It’s October, and time for another all-inclusive theNetFool.com earnings roundup for the month ended September 30, 2008. A bit of an interesting month this time around. Despite a major drop off in posting due to school and financial market chaos, I was able to double my revenues from August with a bit more elbow grease. Now that we are into October, let’s buckle down on our investments and focus on what we’ve got, eh?

Money aside, September was a pretty lacking month in terms of traffic. Google decided to drop me from a PageRank 4 to a mere PageRank 3… and my Alexa.com ranking tailored off as I tend to focus more on generating return visitors (which Alexa hates). I feel like with some more consistency in getting our at least 4 posts every week, I should be able to bring The Net Fool right back to the top. And hey, I’ve got a pretty cool web hosting contest wrapping up and a great big one planned for October. Let’s get cracking on our results from September!

August Results

• RSS Subscriber Count: 633 Readers
• Average Unique Visitors: 379
• Average Returning Visitors: 74
• Average Page Loads: 628
• Alexa.com Ranking: 103,212
• Technorati Ranking: 10,121
• 45n5 Top 100 Rank: 21
• Google PageRank: 4

September Results

• RSS Subscriber Count: 674 Readers (6.48%+)
• Average Unique Visitors: 443 (16.89%+)
• Average Returning Visitors: 69 (-6.76%)
• Average Page Loads: 652 (3.82%+)
• Alexa.com Ranking: 123,750 (-19.90%-)
• Technorati Ranking: 11,137 (-10.04%)
• 45n5 Top 100 Rank: 47
• Google PageRank: 3

Monthly Review and Growth Strategy
Results from the month show some pretty mixed figures. Understandably, I did NOT gain as many RSS subscribers as intended… I’ll admit that right now. I was pretty shaken by gaining less than 100 subscribers for the first time in a long long while, but the blame has to go toward my increased workload for the period.

Taking this lack of RSS growth into account, relative traffic averages were up considerably during September. I believe that this is attributed to market penetration, as I now get a fair amount of hits regardless of whether or not I actually make a blog post on that date. This is a point in the blogging career that can throw a lot of people out of the loop, since you can visably see traffic holding up even when you slack off. Regardless, I fully intend on breaking this trend and finally exploding upward to 1,000 RSS subscribers and a whole lotta’ traffic growth.

The most disconcerting news was the recent Google PageRank update that brought the website down to a PageRank 3. After jumping from a 0 to a 4, I may have gotten a bit too arrogant in my ability to squeeze PageRank for all it is worth. However, I do believe that it is possible to protest the changes. Because of this, and the quality content that continued to go out live a few times a week, I believe that they should have no problem taking me up on my request. I’ll keep all of you posted on the progress.

September 2008 Revenue Breakdown By Segment
Continuing with the nice graphs from Microsoft Excel, I have now broken down revenue into five segments. The leader this month was HostGator referrals, taking up around 55% of my total revenues. This was mainly the case because of my free Blog Domination package that I started to offer to all your readers out there. Second in the group were advertising sales and miscellaneous commissions, each taking about 15% of the pie. Advertising has been steady ever since I started to offer the 468×60 slot on the top of the page up for grabs. I amy consider raising rates, but will keep sidebar ads at $25 for the time being. Sponsored reviews took around 10% of my earnings while GPT lagged the group with a 5% contribution.

• Advertising Sales ($182.00)
  • 125×125 Ad Blocks – $125
  • 468×60 Ad Block – $45
  • Text Link Ads – $12
• Sponsored Reviews ($120.00)
  • On-Site Reviews – $120
  • ReviewMe reviews – $0
• GPT Website Referrals ($51.75)
  • SWATcash Referrals – $32.32
  • CashCrate Referrals – $19.43
• Misc. Commissions ($190.70)
  • Market Leverage Commission – $4.20
  • OIO Publisher Commission – $18.50
  • Scottrade Commission – $168.00
• HostGator Referrals ($700)
  • Blog Domination – $500
  • Misc. Referrals – $200
• Total September Blog & Blog-Referred Revenue = $1,304.45

Obviously the biggest driver of earnings this go-round were the inflow of HostGator requests that I had in the bank due to my free blog services packages in Blog Domination. Scottrade again brought in some quick cash in the form of trades for me, and successful advertising lending combined with sponsored reviews had my bookings full and healthy for the month.

October 2008 Outlook

As I get into the month, I am in the process of negotiating a competition to run with Market Leverage at the helm. This should be a three-way beneficial transaction. For me, I get some commission money from my referrals. For you, you get not only the money you earn, but prizes worth their weight in gold. For ML, they get new members that are working with their system and pay a bit for performance. More details to come, as I don’t want to reveal everything.

While a lot of other bloggers like to fill their pages with fluff material day after day, I tend to hold out on posts until I can more fully formulate my ideas and get useful information to you. But even with this being said, it’s a drag not being able to post as often as I might like to. Because of this, I am going to do my best once again to attempt posting early and often, so I can successfully run this blog in the face of other businesses, school work and financials. By focusing on the projects that I already have rather than investing in new ones, I feel that I can more easily manage my time and get you paid!

Stay bullish on the net!
-The Net Fool

Related Posts

1. The Net Fool Dot Com Earnings Call (August 2008)
2. The Net Fool Dot Com Earnings Call (October 2008)
3. The Net Fool Dot Com Earnings Call (March 2008)
4. The Net Fool Dot Com Earnings Call (April 2008)
5. The Net Fool Dot Com Earnings Call (November and December 2008)