Tag Archives: alexa

Ask Alexa: How Popular is your Website or Blog?

I’ve been blogging for years, but I’ve just started taking it more seriously a couple of months ago. I decided I would start blogging more often and I wanted a way to determine how well the strategy was working. Here are some strategies for determining your blog popularity using Alexa and to build your following more quickly.

Using Alexa to Determine Blog Popularity

Alexa (http://www.Alexa.com) is a ranking system created by Amazon that tracks the number of visitors sites get. The lower your Alexa score, the more popular your site is — if your score is below 200,000, you’ve got a pretty popular website.

When I first checked my Alexa ranking a couple of months ago, it had a Global Ranking over 10 million and the USA ranking was over 1 million. Not so good.

Now after 3 months of focused blogging, I have improved my Alexa ranking to just over 1 million globally and about 148,000 in the USA and it is improving by leaps and bounds each month.

Using Alexa to Analyze Your Website

If you want to check your Alexa ranking, simply navigate to Alexa.com and type in your website URL, it will analyze your site.

Alexa Traffic Rank

Here’s what mine says as of the date of publishing (October 2015):

Once my blog is ranked under 100,000, it will start to compare my site to others so I am working hard to reduce my ranking. It will also tell you where the majority of your traffic comes from — for me it is from the USA and India.

Visitor Engagement

Next, it shows me how engaged my visitors are, here are my stats:

I am pretty proud of these numbers, here’s what they mean:

Bounce Rate – This is how often people come to my site and only view the page they landed on. For my site, it is 34% of the time. In other words, 66% of the time, people find other content on my website that they like and continue looking at other pages. If you can get your bounce rate to 50% or less, you are doing well.
Daily Pageviews per Visitor – This is the number of pages a single user will view on your site in one day. If you can get this number over 3, you are doing well.
Daily Time on Site – This is how long people are hanging out on your site. My visitors are spending over 10 minutes a day on my site — that’s pretty good. If you can get that number over 5 minutes, it is good.

Sites Linking In

Finally, use Alexa to view the number of sites that are linking to you. If other sites are linking to your site, search engines reward you because it assumes you have important content on your site. One of your strategies is to get more people linking to your site and this is a way of determining if this strategy is working:

The Alexa Toolbar

If you want to check the Alexa ranking of any site you land on, consider installing the Alexa toolbar, it makes it a lot easier.

How I Improved My Alexa Ranking

I greatly improved my site visits and Alexa ranking in under 3 months, so you may be wondering how I did it. Here’s my strategy:

Create Great Content – I spend a lot of time thinking of interesting content that I think others will enjoy.
Blog often – I try to create at least one new blog post a week, more if I can.
Make each blog SEO friendly – If you’re spending the time creating a blog post, make it SEO friendly so that the search engines can find it, here is how to do that.
Market each blog post – I market my blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, Stumble Upon, ViralContentBuzz, Google+, LinkedIn, BlogSpot, Tumblr, Pinterest, Medium, Niume.com, Buzzsumo, and Gizmodo.
Follow Other Blogs – I follow other bloggers that I admire and am interested in. Each time they post a blog, I post a comment on their blog. Many of those blogs use a tool called CommentLuv which puts a backlink to your website when you post a comment. This is how to get other sites linking back to you.
Build Your Twitter Following – At the time of this writing, I have almost 22,000 Twitter followers. When you tweet something (like your blog post), a lot of people see it and many times they will retweet it to their followers. Use a tool like Crowdfire to build your following.
Participate in Discussion Forums – I regularly participate in discussion forums where I ask and respond to questions. In each forum, I have a link to my blog and my Twitter account. People are curious and will visit your site as they see you posting in these forums. The forums I used most often are Mr. Money Mustache, Reddit, and Blonde on a Budget. I don’t use this strategy specifically to drive traffic, I just enjoy the interactions. But it does have a side benefit of driving traffic.
Joining a Tribe – I’ve just discovered this technique, but the idea is that you can interact with a group of other people that have similar blog content and you can share each other’s content. The software I use for this is Triberr and I think this will become a regular part of my blog strategy.
Create an About.Me page – An About.Me page is an online profile where others can learn about you, here is mine. I include that information in the signature line of each email that I send out, here is how my email signature looks:

Steve Miller
www.FlipFlopSoftware.com
Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | About.Me

Conclusion

With a bit of effort, you can drive more visitors to your website and improve your Alexa ranking. I hope you enjoyed the tips I provided for building your website following, do you have other tips that I haven’t considered?

