I started testing out adsense on my blog a long time ago. Since this blog doesn’t get that much traffic, I assumed I’d never hit the $100 that’s required in order for them to even send a check to me. But I’m… almost there. I’ve made $98 and some cents, and that’s a pretty incredible feat, given that this is just a side project / hobby of mine.
How much have you made via adsense on your blog or website? Do you use a different ad network that offers better results?
Finally, after 17,979 page impressions, I’ve hit $50 in AdSense revenue!
Of course, I won’t have access to the funds until I make $100 or something in order for Google to send me a check. Still, this is a day I ought to celebrate.
I’ve been blogging for years and only recently decided to add AdSense to this personal finance blog. My traffic has been slowly increasing, and so have my click-through rates. $50 is not much, especially not for all the work I’ve put into this blog, but I’d be blogging anyway so the extra cash is a nice plus!
I know some people make a lot more money with AdSense. Most of these people have more traffic than me so that’s do be expected. Do any of you have any suggestions for placement on a blog that gets the most clicks without violating Google’s strict terms of service?
I didn’t expect this blog to bring in any extra pay, but I put up some Google Ads to see if I could make some extra cash off of those. Income from the Google Ads turns out to be really random. Some days I’ll get a lot of clicks and other days they’ll be worthless. I think a lot of people are just so numb to Adsense ads these days. I don’t blame them. Then again, if I see an in site ad that is interesting to me on someone else’s site, I often click the ad. Rarely does it amount to me making a purchase on whatever it is the advertiser is selling, but I’ve visited sites that I found through advertising before.
Anyway, I’ve been contacted by a few advertisers lately who want to put ads on my page. I’m flattered, really. It’s certainly encouragement to keep up on this blog, as apparently there is some value to write all there is to know about my oh-so-exciting personal finances. Thus far one ad has gone up, and I’m currently in talks with a few other advertisers that may or may not work out.
This post, though, is to note that as of today, I’ve made my first successful ad sale for this site. I’m amazed, because I wasn’t even fishing for advertisers yet. I mean, I planned to later down the line when I had the site actually looking good and more content that would be useful to people. Right now, this blog has kind of turned into my quasi-anonymous bitch fest with a few useful entries splattered about. I really want to change that and make this site more about looking at what I’ve learned about personal finance and job hunting, and help others with what I know.
I’m not really sure how many readers I have right now. I get a decent amount of traffic, but according to my feed reader button only 13 people have signed up for my feed. I say “only,” but really I think it’s pretty cool that 13 ‘strangers’ are reading my blog on a fairly regular basis. My public blog, which is now mostly friends only, has tons of readers… but it’s over on livejournal and any money made from adsense ads there goes directly to LJ. I do like how Blogger seems to be pretty open to advertising, or at least splitting ad revenue with bloggers. What have they got to lose? Google makes most of the money from Adsense anyway. But I don’t mind that. At least I feel like I have the opportunity to control whether I want ads on my site, and if I do, make some money from them. I mean, enough to buy a few cups of Starbucks per month.
My $6000 was officially transferred from the safety of my Maximizer checking account into my IRA and Mutual Fund investment accounts. I’m excited about taking the investment leap myself, but nervous as all hell that the leap might be futile, or worse. I’m pretty comfortable with the $3000 I put to my Roth IRA. It’s in a nice Retirement 2050 plan that’s already diversified with my retirement date in mind. And since Vanguard seems to be a pretty reputable company, I’m not too worried. However, the $3000 I put towards that Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund is probably a bad idea.
As of 10:25am, my $3000 in my mutual fund is down 5 cents, and my $3000 in my IRA is up 3 cents. Why is a 2-cent loss making me so god-damn nervous? And furthermore, why is my Mutual Fund down 5 cents when looking at the day’s activity in the fund, it should be up a bit? I’m rather confused right now. Maybe it dropped down the second I put my money in. I know I’m going to be anal about checking how the fund is doing, despite that I’m going to try to force myself to keep my money in there for a few years (until grad school) unless someone more knowledgeable than me advises me otherwise.
