It’s September already? 2008 is flying by, and while I was a bit less proactive about writing/recruiting in August… the growth really speaks for itself and the gains realized in traffic and profitability are no joke. Of course, August marked a shift in focus for me… as I concentrated heavily on alternative blogging projects which will compromise my high-margin growth. Still, Jimvesting is quickly approaching the 1,000 mark of RSS subscribers and I am excited about the future.

July was a record-breaking month by all means. However, August did follow up with strong numbers despite my relatively relaxed stance toward growth in the month. Because of this, I am looking more June v. August and was impressed how earnings came in this month. Growth, as always, showed steady improvement. Once I get a bit more settled in for the quarter, I expect growth rates in traffic, subscribers and whatnot to increase as desired. Let’s check out how we fared in August!

July Results

• RSS Subscriber Count: 547 Readers
• Average Unique Visitors: 369
• Average Returning Visitors:67
• Average Page Loads:573
• Alexa.com Ranking: 95,501
• Technorati Ranking: 11,324
• 45n5 Top 100 Rank: 29
• Google PageRank: 4

August Results

• RSS Subscriber Count: 633 Readers (15.72%+)
• Average Unique Visitors: 379 (2.71%+)
• Average Returning Visitors: 74 (10.45%+)
• Average Page Loads: 628 (9.60%+)
• Alexa.com Ranking: 103,212 (-8.07%-)
• Technorati Ranking: 10,121 (10.62%+)
• 45n5 Top 100 Rank: 21 (27.59%+)
• Google PageRank: 4

Monthly Review and Growth Strategy
As you can see by the results, I experienced mostly low-end double-digit growth for the month of August at theNetFool.com. Why? This is probably because I couldn’t keep up with writing. So despite what I felt was great content, you just aren’t going to get as many hits if you aren’t posting every day like I have in past months. That being said, Alexa.com took an unnecessary cut back in my site’s ranking… dropping me to the 100,000s once again. I feel like the algorithm favors regular posting, so it shouldn’t be too hard to build this right back up once I get back to basics.

My strategy was essentially a non-factor for this month, though I am a bit surprised how great the numbers were seeing as I didn’t have any contest last month and wasn’t involved in any competition of sorts. Still, I tried to post as often as possible… despite having one of the busiest months of my life. I’m still moving projects that I am wrapping up onto the books, so this will positively impact my September 2008 earnings once accounted for.

August 2008 Revenue Breakdown
I decided to whip up some graphs for the earnings calls, basically because you can get a better grasp on where I am making my money and how well I have performed over time. I don’t like to keep any secrets, and August proved to be a well-diversified month with earnings coming darn near equal from the business areas I have broken down. Private Ad Sales let the way with just under 35% of earnings, followed closely by Misc. Sales/Commissions at 29% and Sponsored Reviews at 25%. The laggard, though still quite profitable, was GPT referrals which produced 11.30% of my sales for August… great considering I do nothing.

• Advertising Sales ($176.00)
  • 125×125 Ad Blocks ($125)
  • 468×60 Ad Block ($45)
  • Text Link Ads ($6)
• Sponsored Reviews ($130.00)
  • On-Site Reviews – ($80)
  • ReviewMe reviews – ($50)
• GPT Website Referrals ($58.10)
  • SWATcash Referrals – $35.38
  • CashCrate Referrals – $19.43
  • ThisSiteIsForReal Referrals – $3.29
• Misc. Commissions ($149.80)
  • Market Leverage Commission – $6.30
  • SEOBook Commission – $20.00
  • OIO Publisher Commission – $18.50
  • Scottrade Commission – $105.00
• Total August Blog & Blog-Referred Revenue = $514.30

A big surprise this month came from Scottrade, my personal favorite online stock broker that I use and trade with. Basically, I was racking up free trades worth $7 a pop and not really noticing or adding it to the sheets. After I referred three more members this month alone, I decided to add the sales I have made as assets, just like they should be. Other than that, pretty standard commission all around and GPTs held up nicely. After selling out the $45 top banner ad, I had a record-breaking month in terms of private advertising… which is always a good indicator of growth.

