The first whole month in VikingBlogger.com history is finally over, and this post marks the start of my monthly income and stats reports. Since I haven’t focused so much on monetizing the site yet there is not much to show of yet, but I’ll run the report anyway. 
Income
Affiliate - $42,38
Private ad sale - $10
Reviews - $45
Kontera - $0,16
Project Wonderful - $4,16
Total: $101,70
Not much income yet, but hopefully it will be a little better next month. I have just started using Kontera, and it will be interesting to see how that are turning out.
Expenses
Project Wonderful - $210
TLA - $100
Contests - $183
TNX - $10
Other - $40
Total: $543
Loss: $441,30
So, there you have it. Black on white. I did not expect profit this month, and diden’t get that either. I have chosen to use some founds to kickstart this blog, and in my opinion it has worked out pretty well.
I’m not going to write so detailed about each sum above, but I can mention that the service from TLA was money out of the window. As you might know you don’t get to know the URL of the site where you buy links on before after you have paid. Sure, it’s easy to cancel the buy after, but you don’t get your money back, you have to use it on other links. I spent hours trying to find descents site to advertise on, but every one of them where rubbish sites, with almost no traffic. (though the alexa said something else) I stopped trying to find a decent site, and the money where just staying in the account. Then suddenly one day someone at TLA thought it was a good idea to buy two spots on a site for my money and choosing a anchor of their own. Sure they linked to my site, but they did not get my approval at all. I did not send them an email on the issue, but I’m not going to spend another dime in that company again!
Since the start in medio January I have gotten 65 RSS subscribers, and the number is still growing. I don’t think I’m going to use as much money on advertising in March, but you never know.
Statestic
To track my stats I use Google Analytics, here are some numbers for you to look at.
- Visits – 5,923
Page Views - 10,626
Pages/Visit – 1.79
Avg. Time on Site – 00:02:52
Bounce Rate – 70.62%
The February Goal
In the start of February I wrote my goals for the month. Here is how that went:
- Get over 50 subscribers [ YES! ]
- Sell one 125×125 spot [ NO! ]
- Write 20 posts [ YES! ]
- Get over 5.000 unique visitors [ YES! ]
It’s actually a little disappointing that I didn’t sell a 125×125 spot. But I did not make an effort of either. You want to get your word out, make sure to book your ad today!
The Site eCPM
To see how well sites are monetized you can look at you eCPM. This means how much you are making of each 1000 views. To get this number you simply take the page views and dived it on 1000 then dived the income on that number. VikingBlogger got 10,626 page views, and earned $101,70 which equals an eCPM of $9,57 which aren’t all that bad. Though JohnChow manages to get that number aprox $100 higher. I’ll get there, mark my words!
So, the month is over, and we can start on March. It’s going to be fun, and I got some good ideas to post. The big 20.000 entrecard contest are ending in two weeks, so make sure you enter. If you haven’t subscribed to the feed yet, do that as well. Got any question, shot away!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Good achievements there Staale
yeah income is hard in the start, but seeing the work and time dedication, we can expect something in the future.
I too am struggling for some good traffic, and this month i am starting a big contest thinking it would create some buzz around.
So money investment there too.
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Is Kontera the provider of the inline ads? I had something similar but dropped it becasue it made some of my text hard to read and the link generally has little to do with the word. The inline ads are a good idea, I just don’t think they have perfected the technology.
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Lol Paddy, Perfected the “Technology” – That word also generated an inline ad, and i don’t think they look odd. They rather look interesting ads!
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Yes, Kontera is the provider. You can read about it here:
http://www.vikingblogger.com/2008/02/20/giving-kontera-a-try/
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congratulations on the achievements.
i droped kontera as soon as i was having 1 cent clicks
as for your advertising deals, i found them too much expensive, and im usre im not the only one to think like this. maybe you should consider lowering the prices, or even do an ad promotion with bargain prices…. just my 2 cents :p
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@Hugo; I know my ads aren’t the cheapest ones around, but the main reason I have put it at that prize is simple; I don’t going to sell my spots cheap just because no one is buying any yet.
And actually, the spots aren’t that bad, I can guarantee 100 clicks within 1 month, and thats under 0.25 for a high paying keyword niche. Not bad if you ask me.
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well, no one better to decide what’s the right price for the ads here than you.
But i consider pricing according the market laws, if an ad has high demand then the price will rise, if no one buys it then the price falls…
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Hugo; Your totally right regarding demand/offer. But I have sat a minimum price that I will let the banners go for. If the spot don’t get any buyers (got 1 now) then I rather take it down, and keep the site clean of ads, then sell myself cheap.
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you got one now? cool
hey im selling my self cheap and even so i haven’t sold more than 4… lol
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