The Traffic
So leading up to Christmas has been a busy time and this shows in the visitors overview in the diagram below. Up until only 5 days ago the site had been running itself, pretty much on autopilot. Without the time to create compelling content the traffic has not been all that great. Then I managed to get some time to deliver a couple of very cool time-lapse videos I had taken on a recent trip to Tasmania. Since then the traffic has leaped up to between 50-70 visitors per day.

My Social Marketing Strategy
Part of the reason for this leap has also been my social marketing strategy, which if done correctly can help any business build traffic and sales leads. Below you can see the results of my strategy, primarily using Twitter to promote blog posts and videos. I am yet to create a Facebook presence but as you can see Facebook still gets in the top 5 for referrals. So when I do create a Facebook presence this should also build more referrals.

The Keywords
Below is the Google Analytics results for the top keywords searched leading to my site. It’s nice to see that my original research into Nikon time-lapse photography has paid off. My focused keyword/phrase is the top keyword leading into my niche site so I am happy about that. Now it is just a matter of building on that.

Rank Tracking
As mentioned above I am pretty happy to be receiving some traffic on my Niche keyword/phrase. In fact it’s nice to see in the Market Samurai screen shot below that I am on the first page across all three major search engines. I am currently seeing this fluctuate as the numbers in red show a drop in value but not too bad for a recent site that I have hardly had any time for. I can’t wait to free up some more time and really give this site the time and effort it deserves. Soon I will post some details on other aspects, like the revenue side to see how this is converting. Stay tuned.

Street View Now in Australia
On my usual lunch time raid of news.com.au to catch the latest in pretty much any news I noticed an article on the “Street View” now being available for Google Maps in Australia. maps.google.com.au.

When browsing for a service or address you are provided with specific options. One of those is “Street View”, which displays imagery as if you were standing on the street itself. Once selected the map displays the streets available to Street View highlighted in blue.

Now I do realise that this has been around for a little while in the US so in a sense it is nothing new. But when you go ahead and type in your address and are able to see a photo of your own home from the street in Google Maps (see image below), well lets just say it does feel a little weird to say the least.

I must admit though despite the privacy issues Google are struggling with, that Google Maps is a brilliant and versatile application. Certainly a testimony of what you can do with billions of spare dollars.

1. Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google Inc.)
2. Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Created World Wide Web)
3. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
4. Shawn Fanning (Napster, Rupture)
5. Kevin Rose (Digg)
6. Matt Mullenweg (WordPress)
7. Bram Cohen (BitTorrent)
8. Pierre Omidyar (eBay)
9. Mike Morhaime (Blizzard Entertainment – World of Warcraft)
10. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)
11. Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
12. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (YouTube)
13. David Filo and Jerry Yang (Yahoo! Inc)
14. Jack Ma (Alibaba)
15. Jeff Preston Bezos (Amazon)
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