Starting Another New Blog

Over the next few weeks, I will be starting another new blog.  The plan is to launch at the beginning of January.  I don't quite plan on revealing the topic yet, but I think that it will be a great topic and incredibly useful to lots of individuals.

The best part is that I am now making enough with my blog, Cash Flow Mantra, that I can afford to partner with a few fellow bloggers and pay for 4 articles per month with some of the money that I have been making.  Right now, I have enough money in my PayPal account to pay for about 4 months worth of articles.

My plan all along has been to spend my time to develop an online income stream rather than any money.  I have successfully done that and haven't spent one dime of my own money.  Rather by starting with HubPages and eHow, I was able to earn on a platform with no upfront costs.

Then, once I got affected by the first Panda Update, I finally got the guts to start my own WordPress blog.  Of course, I have to repeatedly ask myself why I didn't do so sooner.  I would be much farther down the road had I done this 18 months ago.  I might be making double or triple what I am making now.

If this new blog is anything like CFM, it should take about 6 months for me to be making enough to pay for the costs of paying for content and begin making a profit.  Then, I could start another blog with the additional proceeds and pay for more content.  The goal would be to keep my writing load the same while increasing my internet exposure and earning possibilities.  It would be a lot like reinvesting dividends and compound interest.

Of course, having cross-marketing opportunities across the different blogs will help.  I suspect that this new blog will grow much faster than CFM because I have some experience getting traffic but also some writing partners who will help in that realm and benefit themselves from the traffic.

It is going to be a busy December getting ready, but I am looking forward to it.  Wish me luck.  I will be sure to let everyone here know the name and topic in a week or two.

Amazon Streak Likely to Come to an End

Well for the last 10 months, I have managed to have at least one sale through Amazon.  It looks like that streak is about to end since today is the 29th of November and I don't have any sales yet.  I am actually a little surprised given that this is the shopping season.  Maybe all the people that link through my Amazon links are procrastinating like me.

Despite that, I am not too worried.  Both AdSense income and HubPages Ad Program income are up compared to last month and traffic continues to improve so for that I am thankful.

I am also earning some money through my blog as well so that is good.  I think that having a diverse income stream can be very useful should one of them have a bad month.

Plus, I am excited by the fact that my online income for this year has exceeded my income for 2010.  I honestly didn't think that would happen given the changes that have occurred this year, but it did happen.  I am really looking forward to 2012 for another opportunity to learn, grow, and earn more income.

PS:  My kids have some Cockapoo puppies for sale.  Here is an ad for one of them.  You can see his picture at the left of this post.

Hoping for a Little Help From My Friends

I just happened to be on the Yakezie forums on Sunday morning and joined a team that is looking to help each other with generating traffic and commenting on one another's blogs.  There are 15 members so it will definitely be noticeable in my statistics since my traffic isn't all that great to begin with.  We just started this yesterday and should the numbers remain consistent through the end of the year, I think this will help me succeed in the Yakezie Challenge of getting the Alexa Rank for Cash Flow Mantra below the 200,000 by the New Year.

I would hate to think that publishing 3 times per week and spending lots of time working on commenting would not produce some results over the next month and a half.  I know the process can be slow at times, but I would like to see some steady growth.  This is why I am optimistic.  I think that I will be able to see progress and am looking forward to it.

I must say that it is encouraging to have a group that is looking out for one another and offering to assist each other.  It certainly is a big motivator to know that someone has your back.  Blogging can be quite the lonely venture with many hours sitting in front of a blank screen.  I was wanting to write a post for CFM tonight but just couldn't come up with any decent ideas.  Wouldn't you know that when I have a little extra time, I have nothing percolating in my head.  I will have some time over the next few days so I will probably be lacking for any good material.  Arrgh!  Isn't that just my luck.

Maybe after a good night's sleep an idea will pop into my head.  I did get one post written today to schedule for this Friday so I am good for the rest of the week.  I am hoping to stay one week ahead so would need to get 3 posts together by the weekend.  Wait, I just had an idea.  I need to wrap this up so I can go write it down.  Will catch you all later.  Wish me luck.

Getting Ahead of the Curve

Well, it has been a fairly productive weekend and I managed to get 2 posts written for my blog at CFM for the upcoming week.  That means the next post will be for Friday so I am 4 days ahead on my posting schedule.  It has been quite some time since I have been in this position.  My goal was to get 3 done, but I will take what I can get.

I also wrote a link post this morning and got it published so I guess you could say that I really did get 3 posts written.

It seems that having a regular posting schedule is an asset for a blog so that readers can know what to expect.  I also think that more publishing leads to more traffic since the regular readers need to read more and there is more material for the search engines to search and find some longer tail keywords.

