August 2010 – Best Month Ever (and 2 charting tips inside)

Time to stop everything we do and celebrate, for, our little community at chandoo.org had the most fantastic, awesome month ever.

That is right. August 2010 has been the best month since I started chandoo.org. We have broken a majority of previous records in terms of conversations, connections, content and revenues.

In August, we had 17 posts, with 604 comments. We had 178,000 visitors reading 453,000 pages. Our RSS subscriber base grew to 11,917 (it was 5738 an year ago). August has been the best month in-terms of revenues too. We sold highest number of project management templates & excel formula e-books since launch. We had a stellar launch for wedding planner with 22 customers.

Personally too the month had been exciting. I learned how to drive a car without damaging much property or messing with pedestrians. Our kids started walking for the first time and we had hilarious moments watching them and playing with them. I used the occasion to record 10 videos to help you take baby steps in to excel world.

All the credit for website success goes to you. You have been awesome by sharing, connecting, commenting, learning, buying and emailing. Without you, this success means little to me. Thank you so much.

We dont have best months every now and then. The last time we did was in Jan 2010. So, to celebrate this occasion, I have created a small poster showing all the vital statistics for last 13 months. After all, today is a Friday, time to loosen up and get ready for the weekend.

PS: I have removed the labels from financial info. But, you can safely assume that Chandoo.org has been keeping both my mind and pocket happy.

* I have ignored Excel School revenues due to seasonal nature of it.

Some observations:

1. Traffic has gone up since Jan 2010, may be due to increased word of mouth?!?
2. We got 850 comments in May, 2010 due to 2 personal updates – I quit my job to become full time entrepreneur and we replaced Pointy Haired Dilbert with Chandoo.org
3. Google adsense income has been growing steadily.
4. Affiliate income (money I get when I recommend someone’s products) has been low in the last few months. I removed a few ads and reduced the frequency of my reviews.
5. My own product sales have been extremely encouraging. Between PM Templates, Formula e-book and Wedding planner, we had almost 1000 customers in the last 13 months. Thank you.
6. Excel school has been best seller too. We have trained a total of 350 students in first 2 batches.

Bonus Charting Tips

It doesn’t feel alright to just navel gaze on a bright, beautiful day like today. So here we go with 2 charting tips:

1. Use 13 months as the horizon in time-series charts: Well, the reasoning is simple. While the last 12 months data gives you trend, same month, last year’s data should tell you how well / how bad you are doing YoY. So, try using 13 month window instead of 12 in time-series charts.

2. Use MMMMM format to show first letter of month: If you have dates in the x-axis, you may want to abbreviate them to de-clutter the chart. Use the custom format code MMMMM (that is right, it is 2 and half M&Ms) to show the first letters of months.

That is all.

Thank you once again

Thank you so much. You constantly inspire me  to learn and share whatever I can. Thank you.