This Gal Cooks

Google Analytics Stats and July Recipes

Good morning and happy Saturday. Can you believe it’s already August? Well, you know what that means…it’s time for July’s monthly Google Analytics Stats and Recipe Recap!

Google Analytics Stats and July Recipes from www.thisgalcooks.com

I sure was busy cooking last month, wasn’t I? I’ll get to the recipes in a moment but first, I want to go over my Google Analytics Stats for the month of July. July was a great month for This Gal Cooks, for the most part. My traffic continued to grow and my bounce rate pretty much stayed the same. 

Google Analytics July 2013Last month I started having major issues with my previous hosting company, Bluehost. In June I switched to their pro-hosting plan in order to try to improve my page speed. Well, this ended up being a mistake. Pretty soon after switching to that plan (which meant switching to a different server) my site started going down periodically. I contacted them about this and the response I received was that the server had an error and had to be restored. They also said to cache my pages. So I started caching my pages with one of their products but I still had issues. Then one Saturday morning my site went down for FOUR hours! I was not a happy camper. My pageviews were affected drastically by this. I only had 680 pageviews that day! After going through that, I decided to switch to Servint. Since then, my site has been super fast and I have not been down at all!

Let’s take a look at some statistics:

  • My page views were up 13% from 50,918 in June to 58,980 in July
  • Unique visitors were up 12% from 29,320 in June to 33,511 in July
  • Visits were up 13% from 35,384 in June to 40,984 in July
  • Bounce rate increased from 82.21% in May to 82.30% in July
  • For more information on page views, unique visitors and visitors, please visit here.

What factors contributed to this? 

  • I continued to link to parties that drove traffic to my site. These included Lady Behind The Curtain, Six Sisters Stuff and Chef In Training
  • I continued to share Marvelous Mondays link ups on Facebook and Twitter with a link back to the party along with the link up number. Not only does this drive traffic to my site, it drives traffic to the site of the person who linked up to my party.
  • I continued to add photos with links to older recipes at the bottom of my posts.
  • I continued to try to respond to each and every comment on my blog and I try to visit a post from those who comment on my blog. If someone comments on one of my posts, I feel it is important to stop by their blog and return the blog love.
  • I started to slack off on linking up to parties. I need to start doing it again because I have seen a decrease in pageviews. However, this decrease also started after the issue with Bluehost so I don’t know if I am still recovering from that.

Referral Sites

Here are the sites that drove traffic to my blog. Unfortunately, Recipenewz is no longer in service. This is probably going to affect my pageviews in August. As you can see, Recipenewz was the number four referrer to my site.

Google Analytics July 2013b

What methods do you use to increase your pageviews?

Income

July was a great month for income. I started using Google Adsense and I was selected for quite a few campaigns. I was only paid for one of the campaigns so far, Glacier Fruitwater, but expect payment from the other campaigns within the next month.

Glacier Fruitwater via SITS – $50.00 (paid)
NatureBox via Burst Media – $250.00 (pending payment)
Schick Hydro Social Media Influencer via BlogHer – $50.00 (pending payment)
Wonderful Brands via Clever Girls – $125.00 (pending payment)
Google Adsense – $36.47 (pending payment)

I didn’t mention blogging income in my June post but here are the campaigns I worked on:
Tyson Grilled & Ready Chicken via Burst Media – $300.00 (pending payment)
Fruttare Fruit Bars via Clever Girls – $200.00 (paid in August)

I am currently working on two other campaigns with Clever Girls. Those will be posted in August and income reporting will be highlighted in September!

July Recipes 

And now it’s time for the July Recipe Recap. Enjoy!

{Click the images to view the recipes}

Vanilla Peach Ice Cream

Vanilla Peach Ice Cream

 

Fresh Fruit & Cream Tarts

Fresh Fruit & Cream Tarts

 

Caprese Chicken Roll Ups

Caprese Chicken Roll Ups

 

Broiled Tilapia with Chipotle Peach Salsa

Broiled Tilapia with Chipotle Peach Salsa

 

Cherry Crisp

Cherry Crisp

 

Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Rice Bowls

Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Rice Bowls

 

Tomato Spinach & Artichoke Pizza

Tomato Spinach & Artichoke Pizza

 

Blackberry Mojito

Blackberry Mojito

 

Blackberry Crisp In A Jar

Blackberry Crisp In A Jar

 

Easy Chipotle Ravioli Bake

Easy Chipotle Ravioli Bake

 

Blueberry Coconut Pancakes

Blueberry Coconut Pancakes

 

 

Vegan Apple Berry Bran Muffins

Vegan Apple Berry Bran Muffins

 

Fluffernutter Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream

Fluffernutter Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream

 

Clow Cooker BBQ Beef Sandwiches

Clow Cooker BBQ Beef Sandwiches

 

Orange Creamsicle Mini Muffins

Orange Creamsicle Mini Muffins

Which one of these recipes is your favorite?

