October 2009: Blog Summary & Income Report

techpatio_october_2009_visitsI’ve been blogging for 4 months now and it’s time to look into the numbers for October and compare them with previous months.

But before we do, I have a few announcments to make:

I did some minor advertisement changes. I removed the two 125×125 ads I had in the upper right corner of my site. They never received any clicks, so I figured I’d rather use that spot to promote certain featured posts and/or for RSS subscribers.

Two “ad companies” got kicked out of TechPatio during October. One of them being Chitika. They provide an ad only for users coming from a search engine result. The ad was relevant to their search, but received very few clicks, not worth it. SocialSpark/IZEA was also removed because:

  1. Didn’t pay much.
  2. Something with their ITK tools script was doing some weird stuff in my Firefox, it seemed to “activate” whenever I click on stuff in my website that’s not clickable. I don’t know if it’s supposed to do that in order to “track clicks” or what, but it seemed kinda odd. I hope it’s just me, but in case it’s not, then it’s gone now since I removed the ITK tools.
  3. SocialSpark rejected my blog into their Marketplace without giving a specific reason other than “my blog is not right for their Marketplace at this time”. So, if I’m not good enough for them, they’re not good enough for me 🙂  Besides, without an approved blog (I think), I’m having very limited access to their opportunities. In fact, the only opp’s available to me right now is a an affiliate deal for MacSpeech Dictate that costs $199 and I’d receive $0.32 for each sale (what?!). And the 2nd opportunity is for a program/service that prepares people for the SAT’s, pays out $16 per sale but according to the comments, this opp has expired.
  4. I’ve already made 4 times as much from ReviewMe this month alone than the past 3 months from SocialSpark.

But, then I added something new: ReviewMe. They offer to pay bloggers to review sites/products and in October I made $15 doing two reviews. I just hope my readers are not annoyed by those posts and that they will accept at least seeing in the title where it says “[Sponsored Post]” that it’s a sponsored post and then decide if they want to read it or not. I enjoyed doing the reviews I’ve done so far, I get to read about a product/company I didn’t know beforehand, research the company and their product – and then I receive some money for it as well. My goal is not to “get rich quick”, my goal is to see what kind of money can be made from an online blog, when you start at ground zero.

So let’s just look at the numbers already:

October ’09

Sept.

Aug.

July

Visitors
Visits: 2,990 4,954 1,628 803
Pageviews: 5,109 7,493 3,244 1,441
Pages/visit 1.71 1.51 1.99 1.79
Bounce rate: 68% 75% 59% 71%
Avg. time on site: 01:51 01:20 02:14 01:30
New visits: 76% 82% 72% 72%
Blog comments: 251 294 249 66
Traffic Sources
Direct traffic: 23% 17% 22% 40%
Search engines: 36% 67% 43% 33%
Referring sites: 41% 16% 34% 27%
Earnings
Google Adsense: $11.8 $9 $4 $1.82
Clickbank: $33.41 $0 $0 $112.07
Infolinks: $1.14 $1.98 $0.2 n/a
SocialSpark: n/a $0 $3.51 n/a
Chitika: $0.09 $0.42 n/a n/a
Thesis: $54.12 $0 $0 n/a
ReviewMe: $15 n/a n/a n/a
TOTAL: $115.56 $11.40 $7.71 $113.89

Conclusion: October ’09

I was right, I was not going to reach 7,000 pageviews in October. September was simply too good. I saw a few less blog comments than the month before, but I didn’t comment myself that much either (on other blogs).

The income was good, $115.56, new record, yay!!

I made a Clickbank sale (the Green DIY Energy product, teaching you to make your own solar & wind products). InfoLinks income was lower due to less pageviews, properly. AdSense increased though, I believe that’s because I optimized my AdSense placements during October. We’ll see what happens here in November. And finally, Thesis. I made a Thesis sale too, that’s fantastic! Now there’s another blogger out there enjoying the great SEO benefits of Thesis – will you be the next one? 🙂

TechPatio also received a PageRank update, going from PR0 to PR2 in the latest PageRank update.

I also opened up a new blog in Otober, called ApplePatio.com, where I post all my Apple related news and articles. The above mentioned income covers both TechPatio and ApplePatio, but all the other statistics are only for TechPatio. Next month, I’ll do a blog summary report for ApplePatio too, having two months worth of data.

Goals: November ’09

In November, my goal will be to reach the same amount of pageviews like I had in September, meaning 7.500 pageviews.

Obviously, it’s going to be tough to do another income record. It all depends on the affiliate sales and I’m afraid, as we move closer to Christmas, less people will be willing to spend money online on stuff like this, saving their money for Christmas presents. I don’t have any anticipations regarding affiliate sales in November, but I expect my AdSense income to get closer to $15.

Top 5 Most Viewed Posts: October

  1. Google Wave Invitations – Come And Get’em, They’re Free!
  2. Caroline Wozniacki Breasts
  3. Simple & Easy DIY iPhone Dock For Free
  4. How To Use Twitter To Get Through To Customer Support In A Jiffy
  5. Why “Comment Reply Notification” Is A Must Have Plugin For Your Blog – Otherwise…

Other Summary & Income Reports

I’m not the only one doing this whole income report thingy, many other blogs do them too. Here’s some of the reports I’ve spotted so far. If yours are missing and you want it here, be sure to drop a comment below and I’ll be happy to add it to the list.

33 thoughts on “October 2009: Blog Summary & Income Report”

  1. Pingback: Remergence
  2. That’s some nice earnings, I never though of putting my earning in my round up, also thanks for the linky love 😉
    .-= Blazing Minds´s last blog ..WordPress Plugins used for my Weekly and Monthly Stats =-.

