In my continued search for traffic and revenue growth for theNetFool.com, May 2008 provided one of my best months ever. We managed dramatic jumps in RSS subscriber numbers, daily traffic, social media rankings, search engine rankings and monthly income.

Encouraging news all around with the ending of Jimvesting’s Outrageous Blog Contest, as we had a lot of satisfied winners and anticipate a solid bump coming from continued advertising campaigns around the net. In June, I anticipate getting more heavily involved in advertising. Higher advertising costs on theNetFool.com should provide an extra funding to pull from, a neccesary step due to uncontrollable demand at previously dirt-cheap ad rates. Things will remain affordable, so don’t worry about breaking the bank!

April Results

• RSS Subscriber Count: 153 Readers
• Average Unique Visitors: 179
• Average Returning Visitors:32
• Average Page Loads: 302
• Alexa.com Ranking:250,089
• 45n5 Top 100 Rank: 312
• Google PageRank:4

May Results

• RSS Subscriber Count: 207 Readers (35.29%+)
• Average Unique Visitors: 200 (11.73%+)
• Average Returning Visitors:38 (18.75%+)
• Average Page Loads:337 (11.59%+)
• Alexa.com Ranking: 147,125 (41.17%+)
• Technorati Ranking: 27,027
• 45n5 Top 100 Rank: 55
• Google PageRank: 4

Monthly Review and Growth Strategy
The results of May show clearly that theNetFool.com has seen steady growth across the board over the month of may. One of the biggest surprises was the jump in 45n5.com’s Top 100 Blogs rank from completely out of the picture, to one of the top 55 blogs on the internet. This has been largely fueled by a frantic jump in Google Pagerank along with a fast rising in our Alexa and Technorati ranks. So really, as far as these popular social networking websites are concerned, theNetFool.com is growing as fast as ever.

I like to take my numbers in the most fair and deflated way possible. Though Jimvesting may have seen higher growth toward the end of the month, all of the numbers you see above are from the entire month of May. For example, our unique visitors for the last week floated around 250… and our returning visitors closer to 50. In addition, RSS subscribers have been higher than 220 as of late… but I have taken the number from May 31st to be more precise. With this in mind, I fully anticipate similarly awesome results for June.

Growth strategy over the next month should consist of a back-to-basics approach to blogging. I am going to be running a much smaller contest this month, and not really looking for extreme growth from this. I am growing concerned that the blogosphere is using contests as an alternative to quality work, so I am going to be the first to take a break from the chaos and take a second approach to writing in the “make money online” community.

May 2008 Income Report
Income from May’s action produced one of the best months that I have ever had in making money from web-related activity. With great sales of my latest eBook “Work Smart, Get Rich!“, along with the completion of a music website done for $250, I have really stacked the numbers this time around. I am anticipating further accelatation here once my new advertising rates kick in. Here is the revenue breakdown from the month ending May 31, 2008:

May 2008 Revenue Breakdown

• Private Ad Sales: $144.00
• Design Work: $250.00
• eBook Sales: $220.00
• Paid Reviews: $40.00
• SWATcash Referrals: $56.98
• TSIFR Referrals: $9.30
• ReviewMe Posts: $20.00
• Text-Link-Ads: $18.42
• OIO Publisher Referral: $28.50
• Total Monthly Income: $787.20

So clearly, a good portion of sales came from the work I did on both my eBook and my latest design project. However, I feel that I can match or beat this output over the next month because of higher traffic from theNetFool.com. This continued growth will eventually translate into more money in my pocket, so I am happy to see what is going to happen with this boost.

Advertising Rate Changes
Plain and simple, things have become too cheap on theNetFool.com. I’m really happy to see people taking full advantage of my ridiculously low spending rates, but it is time to raise things up a notch. Don’t worry, I still believe I am targeting the lower end of the ad price spectrum with these changes, so things are still very affordable and should produce good bang-for-the-buck in your advertising pocket.

SideBar Ads: from $15 to $20 per month
Sponsored Reviews: from $20 to $35 per month
Text Ads: from $4 to $6 per month

I feel that these small hikes are completely justified by my output numbers. With over 200 RSS subscribers, It’s rare to find a website willing to give such an extensive review as I have been known to give for under $45… so I feel I am still giving out a great deal.

June 2008 Outlook
As Jimvesting dot com continues to get more exposure around the internet, I am planing to stay on top of things with superior posts, money making strategies and advertising campaigns. This upcoming month I fully anticipate spending a bit more out of pocket to fund continued organic growth on my website. I feel like at this point, my RSS subscriber numbers are safely in tact due to continued interest on other blogs that points users my way. I have seen theNetFool.com pick up some more brand-name exposure, as people continue to flock over here for sane financial advice from a guy they can trust.

Stick with theNetFool.com for all your ways to make money online. I’m going to continue with the plan to keep you educated on the stock market with a spin toward Get Paid To (GPT) communities, affiliate marketing, blogging tips and things that even beginners can do to make cash like the professionals.

-Jimvesting

It’s June 2nd, and after a fantastic showing with multiple thousands of entries, Jimvesting’s Outrageous Blog Contest is finally in the books. It was tough compiling the official list of entries, which I ran through the ramdomizer at Random.org, but after some hard work and some careful organization of prizes… I have decided to award the top 25 finishers with the blog contest prizes found on the original listing.

Again, I apologize that this post is out a bit later than expected. I ran into some problems with a high school graduation conflict, but am ready to announce the winners of the official Jimvesting dot com 2008 April-May outrageous blog contest.