 

 

 

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23 comments on “Google Analytics Stats and July Recipes”

  1. LOVE THIS! I also like how you are using the old recipe links at the bottom.. love the big pictures! Are you using a widget for this or just including it into the post? I’d love to know more about linking to parties.. never heard of this before.

    • Hi Kristina! Thank you so much! :) I am just resizing the images to be the same width and then adding a caption to them. It’s included with the theme I use!

      Ah, so linking to parties is a way to share your links and view others. What you do is visit the party, as your link, email address and the name of your link (for example, if I am sharing my Cherry Crisp, the name of the link would be Cherry Crisp) and then you select a photo and share it at the party. It exposes your content to more people and allows you to view other people’s content. you may find blogs you’ve never heard of before!

      I host a party on Sunday evenings/Mondays called Marvelous Mondays and a networking party on Thursdays called Grow Your Blog. Stop on by sometime and link up!

  2. I love it, especially when you re-post your ice cream recipes! especially when it gets hot outside. And the recipe for those coconut blueberry pancakes.. I gotta try em too!

  3. Julie I find it so helpful that you share your Google Analytics and info on your ad campaigns. I do not make money on my blog yet and have the tentative plan to enter some cooking contests this year (some of which do not allow money-making bloggers) then I hope to turn my blog into a part time job when my youngest goes to kindergarten in a year. Your open advice really is helpful and I appreciate it. Do you read Pinch of Yum? They do a similar thing in sharing monthly income and it is inspiring and helpful like your post is too. Have a great weekend!

    • Hi Holly!
      I am glad that you found the information in this post helpful. I started doing this type of post because I noticed that Julie from Wight Lights on Wednesday was doing something similar and I found it very helpful. I thought it would be helpful for my readers if I did a monthly post like this.

      I just started reading Pinch of Yum. I love their monthly income reports and what they did to keep up with their blog. It’s very helpful and encouraging. I’d love to be able to be where they are one day! I was recently approved for BlogHer ads but I am on a waiting list. I have been for about a month. Hopefully they will have a spot for me soon.

      Thanks so much for stopping by. :)

  4. I love reading informative and analytical posts like this so thanks for sharing!

    And those Blueberry Coconut Pancakes are totally calling my name! <3

  5. I love these posts! It’s always so interesting to see how other people’s blogs are going – or am I just nosey? ;) how did you start doing Adsense campaigns? I have Adsense ads on my blog, and I’ve done ad campaigns through Blogher, but never through Adsense. Am I missing something?

    • The Adsense Campaign is the same thing as the ads. It’s just another word for it. :) I just have the ads on my blog. They don’t do campaigns like BlogHer or Clever Girls.

      Thanks for stopping by. I’m glad you enjoyed this post! :)

      • Ah I think I get it, when you said ‘I started using Google Adsense and I was selected for quite a few campaigns’ I thought you meant Adsense campaigns. Thanks for your reply! :)

        • You’re welcome! Yea, I meant other campaigns. I thought maybe I said Google Adsense Campaign. I guess I could have gone back and read exactly what I wrote before responding to you but it’s been a busy day. :)

  6. Hey Julie! It looks like you’re on the up & up! Question: I have been using Burst for ads on my site … how did you sign up for the campaigns? I’ve never been able to track down the info about Burst Sponsored Post Campaigns. Thanks & Congrats on your awesome stats :)

    • Hi Nicole! I didn’t sign up for the campaigns. If they want you to work on a campaign, they will send an email to you. After you get the email, try to respond fast. I’ve always been picked after responding but I don’t know if time is a factor but I’ve always responded fairly quickly.

      Hope this helps!

  7. Hi Julie- Im new to this blogging thing and just launched my site at the end of June! This information is totally helpful and gives me plenty of ideas for increasing traffic to my site! Thanks for this! I have a lot of work to do! Enjoy your day!

  8. Julie,I can’t tell you how much I appreciate these reports. Thanks for the post. When you say you “work on” an advertising campaign, like the Tyson Chicken, what do you mean? How do you work on it? And by the way, the savory in me chooses those Chicken Caprese rollups.

  9. I was in the Bluehost down club. IT SUCKED!!! I have to renew in another month so I will definitely be checking out Servint! Thanks for the tip! Is it user friendly? Affordable? My stats for July were about the same as yours buy Google Analytics WAS NOT WORKING for 5 days– that affected my totals drastically! I had to re-install the code. Twice. And then down for 4 hours that day– I still broke 1000 but it was because I was furiously promoting myself all over the place for the rest of the day. Love these posts!!

  10. I really enjoy reading about this kind of stuff. It’s good to see how successful blogs are generating their traffic.

  11. Hey! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any trouble
    with hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing several weeks of hard work due to no data backup.
    Do you have any methods to prevent hackers?