Stats & Analysis for September ‘09 – $2,927 Earned
The stats are back! It was odd last month not being able to do them so it’s nice to be posting my monthly stats report once again and it’s a great one to to make a comeback with as there was a nice surprising waiting for me in the income section this time! :-)
Income
- Teaching Sells – $1,659
- Bluehost – $580
- Membership Site Mastermind – $194.37
- Private Advertising – $191.60
- The Bloggers Bible – $114.06
- Traffic Rush – $89.74
- Unique Article Wizard – $80.40
- Niche AdSense WordPress Themes – $18.27
Total income earned during September ‘09: $2,927.44
The income took an unexpected jump this month due to Teaching Sells. I had to scratch my head over that one! How on earth could I earn $1,659 on something that closed months ago? I have a post about that coming up :-)
One thing I noticed this time is that I have been reporting my Bluehost income incorrectly – my commission is reported in UK pounds but I list it as US dollars for consistency but I was reporting $95 per sale (or $65 if it goes through my old links), but it’s actually only, $90 – boooo lol :)
I was pleased to see that even if I take off Teaching Sells, which is a one off as it is closed again now, the income was back into 4 figures (there really must be a summer slump) at $1,268. Good timing really, as I really did overspend on my holiday to Florida!
Subscribers
Usually I would use the stats from the previous month to compare against to determine the subscriber growth but of course I didn’t do the stats for last month. However, on the FeedCompare graph and I see the first number reported for the beginning of the month (not quite accurate as it’s the 2nd today but close enough!) and use that.
Subs at beginning of September: 10,961
Subs at end of September: 11,507
New subscribers in Sep ‘09: 546
Traffic
Same old same old more or less… well not quite actually. I’ve noticed that I am no longer earning money from Twitter Rockstar which is surprising as my Twitter Guide promotes it heavily. I checked the affiliate links and they are all working fine so I decided to have a look at the traffic and that revealed my problem.
The Twitter Guide pages – namely the landing page and page 1 of the guide itself used to be very high trafficked pages on my blog but not anymore! Well, it’s still fairly high but no where near as high as before so I’m not making sales because the pages are not getting the traffic they used to. And why not? Easy – my guide ranked number #1 on Google for the search term “twitter guide” for the longest time but it has dropped down now. It’s at #4 today but I had a look the other day and it was at 6 or 7 if I recall. It just goes to show that the number #1 listing gets a LOT more traffic than others even on the first page.
Conclusion
I’ve said this many times before but this month really is proof of the power of a monetized blog as a source of residual income. As usual, all income earned here is from work done a very long time ago and yet continues to bring in a decent income month after month with the occasional big boost.
As I discussed in my 2 year anniversary post recently, the progress on my Software Project is steady but excruciatingly slow. I’ve been taking a closer look at time scales this month and because the first release will be a free one, it will not be bringing me any additional income for a few more months which means that my only source of income for a while longer continues to be this blog.
I don’t have time to take on any new projects but I might be able to make a few tweaks here and there, possibly post a little more – perhaps try and bring in some fresh search traffic without too much additional effort. I’ll keep you posted, pun intended :)
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Dave Doolin | Website In A Weekend
October 2, 2009
Excellent work.
I can see I’m going to have to get a day job after surf season is open. I don’t see quite enough income coming in for another year to make it all self-supporting.
But the content grows. And grows. And just keeps on growing. Some years down the road, perhaps I’ll be the next “overnight success!”
Dave Doolin | Website In A Weekend´s last blog ..WIAW Week in Review: September 26 – October 2, 2009