was digging into the problem I came across a couple websites that showed their average click rates. From there I could get a better picture of how much traffic “top” websites get, and a potential ceiling for my business. It looks like it’s much lower than my ultimate target. On top of that, while I nearly doubled revenue this year compared to last, I’d need to keep doubling for the next seven years in order to reach my target. That’s a long time to go without a steady paycheck, not to mention a pretty unsustainable growth rate to maintain.

Datayze, in it’s current conception, may be infeasible.

I am not giving up, but I do recognize the need for a new strategy.

Posted in Work Life | Tags: Sarahsoft