Jimvesting Dot Com Earnings Call | November and December 2008 Revenue Report

17 Jan 2009

Jimvesting Dot Com Earnings Call (November and December 2008)

Author: Jim | Filed under: Earnings Reports

Not to neglect giving you readers the “inside scoop” on things here at theNetFool.com, here is the LONG overdue earnings call(s) from November and December of 2008! Things tailored off going into the end of the year, with a noticeable slowdown coming from the recessionary environment that causes advertisers to generally spend less.

Keeping this in mind, earnings have not seen big headwinds that would prevent profits altogether. Things have held up consistently over time, and I am looking to the new year for another great period of growth for the blog. Hopefully, we can surpass 1,000 RSS readers without any tricks that fake the numbers… as we all want to be as organic as possible. Let’s hope for a bottom in the recessionary global market, and a return of rock-solid profits to the website!

A lot of stuff happened over the past two months, and since I did not post anything in November, I will try to lump both November and December of 2008 into this post to get us all back on track. Jimvesting is now officially a subset of JRR Enterprises LLC., our controlling company that will handle all of the assets I have online. I think that I will make a few posts on registering your own business, since it might be something a lot of us consider in a poor economy (the best time to start a business!). Additionally, posting has slowed a bit over here as I start looking more and more into summer employment and have gotten back to schoolwork once again. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t be productive, eh? Let’s get into it!

October Results

RSS Subscriber Count: 738 Readers
Average Unique Visitors: 376
Average Returning Visitors: 58
Average Page Loads: 528
Alexa.com Ranking: 90,715
Technorati Ranking: 14,120
45n5 Top 100 Rank:32
Google PageRank: 3

October Results

RSS Subscriber Count: 800 Readers (+8.40%)
Average Unique Visitors: 357 (-5.05%)
Average Returning Visitors: 52 (-10.35%)
Average Page Loads: 495 (-6.25%)
Alexa.com Ranking: 56,809 (+37.38%)
Technorati Ranking: 18,505 (-31.06%)
45n5 Top 100 Rank: 12 (+20)
Google PageRank: 4 (+1)

Monthly Review and Strategy
Things have been slowing recently, there is no doubt about that. However, as our traffic numbers have largely trended evenly over the past few months, we have picked up on readership and have really started to solidify the name in this industry. In the “make money online” business, getting your name out there is half of the battle. Plus, we haven’t had to throw any ridiculous contest to get our numbers up artificially. I would say that over the last few months, the benefit has been in the form of community… as it seems that a lot of you readers are enjoying the more personal touch that you get here versus other bloggers.

Going forward, I am going to focus on bringing in traffic and revenue from targeted keywords. Additionally, I plan on branching out and once again resume marketing tactics that gave theNetFool.com it’s original run up. Largely, I have just been sitting back and writing for the past few months. This is definitely a benefit for the people that are already here, but doesn’t show much for building up and growing into the future. Therefore, I am going to resume marketing techniques to try and build things up.

Once I have some time, I want to sit down and whip up a new eBook. The problem right now is that I am going through with a bit too many side projects to focus all on this website. The time issue is definitely what is holding the blog back at this point, so I will definitely try and re-prioritize my projects to see if I can’t give a bit more attention.

November & December 2008 Revenue Breakdown
For a revenue breakdown, I figured that it wouldn’t be too useful to break apart the months… although I will do this for the actual earnings numbers. After all, lumping them together will actually give a better representation of where we are getting our earnings. One of the biggest downside impacts on my books has been the fall of former GPT website SWATcash.com. This is a website that I pushed and encouraged here, and drew a significant portion of my revenues from. Fun while it lasted, but now we need a new way to diversity… eh?

The big winner over the past few months has been affiliate referrals, with the two overwhelming leaders being HostGator and Scottrade. One small issue is that Scottrade doesn’t give out cash in their referral program, so all of the “cash” that you see there is simply a monetized reading of the free trades that the referral system gives me each time I refer a new member. HostGator still brings in a great amount of revenue, and I have their web hosting in my best interest going forward.

Private advertising and sponsored reviews have always been consistent, but the trend right now is down as advertisers exit the marketplace in search of safety in what they have. In the recession, companies are struggling to stay afloat… namely a lot of these affiliate marketing firms that I work with. When you cut a budget, you look for the most easily dropped units first… and advertising fits the bill, eh? Still, we saw over $100 per month in ad spending as well as about $75 a month in sponsored reviews. I’d expect this to become stronger as we head deeper into 2009.

“Get Paid To” websites have been a small contribution to the books. Since the fall of SWATcash, this revenue segment has fallen off a lot, but I still get some decent cash income from Cash Crate and Treasure Trooper. It’s been tough recouping losses here, but with a fresh post on the “Best GPT Sites” I hope to capitalize on some more traffic to these referral cash cows.

Finally, I have seen some solid inflows from private freelancing that has come as a result of theNetFool.com activity. Anything that is stemming from the blog exposure itself definitely should be looped into the earnings, so I have included projects I have done here. Recently, I completed work on a website for an attorney law firm client. Additionally, I have done some “on the fly” graphic design for friends in need to get a bit more revenue.

November 2008 Earnings

Advertising Sales – $126.00
Paid Reviews – $0.00
GPT Referrals – $0.00
Affiliate Referrals – $696.50
Freelance Work -$10.00

Total Revenue: $832.50

December 2008 Earnings

Advertising Sales – $253.38
Paid Reviews – $158.00
GPT Referrals – $24.15
Affiliate Referrals – $268.00
Freelance Work -$390.00

Total Revenue: $1,093.53

Going Forward…
Let’s have a look forward, shall we? I see a lot of future revenues coming in from targeted niche content. I have already begun the process of re-marketing things that typically draw a crowd, and it is really just an issue of having some free time to hammer out the actual material that I need to give out to customers.

As far as blog popularity, I already attested to this a bit above; just to reiterate, I feel that Jimvesting.com can bring in increased traffic if I get back on the aggressive marketing front and bring in new crowds. This is, again, a function of me having some time to reach out and network. As it stands, I have done mostly writing, and not enough marketing. So to change this, I am going to go back to basics and start doing things like blog commenting, forum interaction and article marketing.

Let’s look forward to a bright 2009… and stay BULLISH on the net!
-Jimvesting