If you follow this blog, you know that turning this blog (and other websites) into a sustainable, growing income stream is a huge priority for me. I document my progress each month with a monthly blog update. The blog updates typically include traffic growth, income numbers and other general strategic thoughts on the blog.

Traffic & Readership

I like to break my traffic down into three categories: visits, page views and eye ball time. Since page views per visit can depend on a look and feel and how a blog is organized, the eye ball time is probably the most accurate number when comparing blog to blog. Let’s look at each…

Total Visits

October 2009: 6,387 visits
November 2009: 6,996 visits
December 2009: 7,735 visits
January 2010: 12,354 visits
February 2010: 11,947 visits (3.3% decrease overall) but increase in daily traffic (427 visits per day vs. 399 visits per day – increase of 7%)

The above total visit numbers break into the following categories: search, referral and direct traffic. My goal is to show monthly increases across the board in each category.

Search Traffic

October 2009: 3,570 visits
November 2009: 4,075 visits
December 2009: 3,954 visits
January 2010: 5,922 visits
February 2010: 5,533 visits

Direct Traffic

October 2009: 1,245 visits
November 2009: 1,230 visits
December 2009: 1,738 visits
January 2010: 2,370 visits
February 2010: 2,035 visits

Referral Traffic

October 2009: 1,572 visits
November 2009: 1,691 visits
December 2009: 2,043 visits
January 2010: 4,060 visits
February 2010: 4,378 visits

Overall, I saw a small decrease in traffic, but much of this is due to the fact that there are 3 days less in February than there were in January.  As such, if you look at the daily traffic, the numbers were actually higher so February was a successful month.

Page Views

October 2009: 19,155 total page views
November 2009: 20,500 total page views
December 2009: 23,418 total page views
January 2010: 36,023 total page views
February 2010: 33,725 total page views

Eye Ball Time

October 2009: 1:44 per visit = 664,248 total seconds = 184.51 hours
November 2009: 1:57 per visit = 818,532 total seconds = 227.37 hours
December 2009: 1:48 per visit = 835,380 total seconds = 232.05 hours
January 2010: 1:49 per visit = 1,346,586 total seconds = 374.05 hours
February 2010: 1:43 per visit = 1,230,541 total seconds = 341.82 hours

Please note that I used Google Analytics for the above data. I tend to think Site Meter is more accurate, but I couldn’t get all the data that I wanted for the above metrics from Site Meter, so I chose to keep it consistent by getting all information out of GA.

Blog Income

Adsense Revenue

October 2009: $38.60
November 2009: $75.40
December 2009: $59.28
January 2010: $171.79
February 2010: $68.39

This month proves the volatility in Adsense revenue.  After a huge month in January, we dropped back toward a more normal month.  Perhaps, the best metric in this area is a 3 month average.  Three month average is currently $99.82.  We will want to see an increase over time in the 3 month average.

Private Advertisements

November 2009: $285.00
December 2009: $90.00
January 2010: $90.00
February 2010: $290.00

I had a good month with private deals and have definitely seen an increase in requests for advertising.  I have also raised rates recently.

Overall Thoughts

Nothing ground breaking this month, but simply continued progress.  Traffic held up great after a huge increase last month.  Blogging is all about steady gains consistently month to month.  We’re right on track.

2010 Goals Progress

As I mentioned at the start of the year, I have the following goals for 20smoney.

• Alexa ranking under 120,000 by the end of 2010 – As of writing, I’m at 126,857.   Almost guaranteed that I reach this goal.  I may adjust this goal to under 100k.
  
• Google Pagerank of 5 by the end of 2010 – I’ve gotten a lot more quality backlinks in recent months. I feel very confident about hitting PR 5.
  
• 25,000 visits a month by the end of 2010 – I believe I’m on track.  The next couple months will be very indicative of the likelihood of hitting this goal.
  
• Averaging over $100 per month in Google Adsense income by the end of 2010 – Very Likely.
  
• Averaging over $400 per month in total blog income by the end of 2010 – Very likely with the traffic growth trajectory currently.
  
• 1500 RSS subscribers by the end of 2010 – I passed 800 at the start of February and have tinkered between 810ish and 850ish for the month, I should probably hit 900 this month.  We will continue to monitor this progress.
  