About this Blog

Steve and his wife built a software company, sold it and retired early. Steve enjoys blogging about lifestyle freedom, financial independence, and technology. If you like this blog, subscribe here to get an email each time he posts.

If you like this post, you might also like these prior posts:

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Work a Little and Play a lot: Lifestyle Freedom through App Development

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Many people are equating today’s popularity of mobile apps to the US gold rush of 1849. This hype suggests that you can create a mobile app, publish it to the various app stores and quickly become a millionaire.

Is it true? Think about it, there are 1.2 million apps in the Apple App Store in mid 2014. Do you think all of the people publishing apps are millionaires? Nope. According to Laura Tallardy (statistics provided by Owen Goss), here are the statistics:

The bottom 25 percent have made less than $200
The next 25 percent have made between $200 and $3,000
The 50-75 quarter are between $3,000 and $30,000
The top 10 percent have made $400,000
The top 4 percent are MILLIONAIRES!

So the real question is “Can I build an app company that does well enough that I can design my own lifestyle, work when I am inspired and play a lot?“. To do that, you need to get yourself into the top 25%. Is that easy? I’m not sure but I do know that many app developers simply develop an app, put it in the app store, do no marketing and expect it to reach the top 10%. And as you might predict, they land in the bottom 25%.

2HourAppreneur Experiment

All of this brings us to an experiment called the “2HourAppreneur experiment“. I am developing an app (and possibly multiple apps if it looks promising) to determine if a person can build an app business that allows them to live a cool and fulfilling lifestyle. A lifestyle that affords you the opportunity to work on your own timetable, play a lot and revel in your entrepreneurial spirit.

Why am I qualified to try it? I’m an entrepreneur that started a software business in 1998 and sold it in 2009. Selling the business made me financially independent and allowed me to retire at 50 years old. I have enjoyed the retired lifestyle freedom. I’ve traveled a lot, adopted new hobbies, and pushed myself with new challenges. With my free time, I can try this experiment without financial pressures because building an app business is fairly inexpensive. If you want to learn more about me, you can take a look at my personal website and travel blogs.

Will it work? I am not sure but it will be fun to try. I will document my journey and tell you exactly what works and what doesn’t. This posting will be a living document that includes a list of helpful blogs explaining exactly what I am doing and why. And if it doesn’t work, at least we will all know!

Here are some blogs I’ve created to document the process thus far:

Post 1 – Build an app working 2 hours a day?
Post 2 – What App Should I Build?
Post 3 – Defining Your Apps Competitive Advantages
Post 4 – Is Your App Idea Financially Viable?
Post 5 – How Will You Monetize Your App?
Post 6 – How to Build a Product Website for your App
Post 7 – Sneak Peak at aMemoryJog iPhone Edition
Post 8 – Using Alexa to Determine Your User Demographic
Post 9 – 15 Marketing Activities to Consider for Your App
Post 10 – Putting the Final Touches on the Business Plan
Post 11 – Outsourcing your App Development: Getting the Best Price
Post 12 – Pre-Release Tasks When Developing Apps
Post 13 – Keeping Track of Your Appreneur Tasks and Time Spent
Post 14 – Newly Redesigned Website for aMemoryJog
Post 15 – Preparing to Test your App as Development Progresses
Post 16 – 8 Lessons I’ve learned from my first App Development Experiment

How Can You Track the 2HourAppreneur Experiment?

If you find this experiment interesting, you have a couple of ways of keeping updated on the progress:

Email
If you don’t mind getting an email every few weeks subscribe to my 2HourAppreneur blog. You can do that by entering your email address below (you can unsubscribe at any time):

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Facebook
If you prefer not to get an email this often but would like to check in, LIKE my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/2hourappreneur.