September 2008 Outlook
I anticipate running a smaller contest sometime in the middle of the month this time around. I do have a bigger one in the works for October so stay tuned for that one… hopefully I can pull some goodies and electronics for you all to cash in on. I’m going to go ahead and project somewhat conservative traffic growth in the mid-teens for this month. I really don’t anticipate doing an “extreme” amount of blogging, though I am hoping to get posts out on a more consistent basis as I continue to build a web presence for the blog.

That being said, I publish nothing but high quality information that you can use in a practical way to make money. Because of this, I typically spend around two-three hours on each post I write up here and definitely try to get you guys into the black on your investments. I hope that you enjoyed the new charts that I threw in today, I’ll be continuing to use them in future reports as I think it adds a nice touch.

Stay bullish on the net!
-Jimvesting

Here’s a quick update from a pair of blogs I have recently begun developing in the hopes of turning a quick profit. I am definitely a strong believer in using traffic trends to your favor. As such, one of the most popular topics in today’s headlines (and search results) is the 2008 United States Presidential race.

I don’t want to start debating about which candidate will lead this country to a brighter tomorrow, I just want to make you rich. So let’s take a look at the most recent speculative “gamble” I made by registering two solid domain names McCainsBlog.com and BaracksBlog.com in the hopes of turning them around for some quick profits on a minimal amount of total work.

The Story
I am fed up with hearing about how people are making money by flipping domain names day by day (slow as this is), so I decided to give it a go myself. But after purchasing the domain names, I thought to myself hey… why not try making a custom design and loading them with a few articles to boot? After all, if I can pump out a quick custom job in a few hours… I can increase my profit margins tenfold in the long run. Initially, I wanted to hold both of these until after the election, banking on the one winning blog at the end of it all. However, I am a greedy man and I think that I am just going to go ahead and do this as more of a short-term move. This way, I have the room to rinse-and-repeat if things work out well.

The Downside Risk
When you think about speculation, the first thing that should come to mind is risk. Risk is the downside potential that you take on when you try to unlock higher upside (profits). With a quick domain flip, the risk is only about $8 per website… but with a full-blown website, it is a bit more. Let’s tally things up so you can see just what I’m dealing with.

I got the design for free from a hot tip that my buddy Nick Throlson gave. And after seeing it in action at Barack Obama’s Blog, it was hard to look away. Unfortunately for me, Republicans aren’t the web design type… so I had to whip up my own quick McCain theme to fit the bill. This theme is called the “Probama” theme and it was originally made by the folks at Category 4. It fortunately came with the Photoshop .psd editing master file… so switching out a picture of John McCain was easy!

Domain names set me back $12, and I already had a web hosting account. Even if I didn’t, I probably just would have used a free hosting account to save money… so let’s mark that as a zero risk fee. I haven’t done this yet, but I anticipate buying some articles for around $90 total. Finally, SitePoint listing fees will bring my total up $20 ($10 each site) to a grand total downside risk of $122 and about three hours of my time. Let’s see if I can get a decent sell price and get a nice net return on my investment, eh?

BaracksBlog.com: I anticipate that this will be the higher selling blog, but as I am not sure I wanted to buy both domain names. Why? Well fans of Barack Obama will be more likely to be web-savvy than supporters of McCain. It’s just a fact of life. I am planning on gathering some good articles for this website about things like his energy policy, alternative energy plan, healthcare policy, his wife, his running mate (Biden) and his background. With content that is targeted and heavily searched, it shouldn’t be too hard to get things looking professional and well researched.

McCainsBlog.com: Admitting that John McCain will drive less traffic, I feel like a lot of this risk is balanced with the betting sounding domain names that I got with John McCain. As people refer to Barack Obama as “Obama” and John McCain as “McCain,” I got the short end of the stick with my BaracksBlog.com. For content, I am going to focus on the war on terror, energy policy, gas taxes, stock market/economic conditions, his background and his health. Again, this stuff is heavily searched and should pull in some good visitors well into the future.

Again, I am not a professional and do not claim to be. I do not intend on spending any large amount of time building up these websites, and am strictly going to be doing the bare minimum on both. Regardless, I think that this is an interesting speculative project… and I feel that the upside is too great to ignore!

-Jimvesting