Additional Resources That I Recommend For Other Bloggers

• My January 2009 report – similar to this one
• A blog post on a recent offer to buy my blog
• My thoughts on Blogging In The Personal Finance Blogosphere
• My article that explains a great deal of the growth process – “The Slow Grind of Growing A Successful Blog”.
• Recent article: “No Free Lunch For Aspiring Bloggers”

Do you have similar reports for your blog detailing your traffic and income? I want to know about it and link to it. Leave a comment with the URL.

Popularity: 4% [?]

1786Comments (3)http://20smoney.com/2010/03/04/monthly-blog-update-february-2010/Monthly+Blog+Update%3A+February+20102010-03-04+10%3A27%3A13Kevin

Alexa is one of the most widely used “rankings” on the web today.  The lower your Alexa ranking, the better since it indicates a higher-trafficked website.  Take a look at a few rankings to better understand Alexa:

• Google.com – Alexa rank: 1
• Facebook.com – Alexa rank: 2
• ESPN.com – Alexa rank: 70
• DrudgeReport.com – Alexa rank: 471
• Wisebread.com – Alexa rank: 11,294
• 20smoney.com – Alexa rank: 126,992

Note: Rankings as of 3/3/10

There are many noted issues that people have with Alexa rankings.  The biggest one is that it’s determined by web surfers who have the Alexa toolbar installed, therefore, the more techie crowd tends to boost “techie” websites more than other genres of websites.  I actually can attest to this phenomenon with first hand experience.  First, I recently wrote a guest post for a very popular blogging website and it resulted in a large influx in traffic to my blog.  The result was a huge jump in my Alexa ranking, much more than the corresponding jump with similar traffic spikes that I’ve experienced in the past.  Secondly, I was recently on a nice “how to blog” website which will typically have Alexa-installed-toolbar visitors and the Alexa ranking was very good, somewhere around 30,000.  I then saw the traffic numbers and they were only about 30% higher than my traffic numbers.  Lastly, I frequent some websites with 3x to 4x the amount of traffic that my blog has and I have a better Alexa ranking than them.  So, obviously, the Alexa ranking is not to be 100% trusted.

With that said, Alexa definitely has a place in the overall ranking of the web.  I pay attention to it, and hope that my ranking continues to improve.  The wisebread top personal finance blog list is by default ranked by the respective Alexa ranking, therefore, I get results from such a list due to my Alexa ranking.

As such, there is a group of personal finance bloggers that are determined to boost their Alexa rankings.  The wisebread list is a major motivating factor for the group.  You can see the entire list of blogs here (20smoney.com is on the list).  Interestingly, by having a group of 30 bloggers or so all have Alexa toolbars installed and having an agreement to help visit all the blogs on the list, you can actually make a difference in getting the blogs into the 200,000 level, maybe even a little better.  Therefore, the initiative of the group will likely be effective… to a point.  When it comes to elite Alexa levels, namely 50,000 and better, it will take much more than a group of bloggers who are trying to collectively improve the rankings of the group.  Nevertheless, I like the initiative and I’m participating.

It will be very interesting to see what happens after the initiatve ends.  When it comes to Alexa, when you move up, someone else is moving down.  Therefore, you’re essentially competing with other websites.  I imagine many bloggers if they move into fairly competitive territory (inside 125k), most bloggesr may fall out of the level of Alexa rankings.

Here are a few blogs that are participating in the Alexa initiative that I actually read:

• Early Retirement Extreme (Alexa: 191.869) – Interestingly, I know ERE’s traffic numbers are higher than mine, yet I have a much better Alexa ranking, another example of the flaws of Alexa.
• Bible Money Matters (Alexa: 56,592)
• Canadian Finance Blog (Alexa: 123,386)
• Eliminate the Muda (Alexa: 106,725)
• The Amateur Financier (Alexa: 400,681)

An interesting note about all of this that I’m only going to briefly mentioned here (and maybe write about in detail later) but I’m starting to think about the readers of most personal finance blogs.  Specifically, I’m wondering what percentage of the overall traffic to most PF blogs is actually other PF bloggers. It would be interesting to analyze ways to determine this percentage.  Do you have any thoughts?  Are you a 20smoney.com reader and also a PF blogger?  Let me know!

Popularity: 3% [?]

1808Comments (0)http://20smoney.com/2010/03/03/the-allure-of-alexa/The+Allure+Of+Alexa2010-03-03+19%3A00%3A57Kevin

I recently received an offer to buy my blog for $4,000.  The person mentioned it’s negotiable, so let’s say I could have sold it for $6,000.  I refused.  You may think that I should have sold it and then just plowed my efforts into a new blog, but I decided that $6,000 (before taxes) really doesn’t “move the needle” enough.  I mean sure I’d love to have a few more grand in my bank account, but I really haven’t worked hard at this blog for a couple years for a few grand.

