Behind The Scenes Of Snomie.com (secret projects & our blog stats)

Wow. Snomie.com officially launched on May 2011 and what a fun ride it’s been so far. That’s over 450 snowboard tips that I’ve written every day over the past 15 months… crazy!

I wanted to thank you guys who read Snomie.com by lifting the covers a little and showing you a little bit more about the blog, the visitor stats behind the blog and where we’re going with Snomie.

The awesome numbers behind Snomie.com:

The stats below tell me that we have the most awesome and loyal readers ever.

Stat 1:

We’re now sitting at just over 4,000 unique visitors per month.

This may sound small compared to the 60-90k visitors the bigger snowboard blogs like Shayboarder.com get or the even more massive numbers at blogs like Yobeat.com, but let me tell you why this is so awesome.

Most snowboard blogs grow by breaking lots of news/stories or posting snowboard reviews. This is because news and snowboard reviews are some of the highest searched snowboard topics on google.

We do neither of those topics, but we still grew, which is amazing! I don’t break any big snowboard stories and I think I’ve done maybe 2-3 reviews so far, all of which were literally just the gear I’m currently using.

Some of you guys do know that I’m actually experienced in search engine marketing and link building to grow websites, but honestly, I’ve been too busy to even use my google kung-fu skills to get Snomie more traffic.

All we do is one snowboard tip per day while I focused on other Snomie projects and somehow we’ve grown just from that… that’s awesome!

Stat 2:

Our monthly readers has always gone up every month. This means even outside of winter months we still grew when most other snowboard sites saw their visitor numbers go down.

This stat amazes me the most. So it means that even when people aren’t snowboarding, they’re still visiting our blog and connecting with us, which makes me very thankful to you guys who keep reading Snomie.

Stat 3:

Over 1/3 of our visitors are repeat visitors. This is awesome because 33%+ return visitors is actually quite high for a website, especially one without a forum linked to it.

This is important to me because it tells me we aren’t just producing crap that people read once, then never come back again.

Our awesome readers (that’s you!) are coming back for more and we’re actually getting to make real connections with people. Once again, it makes me so thankful to have all of you loyal readers that support our blog.

Secret (and not so secret) projects at Snomie.com:

Here’s the stuff we have coming up for Snomie.

To do 1:

I think a lot of work still has to be done to sort out all our blogs. The problem now is I’ve done 450+ snowboard tips on so many topics and it means newer readers miss out on some good stuff we posted a long time ago.

One idea I’ve had is to maybe start every new email subscriber off with a few emails containing lists of the most useful snowboard tip blogs I’ve done, then later they’ll start receiving the weekly/fortnightly newsletter that the rest of you guys get now.

It’s a work in progress, so we’ll see how it goes.

To do 2:

I’d love to do a daily (or maybe tri weekly) video blog during a full snowboard season to show you guys what it’s really like for someone who basically lives at ski resorts.

It’d be a fun way of showing you my daily snowboard life, plus you’ll get to see the behind the scenes shenanigans in Whistler. We could even do fun stuff like visit the guys over at Snowboard Addiction HQ and get the occasional snowboard pro in to have a chat.

I’m thinking I might try starting this next winter in Whistler, but I’m still figuring out how I’d record the daily snowboard footage without paying a cameraman to follow me around.

To do 3:

We’ve got 2 big projects underway right now that I’m waiting to finish/launch.

One project is an online snowboard freestyle guide that will be insanely useful for anyone learning freestyle (it’s not more trick tips). It’s already finished, but I’m waiting on some partners to co-ordinate the launch properly.

If it delays much longer I’ll just launch the course myself.

The second project is targeted towards beginners and it’ll be an insanely useful tool that I think literally every beginner snowboarder will be using once it’s released.

I think this second project will have a chance to have a real impact on snowboard learning, but it’s only about halfway finished so far. I’m hoping to have it done in the next few months.

One last thing:

I just want to say thanks again to everyone who reads Snomie.com! Our blog was started as a tiny side project, but it somehow turned into a fun community that’s steadily growing.

It really does mean a lot when I open my twitter and email inbox and see everything from gear questions to encouraging messages from readers, so I just want to say thanks again.

You guys are awesome!

- Jed

"How To Pick The Perfect Snowboard Setup"

"Grab Snomie.com's Free Snowboard Gear Guide" 25 pages of free tips including how to pick snowboards, bindings, goggles, boots and much more!