I’m kind of glad I’m prohibited from getting involved in the nitty gritty of stock trading (due to covering technology companies that I’d like want to invest in), so I’ll likely avoid making any major investment mistakes. Still, putting $3000 in an account that could drop down to $2000 in a few days makes me rather nervous. I mean, the largest investment I’ve ever made with my money thus far was that godawful CD with a 3.1 % interest rate. I put $7000 into that a few months after I got out of college. It seemed like the wise thing to do at the time. It was an 18-month CD, and I figured since I had upwards of $30k in savings somehow, I could spare $7000 for such a “risky” investment. Well, it felt risky at the time.
Sadly enough, I didn’t bother to call my bank when the CD matured, thinking that it would just automatically transfer to my checking or savings account and I could deal with it then. Of course, now I know that CD’s automatically reinvest themselves at the same rate, for the same amount of time. So now I have my $7000 (which is at about $7400 after gaining the 18 months of Interest, which I guess is better than nothing) tied up in this low-interest CD. Meanwhile I recently saw an ad on Bank of America for an 8-month 5.01 % CD and I threw $5000 at that. For some reason they haven’t processed my CD investment yet, though. I guess I have to call them and confirm some things before they can pull my money from my checking account and put it in the CD.
In more exciting news, since last weekend I’ve made $1.57 since enrolling in BankofAmerica’s “Keep the Change” program. It’s kind of neat – every time you use your debit card, they roll your spending cost up to the nearest dollar and deposit the difference in your bank account. So, for instance, if you spend $1.01, they’ll toss in 99 cents. Of course, most purchases end up being, like, $2.92, so in that case you only get 8 cents. But over the course of one week and eight transactions, I’ve afforded myself a small coffee. I also apparently racked up $2.46 in my AdSense account somehow. I guess that means people are actually reading my page. That’s exciting! Extra income, even $4 a week, is certainly helpful. I’m nervous about this AdSense account thing, though. I’ve read some horror stories about how Google has shut down accounts if you click on your own links. And it’s not like I’m going to do it on purpose, but sometimes I’m not thinking and I’m actually interested in an advertisement shown on my page. I’ve never had to restrict myself from clicking something. So hopefully I can restrain myself.
On another note, I’m saving some money this month because I’ve offered a friend who’s recently moved to the area a place to crash until she finds a place. I wasn’t going to make her pay anything, but since she offered I figured I’d split my rent and pro-rate it. So that comes out to $15 a day. And I’m also possibly designing some websites for my friends for a rather small fee (compared to my normal rate.) But I never count my freelance money as income. It’s always “extra,” although in actually due to my poor spending habits and inability to keep a budget, I’m lucky if my freelance wages cover all the cash I’ve spent in a month.
So salary-wise, make about $2200 a month after taxes. (Though this year I ended up owing a lot in taxes and I haven’t done anything with the W4, so I’m figuring I make about $2100 a month, really. $905 of that goes to rent & utilities (PG&E, water, trash, etc are “included” in my rent). Oh, what the hell, here’s a list of my basic fixed monthly costs:
$905 — Rent (includes utilities) – Going up to $1050 per month in July, plus requiring renter’s insurance.
$60 – Verizon Cell Phone Bill, if I remember to pay it on time and don’t use 411, etc.
$64 – RCN TV & Internet
$8 – the converter box from RCN that I’ve yet to find time to return, that I’m apparently “renting” on a monthly basis
$5 – RCN “Home networking” – on my RCN bill, but I have no idea what this is. WTF?
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$1038 total for now
$1188 + whatever rent’s insurance costs in July.
Now, time for some depressing figures…
My spending on rent currently is 45 percent of my income (you’re only supposed to spend 20-30 percent of your income on rent, I hear.) In July, sans a raise (and I doubt I’m getting a raise anytime soon) I’ll be spending 50 percent (or more) of my income on rent.
It doesn’t take a personal finance blogger to tell me that’s a terrible idea.
I’ve been thinking about writing a post about why on earth I live alone in the SF Bay Area on $35k a year, so I think I’ll write that up over my lunch break later this afternoon.
In any case, with $1050 left for all the other things in life outside of basic housing, TV, Internet and phone, I just keep overspending. It doesn’t help matters that I’m spending upwards of $350 a month in gas to get to my various rehearsals that are 40 or so miles from my home (my “hobby” is doing community theater – which is free, outside of gas mileage and makeup for shows and the like.)
But hey, at least I made $1.57 in “keep the cents” change. Then again, Bank of America, for some reason, has that $1.57 noted as a “spend” in my checking account. So I’m down $1.57 for the time being. What’s up with that? Grr.