Most bloggers and internet entrepreneurs work hard for a larger pay out down the road or some kind of stable decent passive income.  For me, my goals here are to either establish an income stream that is generated approximately $1,000 and up per month and/or potentially sell the website itself in the tens of thousand dollar range.  Will I get there, we’ll see.

A general note on selling a blog or website, but it seems like many times companies or individuals will want to buy a blog or website if it ranks high for a specific keyword.  They can then leverage such a position for their business use.  Since I really don’t rank that high for that many keywords other than “20s money” or “20smoney” I haven’t received any lucrative offers based on this idea.  Maybe I should have focused more on naming my blog after a lucrative search term.

It is interesting to receive your first offer to buy a business or website, even if it is only for a few grand.  Hey, I like the direction at least.

Popularity: 5% [?]

1754Comments (0)http://20smoney.com/2010/02/24/an-offer-to-buy-my-blog/An+Offer+To+Buy+My+Blog2010-02-24+10%3A06%3A06Kevin

Many people make decent money doing freelance writing.  Also, many people make decent money operating and writing for their own blog.  Which path should you take?  Let’s look at some pros and cons of each.

Freelance Writing

1. No need to maintain an actual website – can focus on actual writing
2. More money in the short run since new websites can be slow to gain traction
3. Not as much pressure to keep content going since you’re likely one of several writers

Starting Your Own Blog

1. More potential upside since you own the site – if your blog really catches on, it could do really well – this is a big IF however
2. A lot of work to get a website off the ground and running
3. You’re the only one who produces for it – if you’re tired one day, the blog doesn’t get worked on that day
4. You own your content and are creating virtual “real estate” for yourself as opposed to building someone else’s “real estate”

My Recommendation

If you have enough time to spend on this venture, I recommend doing both because they can provide a synergy.  If you have a blog, it will help you get freelance gigs since you have a presence and content for people to review.  If you are freelancing, you can help drive traffic to your blog through links and through general awareness of your writing.

I currently do both.  Obviously, I have my blog, but I also write for a few other sites which brings in extra cash and helps me promote my site and grow it.

Popularity: 5% [?]

1719Comments (3)http://20smoney.com/2010/02/19/freelance-writing-vs-starting-your-own-blog/Freelance+Writing+Vs.+Starting+Your+Own+Blog2010-02-19+10%3A35%3A06Kevin

It seems like there are new personal finance blogs popping up daily in the PFB (personal finance blogosphere).  I guess some people believe its a gold rush or a quick path to good money.  Most will be disappointed.  We bloggers love to throw around numbers of how many new blogs are created every day, but nobody likes to talk about how many blogs are stopped and/or destroyed each day.  For example, if you look at the tail end of the Top 100 PF blog list maintained by Wisebread, many of the blogs have not been updated for months – inactive blogs are basically dead blogs.

So, as the PFB seems to be one of the fastest growing segments of the overall blogosphere, I thought I’d comment on my thoughts about it as well as my strategy to carve out a little corner of the PFB for myself.

Types of Personal Finance Blogs

In the PFB, most blogs are broken down into the following categories:

1. Basic Personal Finance - topics range from credit cards, 401ks, 529s, spending, budgeting, basic investing concepts like diversification and portfolio balancing, mostly common sense type stuff
2. Getting Out Of Debt - these blogs typically focus on getting out of debt and commonly fall into the theme of “I have 100k in debt, read about my journey to get out of this hole”
3. How To Save Money – these blogs can take the form of finding cheap products to coupon clipping to general expense management strategies
4. Investing & Trading - this could and probably should be a separate topic from personal finance since you can get really indepth when it comes to investing & trading but I’ll include it for now
5. Economic Analysis - Like the Investing blogs, this could be a category on its own
6. Building Income - Blogs devoted to building income; these are not very common although the “how to make money online” category is very over-populated.  May or may not really apply to personal finance.

My Strategy For 20smoney.com

First, my goal is to not be a typical personal finance blog with common sense money strategies.  For the most part, that bores me and I think is really mostly about common sense.  Yes, I know most people lack common sense.  Anyways, I created the Personal Finance Manifesto for this reason, so that visitors can get a gameplan for the basic stuff, and then read the daily blog content for “more advanced” stuff for lack of a better term.