Are you ready?!

I will be emailing all of you winners in the next 24 hours, so please hold off until after that to contact me if you haven’t heard. As always, all unclaimed prizes will go into next month’s contest. I want to extend my deepest thanks to those of you who chose to participate. Your actions really propelled theNetFool.com into the limelight, and this is now one of the more established “make money online” blogging destinations.

Prizes have been shared in as equal a way as possible, with better rewards weighted toward the first names that were pulled from my random list. So without further ado… the winners of the contest are:

If you are a winner, congratulations! I am hoping to get all of you your well deserved prizes within the next few days, and will be contacting you within 24 hours. I want to thank those of you that won, and those of you that didn’t win, for really working toward a better blogging environment here at theNetFool.com.

Everyone who is subscribed to my feed can receive their FREE copy of Jason Periera’ s “Dollar Million” ebook by contacting me via email at jim@Jimvesting.com downloading the book here. A big thank you to Jason from The University Kid for making this guaranteed win possible for all of you.

I am actually changing direction now and anticipating a contest for the month of June. It will be smaller, but worth a whole lot with some “real” prizes instead of the links and reviews others are offering. Stay tuned for updates on the next contest!

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-Jimvesting

It’s Sunday, time for another rousing link sharing extravaganza. Let’s get started!

With May in the books, Jimvesting dot com has really come on strong and I saw another great spike in readers and traffic. Jimvesting’s Outrageous Blog Contest ended last night, and I will be revealing the winners tomorrow afternoon… the method I still haven’t decided (video, post, or what). In addition to this, I will be going over the monthly earnings call on June 3rd, a day after the contest results are exposed. But for now, and without further ado, let’s go over some of the best articles of the week ending May 31st 2008.

• The Blog Entrepreneur – The Power of Small Numbers
• Court’s IM School – How to Sell Advertising on Your Website
• Garry Conn – Creating a New Digital Fingerprint in StumbleUpon
• Zac Johnson – Affiliate Bloggers’ Work Space
• Yimto – Let Your Competition Teach You

These posts are very creative, and I definitely got a chuckle out of seeing the pictures and videos from Zac Johnson’s post about bloggers’ work spaces. I feel like the other articles focus on growing a big blog from a smaller blog, which is what practically all of us need to be able to do well. Check them out, and hopefully you can learn a thing or two about marketing and increasing the exposure of your blog!

Stock Market
Short week this go around, and we had a good amount of volatility in the markets. Nothing too surprising one way or another in terms of performance, but the big news was the price of crude oil. Unexpectedly, we saw the prices of crude oil collapse mildly (down $5 or so) and this send things like gold down along with it. Having commodities low sparked a lot of talk about the Federal Reserve actually raising rates in the next meeting, which would definitely bode well for the U.S. dollar’s strength against the Euro and other currencies.

My stocks did well this week, as NVidia (NYSE: NVDA) closed out on Friday up over 5%. I’m considering selling this stock, but I’ll have to play it by ear. Yamana Gold (NYSE: AUY) didn’t move much besides big moves up and down with oil bouncing all over the map. Starbucks (NYSE: SBUX) has done surprisingly well, closing over $18 on friday after being absolutely slaughtered by their past earnings announcement when they fell to around $15/share. I’m happy about that, and might decide to cut my losses and bail out soon. Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) continues to excite me. I have a small profit on the trade and anticipate a move upward soon. Having free cash on the table, which I do not currently, would allow me to buy an energy stock on this dip… though I might also consider an alternative play in the markets.

Blogosphere
This week, we are going to hear from most blogs about monthly earnings and traffic, so that should definitely make for some interesting reads to look out for, including a cool blog called Jimvesting . There have been a lot of contests opening up lately, and personally I’m fed up. I am considering making an entire post about why I think that the competitions are eating up and destroying quality in blogs… so maybe I’ll hold back my thoughts until this point.

John Cow v. Garry Conn rolls on, with some great advice in the bank that you can definitely benefit off. Check out their blogs for more information. A lot of bloggers have been moving into video posts. I would love to be able to do this, but my webcam just won’t make the cut. Therefore, I am actually considering buying a Flip Video Camera, which seems to be a popular choice. I feel like a lot of these bloggers lack the personality to make interesting video posts, so perhaps I can get started and establish a level of quality for them in the near future.

Jimvesting Updates & News
Again, the contest has ended, and I will be announcing winners as scheduled tomorrow (June 2nd). I’m as excited as you are… just kidding… but I’ll sacrifice the compiling work for your solid efforts. I have had a great deal of earnings from this month, so reporting that to you should be interesting. In other news, and I warned about this, I am raising all my advertising rates due to excessive demand and the fact that they were ridiculously cheap before. I’m going to be freezing new signups until I update the page, so don’t even try to sneak in a last-minute purchase .

As far as a new contest, I am considering doing something smaller in scale, but bigger in quality. I really don’t like all of these bloggers offering laundry lists of lame prizes just to try to get some publicity. It’s time to get back to work in my opinion, stop all the fluff! I’m still working on the new stock market blog of mine, but have run into some delays and actually had to fire my old designer due to his under-performance on the project. I’ll be letting you know how this goes over the next week.

That’s it for this week’s announcements & link love. Stay tuned for the contest results, monthly income report, more entries in the Jimvesting “Creating A Blog” series, and some other interesting posts to help you make money on the internet.

-Jimvesting