January Traffic, Earnings, Content – Crushed It!

by Darwin on February 1, 2011

January was the best month ever for Darwin’s Money (which is the goal every month!), with traffic more than doubling!  I have to credit much of the surge to google’s search algorithm updates, where some existing articles started to pick up traction.  I’ve also been routinely featured in various blog carnivals and roundups and freelancing brings in curious onlookers as well from larger sites like American Express and Wisebread.  Have a look-see at this trend:

(click to enlarge)

While I don’t give out specific earnings numbers, I’ll provide a few tidbits.

  • January was more than double my typical month (see Five Figure Blogging).
  • Adsense revenues exceeded $1000 for the first time in a looong time, primarily due to some great search traffic.  See, visitors from Google are much more likely to click through an Adsense ad than social network or return visitors since they’re not necessarily coming to your site looking for a search term.  When someone googles a particular term and I have a relevant article, there’s a relevant ad block up there.  Included in this value would be other projects like ETFBASE and other cats and dogs where I derive a few bucks a day.
  • Freelance work brought in a record amount as well.
  • I don’t make what I used to from affiliate conversions – something I should work on.  I lay out what affiliate ads are in The Economics of Blogging 2.
  • I had a few direct ad placements for various things last month.  The Yakezie network has been a big help in that arena, as I’ve been networking with great bloggers, as well as being included in various ad arrangements.

Here were some top performing articles I wrote last month:

So, far, a great way to start off the year vs. my 2011 Blogging Goals.  Looking to crush it this year!

Do You Have Any Ambitious Projects for 2011?

{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }

Flexo February 2, 2011 at 12:22 am

Sounds like a great month! Congratulations!

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Darwin February 2, 2011 at 7:56 am

Thanks Flexo, means a lot – from a guy with about 3 orders of magnitude the traffic! LOL! You deserve yours very much – an early pioneer!

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Evan February 2, 2011 at 12:42 am

Wow, those are fantastic accomplishments! Look at that jump in traffic

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Darwin February 2, 2011 at 7:56 am

I hope to keep it goin’;….so dependent on mother Google though…

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MoneyEnergy February 2, 2011 at 1:34 am

Nice job! Doubling is always fun if you can get it:)

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Darwin February 2, 2011 at 7:57 am

Thanks for stoppin’ in! Now the pressure’s on to keep it goin’

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brokeprofessionals February 2, 2011 at 2:23 am

Good job and you deserve it. Your posts are always awesome. (Except maybe that one guest post some upstart blog did for you regarding economics of marriage).

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Darwin February 2, 2011 at 7:58 am

Thanks so much. Awww, I feel bad for that writer then – they actually worked really hard on that post and were really excited about it! Oh well, it was an A for Effort!

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Darwin's Money February 2, 2011 at 1:09 pm

Oh, I just caught myself – that was your post LOL! I was thinking it was some mean-spirited hater. I actually thought your article was well-researched, articulated and thorough! And so did commentors. OK, so I’m not nuts. Feel free to post again any time!

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Money Smarts February 2, 2011 at 12:27 pm

Congrats on the great month! I picked up some serious traction last month as well, more than tripling my previous month’s traffic, and doubling adsense! Amazing what can happen when your search traffic picks up isn’t it? It’s also nice to get that nice big deposit from adsense at the end of the month, isn’t it? 🙂

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Khaleef @ KNS Financial February 2, 2011 at 12:38 pm

Congratulations Darwin! You always post good content that really makes one think and reconsider conventional thinking!

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Invest It Wisely February 2, 2011 at 12:41 pm

Are those numbers and revenue just for Darwin’s Money? Those are awesome results and I’m sincerely happy for you. You’ll have to share with me sometime how you have time to update so many sites 😉 … I’ve been considering launching a second site but I’ve been incredibly lazy in updating my travel blog and I’m behind on the main site from all the moving and other stuff done lately, but I have also noticed that I’ve been getting a bit more efficient overall as time passes by.

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Invest It Wisely February 2, 2011 at 12:42 pm

Oh, I see the adsense includes everything. Still a very great result!

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Darwin February 2, 2011 at 1:19 pm

I post some places once per week or so. Overall, it’s probably an average of a post per day. I write 2-3 articles some nights, then take Fridays, Saturdays off, etc. Not too bad – batch processing is the key!

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IPA @ investmentpropertyasset.com February 2, 2011 at 12:53 pm

I recently launched my blog with the realization that it will take time to see any sort of traffic let alone income. After reading many different blogs for several months I decided to take the leap. One of the main reasons I started the blog is to keep myself focused in getting our debts paid off so I can start investing in income producing real estate, which has been a lifelong dream and goal. I enjoy reading these posts about how to get traffic to your site and the basic economics of blogging. Thanks for this article and congrats on getting a large jump in traffic.

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retirebyforty February 2, 2011 at 3:26 pm

WOW!!! Awesome January!
I think the MBA Mondays posts are really great too, I’m sure thry bring in a lot of traffic.

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Squirrelers February 2, 2011 at 5:09 pm

That’s fantastic! The steep increase in traffic you had is very impressive, looking at where you started from. Good to see that you broke through, so to speak…it must feel great.

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krantcents February 2, 2011 at 8:20 pm

Congratulations. My ambitious project is to be in the WISEBREAD 100 by year-end. I plan on sharing my progress every Friday.

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101 Centavos February 3, 2011 at 8:17 am

Congratulations on the crush! I have an informal goal at least a hundred posts before I start thinking about advertising. It’ll take some doing, since I haven’t even figured out about RSS and tweet link buttons yet 🙂

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Miss T @ Prairie EcoThrifter February 3, 2011 at 11:15 am

Congrats to you!! That is fantastic. You are an inspiration to the rest of us who have a ways to go to get our blogs to where yours is. One day you will have to share with us all of your secrets.

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Finanzas Personales February 6, 2011 at 10:10 pm

Great job!!! What an impressive increase in visits!!! And well, that starts to cascade into the other stats, so expect great numbers the following months.
I’m sure you’ll have great news for us in the following months.

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