2007 Year In Review - Thoughts From My Life
2007 has finally gone by. My first full year of blogging has past and I have written a lot of articles and learned a lot of lessons. Fortunately, I have made some money in the meantime as well.
I started this blog in November of 2006. My intent was to try and make money on the internet and use the site as a diary of what I was thinking about or working on at the time. I have a variety of interests ranging from computers, finance, travel reward programs, music, photography, traveling, and you name it. So the blog has not been overly focused, but it has made it a lot easier to continually be writing content for the site. If you like any of those topics then there is a good chance you will find something of value here.
Traffic For 2007
The traffic had a couple of cycles this year. I ramped up to around 200 unique visitors a day in the spring and then Google dropped me from their search results for some reason. I have since built it back up to 100 uniques a day and have just passed over 300 uniques a day in the past week.
Revenue For 2007
I had a variety of revenue sources throughout the year and some of the ones I tried out required a $100 balance before paying out. The ones I quit before achieving that I will not count in this article.
- PayU2Blog: $563.23 cash, $100 merchandise, $663.23 total
- PayPerPost: $43.45
- Adsense: $301.25
- Kontera: $155.22
- LinkWorth: $40.19
Total earnings on the year were $1203.34. This number is a little bit low as I am not counting some of the other revenue sources, but I don't want to over estimate my actual earnings.
Expenses For 2007
There are 2 main expenses for running a blog. You need to register a domain name and pay for hosting. Hosting usually has a monthly cost or you can pay in advance to receive some discounts and domain registrations can be for a year or more.
I paid out $206.21 total on the year and this covers my domain and web hosting for the past year and 2 years into the future. I have committed to Thoughts From My Life through October of 2009!
This means my profit came out at $997.13 for the year. Not bad for keeping a diary basically. It is definitely more work than I imagined though.
Popular Articles
It is only a small percentage of my articles that drives the majority of traffic. Here is a listing of them.
- Collecting Aeroplan Points and Their Value
- Collecting Air Miles and their Value
- Best Nintendo DS Homebrew
- Acer Extensa 5420 Laptop Review
- Aeroplan Versus Air Miles - Comparing Them
- Viewsonic VA2226w Review
Lessons Learned
I made a variety of "mistakes" over the year, but I have learned a few lessons that have helped me to blog.
Post Consistently
Post on a regular basis. Your readers can count on you and it forces you to write through "thick and thin". You learn a lot about yourself when you have to post when you don't feel like it. It might make you right about something you wouldn't have normally and it might turn out to be one of your big articles.
Spell Check
Spelling mistakes look bad. Plain and simple.
Good Content
Write about something you have an honest opinion about, you can tell in the article if it is honest or not. Make sure you put as much content in as you think is necessary. If you were reading the same thing on someone else's site, what would you expect them to write? People are looking for a yes or no answer quite often so give them one, but remember that it is your opinion.
Experiment With Monetizing
Try out different advertising companies or affiliate networks. Find what works for you. Try different ad positioning as well.
Detailed Statistics
If you can identify where and how you are earning more money, then you can build off of it and change the rest of your site to match it. When I see a spike in traffic, I know exactly what sites drove it and what articles it was.
Sign up for a Google Analytics account and put the code on your site. They have the best free web tracker in my opinion. Their only downside is that you have to wait a day before you can view the previous day's numbers. Just sign up for another free one that does give you real time and use Analytics for everything else.
Goals For 2008
More Good Content
Keep writing as usual. It is surprising what articles can drive traffic and help you critically think about a subject more for yourself.
Sell More Ad Units
Selling my own ad units will put more in my pockets and provide more passive income.
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