    Reply
    • It’s never too late to do so, if it’s information you want to disclose, of course.

      And thank you for tweeting this 😀

      Reply
  3. Congrats! Keep up the good work bro!
    .-= Jacob Yap´s last blog ..Tweet To Win a Google Wave Invitation Everyday, for 10 Days! =-.

    Reply
  4. Congrats on the record, and also thanks for the link love. Thanks Greg Ellison
    .-= Greg Ellison´s last blog ..Amazon Associates Can Share Products on Twitter =-.

    Reply
  5. Hey I think it’s a great idea to get paid to do reviews, Sire does an excellent job with it and you could do very well also. No sense in not making money if you can.
    .-= Extreme John´s last blog ..Halloween Costume Contest Pictures and Voting =-.

    Reply
    • Exactly. Besides, doing 2-400 word reviews is very easy. It might not pay out millions ($5-$10 a review), but pays more than doing a 1000 word post that might get just a single AdSense click.

      Reply
  6. Well, another ok month for you. Seems your site is becoming better in all areas and that will continue if you stay on the same path.

    BTW, thanks for including me in this post 🙂
    .-= George Serradinho´s last blog ..October 2009 Flashback Report =-.

    Reply
    • That’s what I like about doing those reports, it makes me stop up and think about what I’ve done in the past month and see how I, and the site, improves. I like to learn 🙂

      Reply
  7. Congrats man, keep working at it and the visitors will keep increasing. I’m thinking of giving Thesis a try actually once I get enough time to read in to it.
    .-= Alan @ Basin Glass Co.´s last blog ..Freedom to choose. =-.

    Reply
    • You picked a great time to consider Thesis, that’s for sure. Version 1.6 was just released and hopefully the next version will be 2.0. Also if you have any questions, doubts etc. about Thesis, don’t hesitate to let me know (twitter, comments or simply use the contact page), I’ll be glad to help.

      Reply
  8. Best wishes for the numbers. But your page views and visitors have decreased drastically. What are the possible reasons
    .-= John Samuel´s last blog ..How to Enable/Disable Spell Check in Firefox Browser? =-.

    Reply
    • I had some extremely popular posts in September, which you can read about in the September Conclusion, here!

      Reply
  9. What an awesome month. I see your adsense income keeps going up month after month. Keep up the hard work.
    .-= Deneil Merritt´s last blog ..Breakups And Movies =-.

    Reply
  10. Wonderful report. I hope you can increase your Adsense income, as that’s how my income seems to work best.
    .-= Mitch´s last blog ..October Income Report – It Is What It Is =-.

    Reply
  11. Wow, nice earnings from ClickBank 🙂
    and yeah I took out my Chitika long ago because it never gave me good money. Well I guess being in Technology niche never earns us enough money unless if they are affiliate sales
    .-= Michael Aulia´s last blog ..Goodbye Michael Aulia’s Blog.. Welcome, Craving Tech! =-.

    Reply
  12. Pingback: Rakesh Waghela
  13. Chitika is very good for many bloggers if they did SEO in a right way. I hope you will follow that soon to get more organic traffic.
    .-= BlogrPro´s last blog ..How to create a Comment Subscription Manager in your WordPress blog? =-.

    Reply
  14. Hi Claus most of blogger show income report, but I do not know why? Well your income is nice, keep it up.
    .-= chandan@work at home´s last blog ..Top posts on work at home opportunties =-.

    Reply
    • Hi Chandan.

      I think there are several reasons why people are doing it. If you’re in the “make money online” niche and you’re still not a “pro blogger”, it’s probably a good idea to show off your income like this, as you’re then showing that you KNOW how to make money online and not just blogging on what *might* work.

      In my case, I don’t feel it’s necessary for me to hide it and it also helps build relationships with other bloggers and making comparisment easier.

      Reply
      • But I think within my niche its not good to show my income report on my blog. What you say about it?
        .-= chandan@work at home´s last blog ..Top posts on work at home opportunties =-.

        Reply
        • If the goal with your blog is not at all related to how one can make money from a blog, then probably not, no.

          Reply
          • My goal is to come top ten for keyword “work at home” and remove all scammer from the SERP. If you search “work at home”, you will get lots of scam site, so through my blog I want to alter people about those sites.
            .-= chandan@work at home´s last blog ..Top posts on work at home opportunties =-.

            Reply
            • Sounds like a very noble goal 🙂 I hope you will succeed!

              A domain for your site, instead of being on blogspot, might also benefit you – especially if you try to include some of the words you want to rank for: work, home.

              Reply
            • You know I start my blog seeing moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com,Daren is one big player at make money online, I really like how he monetize his blog.
              .-= chandan@work at home´s last blog ..Top posts on work at home opportunties =-.

              Reply
  15. Pingback: Tycoon Blogger
  16. Pingback: MiscBytes
    • At this time, not so much. I just try to write some good content and get it shared on social sites etc.

      Hey, please reply to my e-mail I sent you earler today and about a week ago 🙂

      Reply
  17. Hey very good earning, for a blogger who has just completed 4 months and also decent traffic. By the why as chandan commented chitika is not all that bad… in one which my earning from chitika was .11$.

    One more suggestion please reduce the size of the facebook share and retweet, it causes difficulty during reading the post…………. 🙂
    .-= Sandesh´s last blog ..Animated christmas screensavers for free =-.

    Reply
  18. Pingback: victor delgado

Leave a Comment