This was a picture from my trip to South East Asia in 2004. The Grand Palace is definitely worth seeing if you are in Bangkok. Here is one of the buildings in the palace and in the background is another temple that is actually across a large river in in the city and not part of the palace itself.
This woman was sitting in her boat selling lychees at the floating market in Thailand. The picture is a bit out of focus, but I still like it nonetheless.
December of 2007 is now finished and Thoughts From My Life has ended on the highest note of the year. A great sign for the new year. It was the best month ever for my passive income! New records.
December's numbers and November's numbers are in brackets.
Traffic was over 100 for the first part of the month. I was happy with this and then the last week of this month my traffic exploded. I definitely have higher expectations now. This traffic came from a couple of sources. One was Stumbleupon users going to my Nikon 18-200mm VR Lens article and the second source was my new article on my Acer Extensa 5420 laptop.
December Traffic
Overall, my earnings for December were $171.33. Here is the breakdown with last month's numbers in brackets.
My Adsense and set a new record for monthly earnings. This wasn't going to make it until the last week with all the new traffic which pushed it over the top. My passive income reached $96.33 which is well over 50% of the total revenue. January is looking very promising with the new traffic.
This has been my best month for passive income and I am really looking forward to 2008. My traffic is at record highs and I have even established some recurring monthly advertisements for more income.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is only a small percentage of my articles that drives the majority of traffic. Here is a listing of them.
I made a variety of "mistakes" over the year, but I have learned a few lessons that have helped me to blog.
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.
Spelling mistakes look bad. Plain and simple.
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.
Try out different advertising companies or affiliate networks. Find what works for you. Try different ad positioning as well.
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.
Keep writing as usual. It is surprising what articles can drive traffic and help you critically think about a subject more for yourself.
Selling my own ad units will put more in my pockets and provide more passive income.
This is an awesome view and entirely worth it for anyone who takes the ferry over to Saltspring Island. It is one of the gulf islands off the coast of Vancouer Island. You can drive most of the way up to the top of Mount Maxwell and then walk 50 yards to have this amazing view. It looks across this valley from east to west and is fantastic.
If you are running short of hard drive space, one of the best options is to purchase an external hard drive. That is what I did when I saw the Iomega 500GB external hard drive go on sale.
It is a 500GB drive that is available from a lot of different retailers. I purchased mine for CA$119 during Dell's Days of Deals.
I want a decent size drive to store pictures and video on. 500GB is a big shot in the arm for my storage capacity.
I paid CA$119, which is the same as the US dollar right now. That is less than 24 cents per GB.
Any computer built in the last 7 or 8 years will have these connectors on them. I can hook my external drive up to anyone's computer. Firewire or eSata are faster, but not everyone has them.
This was the big one. This hard drive is very, very quiet. Unless the hard drive is really working, you do not even hear a noise.
It is quite compact and my is comes with a stand so you can stand it up on its side. You could sit it on a shelf like a book if you wanted so it takes up very little desk space if you want it there.
There is a blue led light on the front that is a little too bright and can be distracting. I usually point my hard drive the other direction or place something in front of the light so that is doesn't glare off of a wall.
The next hard drive I buy will have an network connection. This lets you plug it into your router and the hard drive is viewable by all the computers in the network without doing any special configuration. It also saves on space as the drive can be placed in a closet or the basement away from everything else.
You can get drives that have firewire as well as USB. This just gives you more options for connecting if you have them.
If you have not owned an external drive before, here is how it works. The hard drive is approximately the size of an old VHS video tape (the drive would be a bit smaller). It has its own power cord and connects to your computer via a USB cable. When you plug it in and turn it on, the computer will recognize it as a mass storage device and it will show up as another drive on your computer.
The data transfer speed depends on your USB ports on the computer. USB 2.0 is very fast. I have USB 1.1 and you will notice it takes a bit of time to copy a large file across. That being said, I can watch a high definition video file across a USB 1.1 connected hard drive. If you're computer was purchased within the last 3 years I would say you have USB 2.0.
Check out the Iomega 500 GB External Drive product page.
I was in Ontario for a wedding in Hamilton and ended up going to the Butterfly Museum on my way back from Niagara Falls. It was hot and humid inside, but well worth the tour.
My wife and I were taking photos for our wedding invitation and this was one of the hundred or so that didn't make the cut, but I still like it. It was taken along the ocean just off Dallas Road in Victoria at sunset.
Outside of Dalat, Vietnam are these waterfalls. I ended up having a shower in them, but the water was a bit too brown to say it was that great. Dalat billed itself as the Paris of the East as it is a honeymoon town for the Vietnamese and it has a tower that resembles the Eiffel Tower.
In the summer, it has been a bit of a tradition to go for a swim at the Nanaimo River. It bulges out at one point and creates a rather large pool where you can jump off the small cliffs or just relax and sit in the sun.
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