My focus is the following:

1. Help people who are in good shape financially get to “the next level”
2. Help people learn how to successful become an active investor/trader
3. Help people develop additional income streams

Those three areas are my focus.  Additionally, I do comment on the economy and politics when it affects those three areas (usually with regards to investing).  As such, if you look back at the category list above, 20smoney.com tends to be a blend of the last three categories mostly and the blog dabbles a little bit in the other areas.

So, after reading that explanation, if you think this is a good blog for you, I suggest you SUBSCRIBE TO MY RSS FEED.

Planning To Start A Personal Finance Blog?

If you’re planning on staking your claim in the PFB, good for you, kinda.  I’m not going to encourage you or discourage you because hey, you might have something that millions of people need to hear, or you might have nothing that anybody should hear.  Who am I to say?

It is very possible to start a blog and gain readers and even make money.  With that said, I will give the following warnings:

• The PFB is crowded – very crowded
• Pretty much every topic has been discussed and to a degree of decent quality
• Your story probably isn’t unique

If you’re determined to still move forward, I would encourage you to try and be specific and have a unique angle on something.  Share your opinion.  Don’t do how-to articles on basic stuff that you can already easily find on Google.  Share commentary, your opinions and maybe some examples of your own finances.

For more tips and information on blogging including details on my traffic and income I receive from blogging, check out the Blogging category on this blog.

Popularity: 4% [?]

1693Comments (2)http://20smoney.com/2010/02/16/blogging-in-the-personal-finance-blogosphere/Blogging+In+The+Personal+Finance+Blogosphere2010-02-16+10%3A53%3A00Kevin

I’ve been doing some brainstorming regarding web based incomes and monetization strategies for various websites. Adsense is definitely the staple of most attempts at making money online.  Because of the popularity of the platform, I think it is also somewhat limited because people “tune out” Adsense ads and rarely click on them.  For a publisher, with Adsense, you’re also only able to make money on the clicks versus a pay for impressions type model.  Some nice websites make a killing selling private ads based on impressions rather than click performance.  This is a clear winner for a blogger or website operator.

Interestingly, some great websites with large traffic do a terrible job of bringing in revenues while smaller, less trafficked sites can often make much more revenue than the larger, “better” sites.  I have a few ideas I’m kicking around as well as a couple experiments on multiple websites that I have up and running.  I will be debuting some of these ideas and explaining them to my readers in the near future.  My goal is to bring in several thousand bucks a month in online income and Adsense and other advertising forms will likely be a major aspect of this goal.

So, bloggers… how much money do you make with Adsense?  Leave your comments below.

Popularity: 6% [?]

1730Comments (2)http://20smoney.com/2010/02/13/bloggers-how-much-do-you-make-with-adsense/Bloggers%3A+How+Much+Do+You+Make+With+Adsense%3F2010-02-13+19%3A30%3A23Kevin

If you follow this blog, you know that turning this blog into a sustainable, growing income stream is a huge priority for me. I document my progress each month with a monthly blog update. The blog updates typically include traffic growth as well as income for the month.

Traffic & Readership

I like to break my traffic down into three categories: visits, page views and eye ball time. Since page views per visit can depend on a look and feel and how a blog is organized, the eye ball time is probably the most accurate number when comparing blog to blog. Let’s look at each…

Total Visits

October 2009: 6,387 visits
November 2009: 6,996 visits
December 2009: 7,735 visits
January 2010: 12,354 visits (59.7% increase) or 398 visits per day

The above total visit numbers break into the following categories: search, referral and direct traffic.  My goal is to show monthly increases across the board in each category.

Search Traffic

October 2009: 3,570 visits
November 2009: 4,075 visits
December 2009: 3,954 visits
January 2010: 5,922 visits (49.7% increase)

Direct Traffic

October 2009: 1,245 visits
November 2009: 1,230 visits
December 2009: 1,738 visits
January 2010: 2,370 visits (36% increase)

Referral Traffic

October 2009: 1,572 visits
November 2009: 1,691 visits
December 2009: 2,043 visits
January 2010: 4,060 visits (98.7% increase)

I experienced a large jump in visits this month when compared to last month.  I think the holidays depressed my December numbers (even though I had growth in December), so the jump was a little larger than normal for January.  Either way, I’m excited and very encouraged to get a major leg up in traffic.