Twitter
Or you can subscribe to my Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/2hourappreneur, my Twitter handle is @2HourAppreneur.

aMemoryJog
While you’re at it, take a look at the first app I am developing called aMemoryJog. It is an app for keeping track of all your passwords, loyalty reward numbers, and anything else that is easy to forget. Learn more at http://www.aMemoryJog.com.

Latest Updates

As mentioned above, I plan to continually update this blog posting as I publish new blogs related to app development, so you will see the list of blogs listed above grow over time. I will also let you know where I am in the process.

Update on 18-June-15
I am now working on my second app called Count Us Down. It lets you count down the days until a big life event (vacation, baby on the way, wedding, concert, sporting event, retirement, etc.). It also allows you to share that event with your friends and family. Want to be part of the beta team? If you do, you will get early access to the app and you can provide feedback before it gets to the app store. Sign up here: http://www.CountUsDown.com

Update on 13-May-15
The aMemoryJog app has been in the app store for a few months now and I’ve learned a great deal from this experiment. Click here to see what I’ve learned

Update on 17-Nov-14
I outsourced the development of the aMemoryJog app in early April 2014. It was expected to take about 4 months to complete but it has taken a lot longer than expected. The extra development time has been OK because it has given me more time to build my social media followers and prepare a marketing strategy. aMemoryJog should be in the Apple app store sometime in December 2014.

This Article Was Brought to You by 2HourAppreneur

This article was brought to you by 2HourAppreneur makers of the aMemoryJog Password Manager app. The app is free, why not try it now?

15 Marketing Activities to Consider for Your App

Marketing Strategies for Software

When I was building my last software business, our product sold for about $700 per user per year for our Software-as-a-Service model and about $1100 per user per year for our On-Premise edition. It was not unusual for a single client sale to yield $30,000 to $50,000 because a normal sale was for 30 to 50 users of the On-Premise edition.

I had the sales and marketing side of things pretty well figured out. We would advertise with Google Adwords, sponsor trade shows, speak at events, appear in trade magazines, and perform weekly web-based demonstrations of the product to users that signed up for a trial. All of this was supported by an automated email drip system that emailed clients once they downloaded our product and a sales team that followed those emails up with a phone call to nudge the client to attend a demo and eventually purchase.

Marketing Strategies for Apps

App marketing is very different. Why? Because the price of apps normally range from 99 cents to 20 bucks. With such a low sales price, it would not be cost effective to have a sales team contact people that download the app to nudge them to buy. It would also not be feasible to try to demo the app to users weekly — it just does not fit for this type of product.

When someone starts searching for an app, they will decide in matter of seconds whether they will download the app, normally based on the look of the icon, app screen shots, short description of the app and the user reviews. So it is important to get those things right.

Additionally, the App Store is crowded with lots of apps so it is important to get your keywords right so that when someone searches for an app similar to yours, they find it. In addition to the App Store, you can also drive downloads for your app from other sources. Bloggers and journalists are normally held in high regard, so if they review and recommend your app, it is an easy gateway to gaining users.

Marketing Activities

Based on my research, here are a list of marketing activities that make sense to consider for apps.

Place your product in all app stores (Apple, Google, Windows) – start with Apple first and migrate to other platforms once a platform shows success.
Use Google Adwords to drive downloads. For about $100 a month you can drive more downloads. Always tweak this process and measure the conversions to ensure that the money is well spent.
For those of you reading this blog, it is part of my marketing strategy. The idea is to build a community of like-minded individuals and provide them with really useful content. When others take a journey with you, they are more likely to share your blog and product information with others — resulting in more visibility for your app. By the way — please tell all your friends about this blog and have them subscribe to it and my Twitter feed and Facebook page (thanks!).
Spend time every day gaining new Twitter users for your blog — use Just Unfollow to follow and unfollow Twitter users. I try to link to at least 50 new Twitter users per day.
Create a Facebook product for your blog or product and try to gain visibility to it.
Work with journalists, app review sites and bloggers to get reviews posted for the app. In only about a month, I have found about 125 blog / review / journalist sites that may review my app once it is ready for the App Store. Once my app is ready, I will email each of them asking them to review it. If they post a review (especially if it is positive), it will generate more visibility.
Implement an automatic drip email campaigns for trial users of the software to nudge them to purchase. I wrote my own automatic drip email system but you can purchase Mail Chimp or a similar program to do this.
Solicit sites to link to your web site by looking at your competitor’s linkages and sending emails to the owners of the linking sites asking to link to you. You can see who links to your competitor’s site by using Alexa.
Participate in discussion forums with other appreneurs to offer advice. This is good for newbie appreneurs and can also be very good for you — you will always learn something new. Never overtly pitch your products using this technique but include a link to your product’s website page and a tagline on each post. That gives visibility to your product, you will be surprised at how many people will see it and click to learn more.
Work with other #appreneurs to offer a MORE section of your app where your can cross promote each other’s product. Be sure that the products you show in this section are good products and complementary to yours. As discussed in a prior blog, it is good to also include these as affiliate links, allowing you to earn money for those cross sells.
Implement reminder screens that encourage your free users to upgrade to the paid version.
Continuously tweak the App Store listing by changing the product title, description and keywords with each release. Test the effectiveness of the changes.
Localize the app title, description, keywords and screenshots for each language you support.
Create a good press package for each release that includes a good press release, videos of the product, screenshots, product overviews, and features.
If all above is working and you have extra marketing funds, advertise on Facebook.

