Million Dollar Portfolio

This year I have been reporting the income this blog makes to show you that anyone can make money online if they do what they are passionate about and persevere. As the summer months draw near, an interesting thing happens with blogs and sites on the internet. First of all, warm weather means less people are surfing the web on their computers. It also means advertisers aren’t willing to pay as much because there’s less traffic.

I’ve mentioned before that traffic is a huge component to how much money you can make. This includes RSS readership. The more RSS readers you have, the more likely it is ads are going to be seen and potentially clicked on and/or will have produced a sale for the advertiser.

Traffic Statistics

As an experiment last month, I wanted to see how much traffic Entrecard was generating as a result of clicking on other blogs/sites and dropping my card. Compared to April 2008 traffic on this blog decreased dramatically. Excluding my financial blog, The Proficient Investor, May traffic produced 232 visits and 342 page views. The Proficient Investor produced 732 visits and 829 pageviews. Why the drastic change in traffic? Simple. I stopped dropping a lot of Entrecards. Subsequently my Alexa rank has nearly doubled. The bounce rate for this blog was 80% which essentially means 20% of my traffic sticks around to read the articles.

There are 2 things to take away from this information.

1. Generating traffic is the most important thing you can do for your blog.
2. Creating original, quality content is the second most important thing because you want your readers to stick around.

Total Blog Income For May 2008

Total income from all sources was less than April’s Blog Income Report with only one income source producing anything relevant. That would be Text Link Ads. Income from Text Link Ads came out to $38.11. To advertise through TLA on this blog is $15 a month, of which I get half.

Summing It All Up

So what does all this tell you? First of all, traffic is still really important but so is the quality of what you write.

One of my problems last month was my inability to write a lot of good articles. Part of the reason is because I am going through some very difficult personal issues. A good friend of mine has lung cancer and we recently found out it has metasticized into his throat, which has also made him nearly unable to talk. Trying to balance helping him out, taking care of my wife and child and working full time makes it hard to come up with anything to write about.

I don’t want to belabor you with boring details of my personal life…but then again maybe you want to hear about it. Maybe that’s what I need to start doing more of. I usually refrain from posting pictures of what I eat for lunch or make videos of my commute to work…but heck, maybe that’s what you all want to see. Comment here and let me know.

The bottom line here though, is I am still making money online. My hosting fees are paid for and I get a little money in my pocket. You’ll notice some changes on the blog already. I’ve installed OIOPublisher which allows you to sell ads on your own, eliminating the middle man. Does that mean I’m getting rid of Text Link Ads? Not at all. I still like the fact that someone else out there is pimping my sites and selling ad space for me, which means less work on my end. That being said, you can become an affiliate of my site!

New Affiliate Program

Can you sell ad space? Can you convince others that advertising on this site is worth it? I pay 10% on every sale you make. Click here to sign up and start selling space on my site. You can make some good money doing this. Just check my advertise page to find out the rates and calculate your potential profit. For example, a 125×125 banner ad on this blog costs an advertiser $50 a month. If you make 10% on the sale, that means $5 a month goes to you each and every month that advertiser continues to advertise.

June will be an interesting month because i have this new ad system and place and traditionally, advertising slows down in the summer months. I’ll update you all in July and let you know how it goes.

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