With November safely out of the way, it’s time to post my results in the last 30 days. Let’s deal with traffic first, then money. But first, …

——-
For more interesting articles on running a business, making money, operating your blog, , and so on…, subscribe to the RSS feed or email newsletter. There’s a lot more in the Random Walk to Wealth on InvestorBlogger dot com.
——-

Page Rank, Alexa and Real Rank.

Well, it’s now time to report that my PR rank finally fell to zero. A big fat zero . At the time, I was surprised by the situation, and somewhat angry, esp. since Google was dictating what we could and couldn’t put on our blogs, and how we could monetize them. Naturally, this still irks when you realize that Google is themselves guilty of breaking their own guidelines.

Oddly, things haven’t been so bad: Traffic to the blog has increased significantly in the last month , despite having zero ranking.

Last Month’s PageViews were only 2800 with about 1300 Uniques. This month’s both of these figures jumped noticeably by about 50% thanks to be being Stumbled, increased links in, and better rankings on Technorati (about 58K) and Alexa (about 132K). In fact, with extra work on inbound links from Carnivals, Friends, and commenting on different blogs. I’ve also had a couple of purchased links on JohnCow ‘s blog and on CashQuests.com.

Payperpost’s new Ranking has been introduced and that has created some buzz: though there are no external ways to verify my ranking yet, it’s generally been between 500-800. I’m still not sure exactly what tier that puts InvestorBlogger!

Show me the money!

Financial results are posted below:

Payperpost: $0.00
Google : $6.35
Other : $225.00
Adlinks : $84.75
Stocks: $75.50
Hosting : $123.08
Bank A/C Interest : $26.18
Amazon: $9.99 (last five months)
Other Incomes: $0.53
Total: $551.38*

On the upside, I’ve been able to sell links directly through the blog this month, which has kept the blog going. I’ve already done the buzzes for these links for Netloans and CarFinance. Additionally, one of my clients recently paid for their hosting on my spanking new Dreamhost PS. That rocks! I’ll be introducing them as well as a way to make money. And Steve and I dreamed up a challenege, which I’ll share this weekend.

On the downside, I haven’t scored any opportunities for reviews in the past month onPayperpost, Sponsored Reviews, or ReviewMe. This is likely due to my PR being reduced to zero, and RealRank not being a factor for advertisers yet. I’ve always felt that creating extra income from a number of sources (in fact, as many as possible) was a good idea to offset in any temporary or permanent glitches. If I were just relying on Adsense, I think I’d just have about $10.00 in income which would be pretty pathetic. I’m still pretty far off my total of $1500 per month in income. But I’m still learning the ropes!

Expenses: Expenses

Blogging is getting expensive for me, in a number of ways; and running a small hosting service also costs money. Additionally, there are fees for Paypal, Advertising, etc.. From 1/1/2008, I’m going to be tracking these costs much more accurately to present a balanced picture of the costs I’m facing. Suffice to say, my hosting is costing about $40.00 per month, and as the popularity of the bloggers using the hosting service increases, this is going to increase. Fortunately with Dreamhost PS hosting, increasing the ‘power’ of the server is a relatively easy thing to do.

*Subject to revisions.

I’ve been exploring three or four new ways to make money, you’ve probably noticed them on the blog, in addition to the more typical ways.

TTZ Media: Nice pictures, needs work.

I’ve recently added some rather nice graphical ads courtesy of TTZ Media, that feature all sorts of goodies. I added them primarily as a way to add visual elements to the blog. Of course, the fact that I can earn a little money with them is quite nice. They are featured in two places. On each page at the top of the posts, and in the single posts page before the comments. Additionally, I’ve also enrolled in the Affiliate Scheme.

Results: I’ve had only 2 clicks since I joined in early November. It’s definitely more beneficial in a number of ways than Adsense, and I enjoy the visual elements much more. But I’ve still to experiment with placement and product selection. It could be that this blog doesn’t suit certain kinds of items well.

Indeed: Publishers’ Program

This is an interesting alternative that I have tried out in the last few days. Indeed.com provides publishers with a Jobroll box in four or five different sizes that can be placed on your website, in a manner very similar to Adsense. Indeed writes:

Publishers: Include Indeed on Your Website
Add a Jobroll, Job Search Box, Instant Job Site and more to your site. Get paid. Join the Indeed Publisher Program to earn money by including our job search tools on your website or blog. You will be adding valuable content to your site while generating revenue.

I haven’t generated any revenue at all with this, but the page impressions are increasing. It seems that placement and appropriacy is key to these kinds of ads.

My own BlogAdcents Program

If you are failing to monetize your blog with Adsense (as I was), and you think you have enough traffic, you can create your own program, as I did.

I’m going to be doing the program more like text links, though with fixed costs to advertisers and none of the hassle of fraudulent clicks. This will give advertisers an Adsense type block with premium placement at the top of the website. At $15 per month with traffic levels rising, this is a great way to monetize a blog.

I’ve tried other ways of the years, and I’ll be laying out those options in a major post in early December. In the meantime, try one of those options, and experiment! I’m still getting lousy click throughs, but you might fare better, much better! Do report back and let me know what success or failures you’ve had…

And good luck!