Even though February was a short month, I still managed to reach 21,934 page views.
The spike around Valentine's Day was courtesy of Dividend Mantra.
For the second month in a row I managed to surpass 20,000 page views. This number seems difficult to believe and I am still under the impression that Blogger is giving me inflated results. But like I mentioned last month, similar to dividend investing, if the chart is heading up and to the right it's all good.
I really didn't make any changes to the blog other than I finally added an About Me page and I removed my Run Log.
I haven't stopped running. In fact after several months of various nagging knee and ankle injuries, I have finally gotten completely healthy (knock on wood). The main reason I am not tracking the miles anymore is because my wife got me a Garmin watch which tracks miles, pace, calories, and a few other cool things.
In February my adsense revenue increased to $35.65. This is quite a bit higher than the $20.55 I earned in January. I still have not received any funds because I have not broken the $100.00 minimum threshold. Hopefully by the end of April I will receive my first payment.
One day while roaming around the AdSense dashboard, a box appeared and asked me if I wanted to optimize my ads. I clicked yes (as this involved no effort on my part) and as far as I can tell my ads have become more COLORFUL and animated. Then again, this could be entirely my imagination. Usually the "optimizing my revenue" section within Adsense entails steps to resize and reshape my ads. Considering it took many hours to get the ads to properly appear (meaning "webpage cannot be displayed" did not pop up) in three locations I opted to avoid this altogether. As you may or may not remember, the last major change to my blog accidentally wiped out the borders surrounding my posts. I have to admit this still chaps my ass.
I have also been noticing that many of you have affiliate websites that seem to be much more effective at generating revenue. I was thinking about adding a Sharebuilder affiliate box to my site if it is available. Since I use their product and make purchases weekly, I certainly think it is a good and cost effective way to build positions in companies.
I guess I should see if Sharebuilder even offers an affiliate option. Then the hard part would be actually installing that into my site. The thought of trying to do that without screwing something major up is one of the reasons I haven't even looked into this yet. I know, I know....I have got to change with the times and tackle new projects. These things probably can be done in a matter of minutes for most of you, but continue to be a thorn in my side. Oh well, I will explore this option very soon.
Thanks to everyone who stops by to visit. I truly enjoy the interaction and support you guys provide. Your encouragement and advice is taken very seriously and I believe information is our most important asset and am always looking for new ideas.
Stay relentless in your pursuit of FI. I certainly plan to!!!
DEFY MEDIOCRITY
Very impressive traffics stats MDP. Given your regular posting and sharing of your dividend journey, I'd imagine things will only continue to go up. Affiliate ads can certainly add some additional income, however you must include some kind of call to action for them to work effectively. Including them in your weekly update posts would likely be the best place.
ReplyDeleteW2R,
DeleteGreat idea about the call to action. I haven't decided if I am going to add an affiliate site. I really want to keep the blog as simple as possible. Creating another ad may be a bit much for me. We'll see.
MDP
That's some pretty nice traffic MDP and congrats on the adsense revenue, that's like a separate dividend right there.
ReplyDeleteCaptain,
DeleteI agree with your analogy of a separate dividend payer. I would love to have a few more $75-$300 a month passive income ideas. The more separate and independent income sources the better.
MDP
Great progress MDP! Just don't get too discouraged when the Adsense revenue fluctuates. Some months ours falls by half. Some months it spikes dramatically. If just a few people actually click on the ads, it makes a world of difference.
ReplyDeleteHave a great week
-Bryan
IS,
DeleteYou are so right about the variations. Some days I receive less than $1 for 3 clicks and some days I receive over a $1 for one click. I have no idea why that is and probably never will.
MDP
MDP,
ReplyDeleteImpressive statistics! You have a lot of pageviews, congrats. And it's great to see your AdSense income climb, which isn't too surprising if your visitor numbers keep going up.
Hope you breach the $100 payment threshold before the end of April!
Cheers,
NMW
NMW,
DeleteI love the Adsense revenue even though I haven't received a payment yet. As far as the page views go, I think they may be about half the Blogger totals. Whatever the real number is, it is heading up and that's a good thing.
MDP
According to Blogger, I have had 2 190 page views last month. Half of them are probably me. Needless to say, 21 000 seems a pretty big number to me. ;-) Good work.
ReplyDeleteMD,
DeleteI was at 2,000 views a year ago, so anything is possible. Also you can choose not to track your own pages views if you choose to.
