July 2007 Goal Update
It's time for my goal project update. In July, things slowly started to turn back around. In general all figures were up in July which was a good sign, particularly after the disappointment of June.
1. Develop Swollen Pickles into a website that can generate $200 per month.
The total for the month was $80.28USD, compared to $70.54 for June. The breakdown by revenue source was:
Adsense: $13.35
AuctionAds: $0.65
PayPerPost: $56.33
Kontera: $1.50
Text-Link-Ads: $8.45
July was an interesting month in that, a week or so in I made the decision to cut back on the advertising blocks on this site. Firstly, I switched off Kontera. It just wasn't paying enough per click to justify sending traffic away. I also removed the AuctionAds from under the post title on the front page and sidebar. I'll now only insert AuctionAds on SwollenPickles.com when I think it might return something relevant for that particular post.
In the second half of July, I also signed up to PayU2Blog, to see if it was a viable alternative to PayPerPost. They supposedly pay fortnightly, but I haven't recevied anything yet, so I won't be adding that to the total here.
If it comes through, I'll add it to next months figures.
What I found interesting was, that in terms of Adsense, the one page that made the most was the Swollen Pickles "What is Forex" page. There must be a lot of money in Forex!
Text-Link-Ads continue to be consistent, and I've been lucky to have to long terms sponsors, with Mara Pets Games supporting the front page and Merchant Account Services pitching in for a post level spot on my unintentionally well linked post, Who stole Michaels goat? I'm surprised that no one has yet decided to buy a link on the PR4 Goals page or any of the other decently ranked camel toe pages!!! Hint, Hint!!!
2. Develop Swollen Pickles to the point where it receives 15,000 unique visits per month.
Traffic wise, things picked up in July, with 5,620 unique visitors for July, compared to 3,416 in June. Still well under my target.
3. Develop digitalburn.org into a website that can generate $30 per month.
I’m really struggling to get this one up an running. Last month was a disappointing $9.75, this month say slight improvement with a total of $12.68. I need some ideas on how to better monetize that site.
4. Develop digitalburn.org to the point where it receives 7,500 unique visits per month.
Digitalburn.org took a bit of a back seat in July as I spent a lot of time developing up a new site. It still dragged in 1,637 unique visits, down from 2,689 unique in June.
5. Achieve my goal weight of 80kgs, which would give me a BMI within the “normal†range.
Ha ha.
6. Buy an Xbox 360 (yes I know, counterproductive to no.5, but I need one!).
I have highlighted the release of Halo 3 as my trigger point for buying the 360.
7. Write and record three new songs including lyrics and vocals.
Everything sounds the same. I'm lacking inspiration in this area right now.
In summary, it was an OK month, but I need to start doing better. With 5 months left, I need to step it up if I'm going to achieve even a couple of these damn goals!
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I have to agree, TLA are probably a very regular performer.
You’ve set the bar high for a number of goals, good for you. Best of luck with reaching them!
[...] Swollen Pickles [...]
Thanks Erik. I’m really hoping I can knock these off before the end of the year!
Kontera is h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e! You really have to have traffic like Google dot com in order for it to be worthwhile. Stick with it though because the more work you put in, the more you will get out. And next year we can meet with other bloggers who started out this year and have a celebratory lunch in Paris!
I love the concept of setting specific, actionable blog goals- I should get around to doing that with my blog.
Good luck- I predict you will get there in a couple of months!