Summer is officially over and fall is underway. We’ve already crossed the autumnal solstice and where I live, it means indian summer, or at least it used to. Indian summer is when we get that warm summer weather (sometimes downright hot) but since the days are shorter the mornings are cooler and the evenings are cooler. I like this time of year also because it means ad revenue has the potential to go up.

Summers are typically slower for most blogs because a lot more people are vacationing, enjoying the warmer weather and generally have better things to do than sit in front of the computer clicking surfing the web and clicking ads. Of course, as an internet marketer you need to work extra hard to produce more income during the slow months.

Economic Factors

Considering the current economic crisis we are facing (which is globally systemic, not just US centric) it stands to reason that advertising revenue would dry up, right? Wrong.

In times of economic crisis, the public tends to seek refuge in entertainment to take their mind off financial woes.  This means watching more TV, Sports, Movies etc. which also means they are going to be exposed to more advertising. Thus, advertisers roll out their major campaigns during the fall and winter months. This also means you can potentially reap the benefits if you can get your CPC campaigns in front of the right people at the right time.

Why Blogging?

I started using the internet and building web sites in 1992 when I ran an online magazine or e-zine called “Orbit”. The e-zine contained artwork, comics, movie reviews and poetry. The problem was my audience. At such an early stage, nobody was even familiar with the internet or the web unless they were part of the scientific or university community. After about 3 months, I shut the e-zine down due to lack of traffic.

Fast forward to 2007. I’d been running my web development company Wilcox Studios for several years and it got me through tough times between full time jobs. I then discovered Google Adsense and thus opened the world of blogging and site monetization for me.

Traffic

Ask any professional blogger and they will tell you traffic is extremely important. Without traffic, you are just writing into the ether.

However, traffic alone doesn’t make a blog successful. Once you get a decent amount of traffic you better have something for all those eyeballs to look at. Content is as always, king. What you have to say is always going to be the reason someone comes to and ultimately, stays on your blog. This is measured in terms of Bounce Rate. That is to say, how long does the average reader stay before leaving to another site.

The second component of traffic is return readership. You can measure this in terms of RSS subscribership. RSS readers subscribe to your blog through various means and click on and read only those articles they are interested in. So the more you write, the more likely it is people are going to stick around and read your blog.

That all being said, here are the traffic results for September. I’m providing both Google Analytics stats as well as Webalizer stats because there is a huge discrepancy between the two as you will see. Statistics also include my financial blog, The Proficient Investor.

According to Google Analytics, this blog had 345 pageviews from 243 visits and a bounce rate of 79.42% which means 20.58% the 243 visits stuck around for more than just the home page. Average time on the site is 58 seconds, 1.42 pages/visit and just over 80% are new visitors.

Now, according to Webalizer, this blog had 16157 views from 6996 visits. Webalizer doesn’t give you the bounce rate but as you can see, it’s quite a difference.

What you should take away from this is that you want to know how popular your site is but also how to maximize the traffic that you do have and convert it into paying traffic.

The Proficient Investor on the other hand shows 498 views from 581 visits and a bounce rate of 90.76% (according to Google Analytics). Webalizer reports 19681 pageviews from 5696 visits.

My guess is Google only tallies a single pageview or visit from the same visitor (unique ip) even if that visitor came to different pages in the same day through RSS or other links.

Overall, bounce rate is up slightly for both blogs but as you will see, revenue increased.

Revenue Report

The following is combined income for both blogs. I document earnings here for your benefit. I can talk all day about SEO techniques, writing quality content and how traffic is going to make or break your online business but I also want to show that anyone can make money online and i’m not just talking about blogging. Income can and should come from multiple sources.

Text-Link-Ads: $70.19 (all 10 ads on The Proficient Investor are sold and my price has gone up)
Amazon.com Seller: $27.63
CafePress: $29.50
Adsense: $4.29(anyone still making money from google adsense?)
NeverBlueAds: $0.00 (working with my affiliate manager to really change this)
LinkShare: $0.00 ( I won’t be using LinkShare on this blog anymore)
Clickbank: $0.00 (Still haven’t done well with CPC campaigns and CB)
MarketLeverage: $0.00
Pepperjam Network: $10.00
Kontera ContentLink: $1.25
Sponsored Reviews: $26.00

Total:  $168.86

Closing Thoughts

As you can see, some of my sources were less than last month like Clickbank, PepperJam, Amazon.com Seller but Text-Link-Ads increased and I am very pleased with this because for one it means TLA can charge more for my spots as they are all booked now. Text Link Ads is also very cool because you can get companies advertising on your blog month after month which means residual income for you without having to do any active marketing. Sign Up today and for every referral you get $25.

Some of these aren’t that impressive but the important thing here is consistency. First of all, if you aren’t signed up with PepperJam yet, sign up now. You get a $10 bonus just for signing up and if you blog about their Blogger Incentive Program you can earn another $10 each time you do for a total of $50 a month. So if you sign up right now, you get a $10 bonus then blog about this and you get another $10. That’s $20 in your account just for signing up and blogging about it!

PepperJam is the fastest growing affiliate network out there and the primary reason is because their interface is excellent. On the home page are all my stats right there and finding new products to promote is easy. I’ve had more responses (clicks) to affiliate products through PepperJam than any other affiliate I promote. I’ll continue to promote PepperJam because I think they are awesome.

You should also notice I’m not relying on just one affiliate program because I truly believe you need to diversify your income streams in case one isn’t performing as well as another. I also believe you need to give any new affiliate at least a month to test metrics against your earnings and spending. After about a month, you can decide if that program is worth your efforts or not.

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