MDP
Great job on the blog stats. It takes a while to get to 20,000 per month. Of course, the Adsense revenue never seems to be as much as it should be....
ReplyDeleteNNL,
DeleteNo the Adsense revenue is just a bonus in my book. I'll take any free money I can. :-)
Thanks for stopping by!
MDP
I think adsense payouts should be $25 or $50, because $100 takes a very long time for many publishers. Affiliate advertising sounds interesting too. I haven't looked into that myself yet.Your stats are very impressive, especially the year over year growth. :) If this trend continues you'd probably reach 50,000 monthly pageviews by 2016 ;)
ReplyDeleteLI,
DeleteIt's hard to say what the future holds. This blog is basically just a diary on my financial decisions. I don't know how much audience growth I can reasonably expect. It's all cool though, as I enjoy the process whether 1 person stops by or 1000 stop by.
MDP
MDP,
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the blog stats and the adsense, I am new to adsense too and I need some ways how to generate more traffic and revenue. Great job there man!
FFF
FFF,
DeleteI hate to use the word "random" but that's what it feels like to me. Some days I receive $.15 and others I receive $4.00.
MDP
Congrats on the extra income.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely adds up to quite a bit at the end of the year.
B,
DeleteThanks for visiting and the comment. You are right. If I can maintain $35 a month, that is around $400 a year. It takes a lot of capital to create that much in dividend income. I love it!
MDP
Definitely look into affiliates. These are nice to pump up extra revenues a little. Be careful to not have too much so it becomes annoying for readers. :-) Good stats, keep it up!
ReplyDeleteDivGuy,
DeleteI definitely don't want the site to busy or distracting. I'll try to keep the pop up ads down to a dozen or so. :-)
MDP
Any little bit helps with reaching financial independence quicker.
ReplyDeleteYou're stats are amazing to me as I am only receiving about 10% of what you are, but hopefully things will start to pick up in the future like yours did over the past year.
$400 extra in income is like having $10,000 in a dividend stock with a 4% yield. I'd take that kind of extra cash flow any day of the week!
ADD,
DeleteI think you will increase your totals a little each month. That is what happened to me. Stay with it.
MDP
Looks like you are making good progress. I remember the first time I played around with adsense on my "sand box" blog. The blog before I launched the real blog. It took about a year for me to get $100 from Google. I personally prefer affiliates because you can really personalize the offerings based on products/companies that you know, like, and trust.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion the ads are not always that relevant to the content.But that makes sense since they are contextually based on browsing history. Some sites make a lot of money with Adsense.
Either way you should check out affiliate links.
Cheers!
GYFG,
DeleteI am going to look into it. Thanks for stopping by and the great input and congrats on the Liebster nomination! It's a cool way to learn more about fellow bloggers.
MDP
Very impressive numbers. Congrats on breaking the 20k pageview stat again and having excellent adsense income.
ReplyDeleteTawcan,
DeleteThanks. It is nice to get passive income from other sources than just stocks and bonds.
MDP
Wow! Congratulations on the > 20k pageview stat! Extra passive income will certainly help achieve early FI.
ReplyDeleteMU,
DeleteAbsolutely. I need to develop a few other sources of passive/side income as well. I be working on some new ideas this year.
MDP
Congratulations MDP! Definitely appreciate you sharing this information as not many people do. We were just approved for AdSense and are going to try it out. Not sure if we like the ads on the blog but we are really just hoping to cover the costs invested since we are using Blue Host for hosting. So far we have earned $0.02. ;) Sadly, that is almost 10% of our February passive income total. Keep up the great work over there and also secretly happy to see that we are not the only ones who are not technically gifted so to speak. All the best.
ReplyDeleteFD
FD,
DeleteDon't worry about your passive income totals. Keep adding quality companies as you can and the results will come with time. My blog skills are certainly on the bottom 10% of the bell curve, but I try to do a few things here and there. I keep hearing about Blue Host on the Create My Independence blog, but have stuck with Blogger. The thought of restarting the blog from scratch does not seem like a good thing for me. Maybe in the future if I get more readers. Right now it's just a journal and a place to interact with other investors, not a business enterprise. Although if I get to $50 a month that would be so cool!
MDP
If you can earn $20/month from adsense... That is equivalent to having $8,000 invested in a dividend stock yielding 3%. If you double that - this is equivalent to having $16,000 invested in a dividend stock yielding 3%.
ReplyDeleteGood luck in your FI journey!
DGI,
DeleteI like your analogy. The best part is I don't have to come up with the 8k!
MDP