Related article: How to Build a Product Website for your App

Conclusion

Now that you have a better grounding for the types of marketing activities you might want to implement, prioritize the list and get started! My next blog will be out in a couple of weeks — I will discuss how to finalize your business plan and give you the opportunity to see mine.

Shameless Plug

The app I am creating is slated for production in the App Store around July or August 2014. However, the web edition is already available at http://www.aMemoryJog.com. Once the app is done, it will seamlessly sync with the web version.

Download a free trial and check it out!

aMemoryJog – Web and iPhone editions

Also, if you like this blog, please share it with others to increase our following. Our twitter account is @2HourAppreneur and be sure to like my Facebook page at http://www.Facebook.com/2HourAppreneur. Thanks for following the blog!

Using Alexa to Determine your User Demographic

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In our last post, we discussed how to monetize your app for free and paid apps. We even discussed how to generate recurring revenue from your app. Once you have figured out your monetization strategy, you will need to formulate a marketing strategy. A more refined marketing strategy can be created if you understand your user demographics.

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, ‘Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we’ll talk.’ – Taylor Swift

How to Determine Your App’s User Demographic

If you have really deep pockets, you can conduct user demographic studies that can better pin-point what type of “typical user” might enjoy your app. You can look at things like male / female, age, geographical location, and education level. But who has thousands of dollars to spend on these types of studies? Not me!

There is an another approach. Using Alexa, you can put in your competitor’s website and it will spit out the demographic. After analyzing several of your competitors, you can hone in on your demographic.

Let’s take an example. Let’s imagine you are creating an app to compete with Angry Birds (good luck with that). You can go to http://www.Alexa.com and enter their website address (http://www.AngryBirds.com) and here is what it will show:

User Demographics – AngryBirds.com

Based on the above, the demographic is mostly male with very little or no college education. They seem to use Angry Birds at school and home more than at work. As we can see below, it is very popular in India and the USA:

User Geographics – AngryBirds.com

You will want to do that with 4 to 5 of your competitors to hone in on the commonalities.

Related article: How to Build a Product Website for your App

Are Demographics Important?

In some cases demographics can be very important. For example, women tend to use meditation apps more than men so if I were designing a meditation app, I would want very soothing colors and would want to give my beta version to several women I trust to try it out and give me feedback on the design, look and feel and functionality.

The demographic can also play into how you market the app. In our fictional meditation app, I would scour the web for some female bloggers that are early adopters of technology, and are into meditation. I would contact them to get them excited about writing a review for the meditation app. Their popular blog could turn other women onto the app if they really enjoy your app, especially if they write enthusiastically about it.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to use Alexa, try determining your app’s demographic! My next blog will be out in a couple of weeks — I will discuss what marketing activities you might consider when planning the release of your app.

Shameless Plug

Download a free trial and check it out!

aMemoryJog – Web and iPhone editions

We Retired Early

Lifestyle freedom, financial independence, and recommendations for cool mobile apps.

Tag Archives: alexa

Ask Alexa: How Popular is your Website or Blog?

Using Alexa to Determine Blog Popularity