Page Views

October 2009: 19,155 total page views
November 2009: 20,500 total page views
December 2009: 23,418 total page views
January 2010: 36,023 total page views (53.8% increase)

Eye Ball Time

October 2009: 1:44 per visit = 664,248 total seconds = 184.51 hours
November 2009: 1:57 per visit = 818,532 total seconds = 227.37 hours
December 2009: 1:48 per visit = 835,380 total seconds = 232.05 hours
January 2010: 1:49 per visit = 1,346,586 total seconds = 374.05 hours (61% increase)

Please note that I used Google Analytics for the above data. I tend to think Site Meter is more accurate, but I couldn’t get all the data that I wanted for the above metrics from Site Meter, so I chose to keep it consistent by getting all information out of GA.

Blog Income

Adsense Revenue

October 2009: $38.60
November 2009: $75.40
December 2009: $59.28
January 2010: $171.79 (189% increase)

Huge increase in Adsense revenue this month, leaping over my $100 monthly goal. This is a very encouraging sign and I hope that it continues. I don’t imagine I will top it in February, but as long as the average continues to move upward, I’m happy.

Private Advertisements

November 2009: $285.00
December 2009: $90.00
January 2010: $90.00

I didn’t sign many new deals this past month, but the revenue that is recurring each month is increasing which is what I want long term.  I now have three deals that pay each month through PayPal subscriptions.  The consistent monthly income is what I’m shooting for.

Overall Thoughts

This was a very encouraging month for the blog with the first large monthly increase in traffic (approx 60%) in some time.  Also, Adsense performance was very exciting.  If I can hold these gains and then make another leg up in the next few months, things will be looking great.

I mentioned last month that I broke the 700 subscriber mark.  Well I jumped over the 800 mark within a single month which is great.  As I show below, my goal is 1500 by end of the year.

2010 Goals Progress

As I mentioned at the start of the year, I have the following goals for 20smoney.

• Alexa ranking under 120,000 by the end of 2010 – While my Alexa ranking is improving, this might be tough, as it gets exponentially harder the lower you go.
  
• Google Pagerank of 5 by the end of 2010 – I’ve gotten a lot more quality backlinks in just this past month.  I feel pretty good about hitting PR 5.
  
• 25,000 visits a month by the end of 2010 – Definitely on track for this one.
  
• Averaging over $100 per month in Google Adsense income by the end of 2010 – Well I sailed past the $100 mark in the first month of the year, let’s hope that it becomes consistent.  If it does, I might have to raise this goal.
  
• Averaging over $400 per month in total blog income by the end of 2010 – Very likely with the traffic growth trajectory currently.
  
• 1500 RSS subscribers by the end of 2010 – I pretty much added 100 subscribers in January.  At that pace, I will hit 1500.
  

Additional Resources That I Recommend For Other Bloggers

• My December 2009 report – similar to this one
• My article that explains a great deal of the growth process – “The Slow Grind of Growing A Successful Blog”.
• Recent article: “No Free Lunch For Aspiring Bloggers”

Do you have similar reports for your blog detailing your traffic and income? I want to know about it and link to it. Leave a comment with the URL.

Popularity: 6% [?]

1597Comments (2)http://20smoney.com/2010/02/01/monthly-blog-update-january-2010/Monthly+Blog+Update%3A+January+20102010-02-01+14%3A04%3A05Kevin

Google’s Adsense product is the main money making for millions of website operators.  I’m attempting to grow my online income and Adsense revenue is a big part of this.  While I document my Adsense revenue each month with my monthly blog updates, I have found the easiest way to boost your monthly numbers.

Four days into January, I’m already at 40% of my total Adsense revenue from December.  The main reason is that I had a huge day yesterday where my daily total was about 5x the normal daily revenue total.  By stringing together a few “big days” like this, you can drastically increase your monthly Adsense revenue.

By securing 2-3 huge days which are caused by a combination of a traffic spike and the right type of traffic, you can pretty much secure a healthy month in online income.  While the other 28 or so days of the month will definitely generate more than zero, the combination is a nice month in Adsense income.

Do you have days when your Adsense revenue spikes?  What do you do to try and repeat these days and/or create more of them?

Popularity: 7% [?]

1403Comments (3)http://20smoney.com/2010/01/06/how-to-increase-adsense-revenue/How+To+Drastically+Increase+Your+Monthly+Adsense+Revenue2010-01-06+18%3A59%3A51Kevin