Monthly Report – February Report 2011

Another month has come and gone and Riches Corner is still going.

February marked a month of steady growth for myself as a blogger and for the blog in general.

What I Learn This Month

As for myself, I started the process of learning more about the tools available for me to assist in the blogging process. I wrote up a couple posts regarding the tools that I use on a day to day basis. I wrote a post about the apps I use on my iphone. I also wrote about some desktop blogging programs that I was trying out.

I’m really enjoying using the desktop blogging programs. So far, I have been using ecto the most and will likely purchase the program after the free trial is up. In second place is Qumana, which is a free program and also quite good.

Using these desktop programs really did help increase my productivity. I was able run an experiment with my posting frequency, by posting daily for a full week. I believe that using the desktop software made this possible as it was much more efficient than editing on the wordpress backend and saved a tremendous amount of time.

I gained a lot of insight during my weeklong binge of writing a post every day.

First off, it forced me to come up with a topic daily. This actually was not as difficult as it seems. There’s a lot of subjects to blog about. The areas of discussion can be nearly limitless. And when I was putting out an article every day, the process of deciding what to write about actually became easier. It becomes more of a habit.

For myself, time became an issue as I become busier at my 9-5, I’m unable to keep up a daily schedule and I did go back to my regular schedule of about 3 posts a week.

As far as how my blog responded to the daily posting: I found that my daily traffic did increase slightly, but it was negligible enough to be a normal fluctuation. However, where I did see a steady rise was in my rss feed subscriptions. I started seeing a few new subscriptions daily and ended up at a peak of about 16 more subscribers than I had at the beginning of the week. That was the clearest indicator of the benefit to posting daily.

Now that I’ve gone back to my normal posting schedule, my rss feed subscription is going up at a much slower rate. However, my day to day traffic appears to be increasing at the same rate as before.

February Traffic

February traffic is showing a slow but steady rise. Overall, I’m pleased with the progress of the blog.

As you can see, my visits are moving closer to the 3,000 mark and my pageviews have increased as well. Both of these stats are an improvement over January.

Here’s the breakdown of my traffic sources:

This big difference here is the jump in search engine traffic. Last month, I was only getting 6.74% from search engines, this month I’m just over 10%. This is really showing signs of steady growth in the search engine area. I take the rise in search engine traffic to be a real significant indicator of the growth of this blog.

I believe this increase is primarily due to the increase of content on the site. I am adding at least 3-4 articles weekly. In addition, I have received several guest posts from several different authors. And finally, with the support of regular commentators, there is always some discussion occurring on Riches Corner. The search engines are picking up on all of these factors and we are benefiting.

Income Report

This month I’ve diversified into a few additional programs that are starting to bring in some additional income.

Here is my income summary for the month:

Mylikes: $20.66

Donanza: $6.00

SponsoredTweets: $7.43

MediaPass: $2.93

Adfly: $0.50

Investments

Lendingclub: Annualized return rate 16.69%

Current total of interest received from LendingClub: $51.72

As you can see, I am starting to earn additional income from various sources. My Donanza Job Board did take a dip this month. This is actually a normal fluctuation. What happens with that program is that I get a small commission when job seekers submit a bid, but when they are actually chosen for a project I get a larger $50 commission. So in January, I had slightly more job applicants for the month, one of which got hired for a job, accounting for the $63 for the previous month. I anticipate that over time, these fluctuation will average out.

I also wrote a premium article for Riches Corner about getting more twitter followers, and included a twitter template pack with that article. I used mediapass to monetize that article and have already started to receive some income from that as well. As that program operates on a subscription model, I will continue to add premium articles to that section of the blog to give continuing value.

Adfly is a new passive income program that I just started a little over a week ago. It is a link shortening service that I am using on a new twitter account. It generates income purely through ad views. As a brand new source of income, it’s already off to a good start.

Finally, I wanted to add a new section to the income report for investments. When I generate income from Riches Corner, where does it all go?

Ideally, I want my money to work for me and generate more income. So I put it back into the blog in the form of purchasing blogging software, hosting, etc… But my net profit, I put into an investment account.

While, I also keep traditional investment accounts, I’ve put my blogging income into a non-traditional investment account through lending club.

Lendingclub is a peer to peer lending service. It allows investors to lend money to borrowers and then collect the payments in the same way a bank or credit card collects payments. Lending Club handles all the transactional aspects of the loan. As an investor, I can carefully select my investments by reviewing the loan applications. Then I can elect to put in as little as $25 towards the loan that I chose. This amount goes into a pool with other investors until that loan is funded. Then I get repaid according the percentage that I invested in the loan.

As you can see, the annualized return on investment can be quite high. That’s because my profit is the interest generated from that loan. I am now basically acting as a bank.

Everyone should have a plan for what they will do with the profits that they earn. Whatever your plan, find a way to invest and make your money work for you. I’ve chosen to go with Lending Club as my investment route. It allows me to act as a bank for others and earn profit with my investment accordingly. Overall, it’s an excellent investment program.

Summary

As you can see, I am diversifying my sources of income. This is always a good ideas as each of these programs will go through normal fluctuations from month to month. As I get more sources of income, the higher performing programs for the month can balance out the ones that are sluggish. Also, it’s a good idea to have a plan for how you handle your money once you start generating income. I’ve done that with Lending Club.

As you can see, Riches Corner is growing. The process of running a blog is one that takes time. But it’s rewarding to see the steady growth from month to month. These monthly updates are a wonderful way to see the big picture of how the blog is progressing. I’m enjoying watching the steady growth of Riches Corner and already look forward to next month’s report!

Also, I want to thank everyone for their support this month. I’ve had regular commentators, guest bloggers and visitors that are really contributing to the growth of Riches Corner. This blog wouldn’t be here without all of your support. So thank you!

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About Richard  (243 Posts)

Richard is a full time professional, husband, father and blogger juggling all the responsibilities of life and running a blog. Richard enjoys writing about life and online money matters.