PaulNorwine.com

The Moronic Graduate

Okay, quick story about this picture. This is me on graduation day from the University of Texas (Master’s Sport Management) in 2006. After let’s just say a bit of a rough night (finally stumbled home as the sun was coming up), I shot out of bed at 8:35am realizing that I was supposed to be graduating…in 25 MINUTES! I grabbed my graduation gown which was still in the bag and I was just coherent enough to get it out of said bag when I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to put my arms through the sleeves. Seriously. I slipped my arms through the sleeves only to find them sewn shut at the ends.

So, like any enterprising individual who is so hung over it doesn’t yet hurt, I grabbed the scissors and began to cut open some hand holes. It wasn’t until after I caused a mini-uproar on stage in front of my closest 3,000 friends and their families that I realized the arm slots were already cut…in the SIDES of the gown. Everybody else had nice, flowing sleeves and I looked like I was wearing Larry the Cable Guy’s graduation gown. To this day, my family likes to call me the “dumbest grad school graduate of all-time” (all in good fun, of course). Okay, now back to the review.

It has been a little over a month since my first ever blog post, “I Have Yet to Make a Single Dollar Online and I Just Quit My Job.” Over the course of this last month, I have…moved to a different city (again), moved in with a girl for the first time (it’s okay, she has a ring. It’s not my ring but…just kidding), left a job most people would kill for, and started my own online business with absolutely no past experience or realistic expectations of success. I have also been planning a destination wedding in Jamaica, a co-bachelor party in Vegas, and have been enrolled in two separate mentor / coaching programs. To say the last month has been a whirlwind is a bit of an understatement…

Sometimes, especially in the midst of turbulent change, we get lost in the minutiae of the day-to-day grind without acknowledging our successes and just how far we have really come. Taking a step back to reflect on and gauge my progression has always been a helpful tool for me to (1) acknowledge I am further along than I had given myself credit for (usually) and (2) to re-evaluate, recharge, and re-focus from a different perspective. With that in mind, I wanted to share my first month’s experiences as a full-time blogger with all of you. So, without further ado…here’s the progression of PaulNorwine.com over the last month:

Posts / Videos:
Not including this post today, I have written six articles and have even posted one cheesy 30-second video in the “About Paul” section. My posts have ranged from 122 words (I included a movie clip) to 1775 words (average of 1100) and I have touched on topics ranging from simplifying goal-setting methods and online business strategies to football, heat-seeking missiles, and even guys puking on my garage floor. I used to hate writing…but now it’s almost cathartic and I have come to realize I DO have a voice that I want to share (though you may wish I’d go back to being silent ).

Visitors:
Since my first post on August 10th, I have had 481 visits, 275 unique visitors, and 1282 page views of my blog. Considering I haven’t truly dedicated myself to driving traffic yet, I am relatively excited by these numbers. Last week alone I had 162 visitors (109 of which were unique) with over 371 page views. I have just recently begun to play around with twitter, StumbleUpon, and other traffic driving techniques so I am definitely looking to continue the upward swing.

Comments:
With 80+ comments spread over my first six posts I am definitely feeling the love. I know a ton of people struggle with getting comments in the beginning so I feel pretty blessed that people seem to be resonating with my articles (my first post alone has 30+). I have even started to get a few pingbacks with each of my posts (I didn’t even know what these were a couple of weeks ago). But I also know a lot of this has to do with the comments I have been leaving on others’ blogs. I always strive to provide relevant comments that add value when I write on others’ posts. I will never become “THAT GUY” who just copies and pastes generic comments on every blog he comes across in order to get backlinks to his site…those guys suck – the copy and paste comment method is not only shady, but it’s also easily identifiable and these people will not get very far in the long-run. But I digress, back to the review.

Subscribers:
I currently have 11 people on my mailing list and about 5-8 feedburner subscribers depending on what day it is. Not as high as I would like but it is still early, after all. And, I didn’t even have feedburner set up until last week so I can’t be too disappointed (but if  you would like to help out then by all means click here to receive my updated posts via email – yes, it’s a shameless plug but what the hell, we’re all friends). I have a few ideas that will hopefully increase my numbers in this regard and they all involve offering the best free stuff I can find so keep an eye out!

SEO / Google Rankings / Alexa Rankings:
It took me a while to figure out (aka, last Wednesday) that I not only needed to learn HOW to use the All-in-One SEO Pack on Wordpress but that I also needed to ACTIVATE the damn plugin. In fact, my pages have yet to be indexed correctly but they ARE starting to return organic results – I’m even getting a little bit of traffic from Google which is surprising considering (1) I only have 6 posts and (2) none of my pages have made it to page one yet (at least not that I am aware of).

But, despite not ranking too high yet, I have seen a dramatic jump in my Alexa ranking. After previously being unranked, last week I made it to the 2.43 millionth “most important” website only to LEAPFROG ALL THE WAY TO…1,896,583. Talk about ballin’! Okay, okay – this is nothing to get excited over but it’s still fun to think I increased my ranking by 500,000+ spots in one week. I have a ways to go to make it into the coveted top 100,000 but my Alexa ranking is something tangible that will always help me to track and evaluate my progression over time.

Alright, I have turned an 800-word post into a post of 1,300+ (what’s new?) so I am going to stop right NOW…or after this:

This exercise of looking back and evaluating my progress has shown that even though it has been crazy month, I have come further along than I had given myself credit for and it motivates me to push ahead even further this next month. I hope you will continue to follow me on my journey and I sincerely appreciate all the support and advice you have showered me with from day one. As always, I would love to hear your feedback – either on this post or my blog in general – so please leave a comment below or hit me up on twitter (paulnorwine). I also urge you (seriously, this time) to subscribe to receive post updates via email. I know that I will only reach my goals if I help enough people reach their own…and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Until next time…

Paul

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