My plan is to keep a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule for the rest of the year at least in order to keep up the intensity and make it through the Yakezie Challenge.  I also have someone submitting to Carnivals for me which I am also hoping will help drive some traffic as well.  These are my two major strategies for increasing traffic over the next 2 months.

1. Regular posting schedule
2. Carnival submissions

I am hoping to almost double my traffic over that time to 2,000 visits per month from 1,200.  I think it is possible.  The most positive aspect has been search engine traffic increases over the past few months.  I would think that I might be able to get up to 600 search visitors per month by the end of December.

For now, though, I will be taking the rest of the evening off and try to write some more tomorrow.  I hope everyone has a good week.

Why I Am Sticking With HubPages

As you can see from the title of this post, I am sticking with HubPages.  Now there is a lot of potential meaning in those words, and they could be taken in many different ways so I will be explaining myself.  It could mean that I believe HubPages is a viable method of making money on the internet.  I suppose it might work for some people, but it really doesn't mean that for me.  I have found a much more profitable method of generating income.

Essentially for me those words mean that I won't be deleting all of my Hubs like many others may have done.  In other words, I will retain HubPages as a source of passive income.  I haven't written anything for the site since June 4 of this year and that was really to complete a grand total of 200 Hubs.  Before that, I hadn't published since March.  I only end up going to the site every few days and checking to see if I have any comments to address.
 
Despite that lack of activity, I managed to earn $14 through their Ad Program and a couple bucks in Amazon purchases and AdSense ads.  Clearly, it is not the most lucrative venture but it is entirely passive at this point and pays for my hosting costs at Hostgator.  That is clearly OK in my book.

HubPages got hit big with the Panda update in March of this year.  I saw my traffic nearly disappear and decline through the summer.  But recently, I have seen an uptick.  However, my traffic is still less than half what I received in January 2011.  It would be great to see a return to that level, but I won't necessarily be doing anything to encourage traffic since I feel that my efforts are more useful with other projects.

Nonetheless, I won't be complaining too loudly about income that will pay for my expenses without any effort on my part.  I am pleased that I can continue to earn passive income for work that I have already done.

I Think My New Posting Schedule Will Work

I have been inspired to post 3 times per week at my blog, Cash Flow Mantra.  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday a new post will appear.  I may even occasionally be able to post a review with links on the weekend.

I started my new schedule this past week and am pleased to see that my traffic was up about 40% as far as I can tell.  It only makes sense.  Before, I was only posting about 2 times per week on average.  Since most of my readers currently are regulars with not a ton of search traffic, that meant a reader would see the article and then only come back later when something new appeared.

Now since there is new material more days each week, then I am likely to get more traffic from my regulars with more opportunity that one of my posts ends up in a weekly round-up somewhere.  I also have that many more phrases for some long tail searches to find my blog.  I figure that will only enhance any search engine traffic.

Search engine traffic is actually growing fairly nicely as well along a slow upward trend.  Currently about 27% of my traffic is from Google.  I expect that this number should continue to increase and might even be about 40% by the end of the year.

According to Google Analytics, for the past 30 days, I have had just over 1300 visitors.  I think this is a respectable number for a blog that only started at the end of May.  I would like to have about 2000 per month by the end of the year.  I think with my new schedule, I could come very close.  I did have a big month in September when one of my articles got linked from a larger blog.  I then got over 100 visitors per day for about 5 days.  That was cool!  But now, I am back to my regular level of traffic.

Earnings are OK, but certainly nothing to write home about.  I have been a little disappointed but I have come to realize that there will be a constant ebb and flow in that regard.  Eventually it all evens out in the end.  My goal is to just make about the same as I did last year and to improve upon that each year after this.

Well, I still have to get about 5 posts written for CFM over the next 6 days before I head for Honduras.  I did get a guest post for one day over the next 2 weeks leaving me 5 to go.  I have ideas for 2 of them but will need to spend some time thinking about the other 3.  Anyway, thanks for reading my blog here.  I really appreciate it and thank you for your continued support.

Trying to Write Ahead

Well, I plan on heading to Honduras for a mission trip in the within the next few weeks and will be gone for 10 days.  I will have limited time and internet access while there so I will be working diligently to write some extra posts over the next week or so for my main personal finance blog.  I would like to get those posts scheduled to come out over the time while I am away so that I don't have 10 days without any activity.

I think this is one of the coolest features about Wordpress that I had never really embraced until I started writing for my own site.  I am pretty sure that I could schedule posts here as well, but I never really felt the need.  I was writing whenever I could for the content farms, and it didn't really matter to me to maintain a certain level of consistency.

But now since I am trying to build a strong blog and following, I think it is vital to interact and stay active.  I have been posting 2-3 times per week, and I believe that it would be detrimental not to publish any new material over a 10 day stretch.  So, I will writing furiously tomorrow and this weekend to get several posts ahead.

Well, I better get busy so this post will be somewhat short.