July proved to be one of the best months that The Net Fool dot com has ever seen. Despite a slow start, things really started to kick into high gear and I am proud to announce that not only did I gain the largest amount of RSS subscribers in one month ever, but July also proved to be the biggest month of revenue. I honestly didn’t expect too much from a month riddled with work, side projects and travel… yet this blog has shown its resilience once more by turning out some real eye popping statistics that will be hard to match for a long while. This report will cover growth strategies and catalysts over the course of July, a record breaking month despite initially downcast estimates.

Made available to you once more is my free 55-page eBook “Creating A Blog,” compliments of the Net Fool! If you want to know how to start your own blog or fine tune one you already have in place, this is definitely a must-read. Getting back to the numbers, things really picked up toward the end of the month. With a whopping last-week rally of 127 RSS subscribers, we have surpassed the 500-subscriber mark in style! Let’s see how our numbers improved in July 2008.

June Results

• RSS Subscriber Count: 333 Readers
• Average Unique Visitors: 299
• Average Returning Visitors:52
• Average Page Loads:468
• Alexa.com Ranking: 95,308
• Technorati Ranking: 13,851
• 45n5 Top 100 Rank: 35
• Google PageRank: 4

July Results

• RSS Subscriber Count: 547 Readers (64.26%+)
• Average Unique Visitors: 369 (23.41%+)
• Average Returning Visitors:67 (28.85%+)
• Average Page Loads:573 (22.44%+)
• Alexa.com Ranking: 95,501 (0.20%-)
• Technorati Ranking: 11,324 (18.24%+)
• 45n5 Top 100 Rank: 29 (17.14%+)
• Google PageRank: 4

Monthly Review and Growth Strategy
Looking back on the month, it seems that all of the traffic numbers have continued to grow strongly in the mid-twenties range. I am not concerned with Alexa.com results as the loss was negligible and the system is known for being a bit off now and then. I had planned to pass 400 subscribers this month, as 100 subscribers per month is generally a solid goal. However, I was able to drive in a whopping 214 added readers to bump us all the way past 500 (nearing 550) as this month was certainly a thriller. Other than subscriber numbers alone, the growth in traffic was generally consistent with prior months. We managed to keep everything in line here with no noticeable movements to the upside.

After adjusting estimates downward for the month, a superior execution of my growth strategy allowed for consensus estimate beats across the board. The main catalysts in this month were focused on picking up subscribers for the Blogging Idol competition that ran the month of July. The full results aren’t out yet, but I definitely finished in the top ten and more than likely in the top 4-7 range! While I didn’t actively promote my participation, and actually ranted against the basis of the competition, it was a nice motivator beyond any doubt. My first strategy was essentially an active marketing campaign where I intentionally sought out subscribers through emailing, commenting and linking. The other big driver was The Net Fool’s July Referral Extravaganza which pulled in a great deal of subscribers as I gave away a Flip Mino to the most active referrer (results pending).

One of my strategies for campaigning was especially devious. You may have noticed many people in Blogging Idol just giving away links on their blogs for subscribers. The exploit here is obvious. People that made these exchanges are obviously interested in traffic, so I simply made lists of people who were in the exchanges and emailed them. In the emails, I essentially wrote that I had subscribed to their blogs (I did, of course), and would love for them to subscribe to mine. This is an example of no-pressure marketing scheme that usually results in a subscription and a happy returning reader. Just another lesson in business from Jim.

July 2008 Revenue Breakdown
Last month I earned a pretty solid $370.26 from theNetFool.com and related activities. This month completely blew this out of the water, despite a lowered advertising plan, due to a major bonus upgrade from my still-favorite GPT website SWATcash. Over $1,800 of revenue came in from the site this month alone, and I continue to maintain a healthy business relationship with them made possible by the continued stream of subscribers that I throw their way. I strongly encourage you to check out my review of SWATcash to clear any doubt. Still sales coming in for my eBook that I haven’t mentioned in a long time, which is sort of funny to me as a marketer. Let’s get to the full results, shall we?

• Private Advertising Sales - $159.00
• Sponsored Reviews - $70.00
• ReviewMe reviews - $50.00
• eBook Sales - $30.00
• SWATcash Referrals - $53.86
• SWATcash Bonuses - $1,803.00
• CashCrate Referrals - $24.22
• ThisSiteIsForReal Referrals - $14.27
• Total July Blog & Referred Revenue = $2,204.35

This month was by far the biggest revenue this blog has ever seen, and ever will see for quite some time. Before you call me out for the insane accrued revenue in the books from SWATcash, please keep in mind that the GPT offers incentives which I have been saving virtually since the blog started. All of the revenue you see above directly stems from activity on theNetFool.com, as all of the sales and referrals leads are directly from traffic on this blog. I hope this $2k+ income report proves how powerful reputation leveraging can be!

In July, I published just three sponsored reviews. While I believe in saving review posts for a once-a-week at most occasion, I would still like to see a bit more like five come out. I have decided to bump rates on these to $40, as I have seen continued reports of feedback, commenting, clicks and sign-ups all brought by my lengthy and detailed reviews. Most of these are around 1,000 words… which is more than you’ll get anywhere else… and I now have over 500 RSS subscribers active to read up on things. I feel that a $5 increase is totally justified as most advertisers have huge budgets regardless.

Once again, spending here was extremely limited. I have not formally checked my books, but I believe that I spent less than $50 promoting theNetFool.com. I don’t believe in capital spending very much I suppose, and maybe I’m getting a bit too greedy pushing funds into my stock brokerage account (haha), so I am planning on spending more this month to balance things out.

August 2008 Outlook
It’s strange how fast the summer has gone away, I’ll even be moving back into the dorms at Penn State in a few weeks… so who knows how this month will pan out! Definitely check out my new stock market blog Bullish Bankers if you haven’t already. I’ll be doing a fair amount of posting there, but definitely not anything that would detract from the attention I spend on The Net Fool, so don’t you worry!

After being contacted by a few people about blog competitions, I think I may throw together a quick advertising spree this month and focus on website advertising as prizes. I know that a lot of these prizes are often worthless to some, but I feel that if the contest is clearly labeled to be giving away solely advertising, than it is much more effective. Please contact me if you have a popular blog and you’d like to get some exposure by contributing to the August contest here at The Net Fool!

I hope that you enjoyed this lengthy earnings & traffic run down, as it was definitely the best month so far. I’m looking forward to making you some more money online… so stay bullish on the net!

-The Net Fool

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