A Recap
This post covers July and August together as it took me about 2 months to get the blog into full swing.
Step 1: Where I Hosted
I did a lot of research and boiled down my hosting options to godaddy.com; wordpress.com, and Bluehost.com. Given the desire to monetize – WordPress.com was dropped (they have a program but it is limited). Godaddy.com had a lot of extra set up needed for WordPress so I went with Bluehost.com. They have a some good teaser prices and my all on cost was $295 for three years as I paid for several extras I thought were worth it. Cost ended up being approx $7 a month all in. The one click WordPress install and a 30 day money back guarantee is what also sold me… I was up and running with a shell of a site in less than 30 mins.
Step 2: Enough Content to Get AdSense Approved
I got AdSense approved with about 10 solid postings of 500 words+. This took about a month and I got approved the first week in August.
Step 3: Get Content Rolling
By the end of August I had a week of posts already written and scheduled to post so I could post daily during my ramp up period. I would like to ratchet this back but it has become clear to me that blogging is a momentum game….. getting that momentum on traffic and SEO off of google is not going to happen with one post a week. I can jam out a post in less than an hour if I am fully dedicated to getting it done and I have started a few “aggregation” posts in my queue for current events commentary which I don’t think personal finance blogs have enough of.
Step 4: Promotion
I did a lot of reading on the need to promote your blog – “you should spend as much time promoting your blog as you spend writing content.” I don’t have time to promote so I outsourced this but didn’t spend a dime until I was AdSense approved:
- Blogpros.com drives social media posts for me at roughly $1 a day
- Google ad words gave me a $150 credit after I got ad sense approved…. I am using this to tinker with what makes the most sense here. They suggest a budget of $10+ a day but I am not convinced that makes sense yet. I have gotten some interesting statistics from the google searches though that have me thinking….
I know I need to post more on other finance blogs and will get back to that soon.
Step 5: The traffic
My traffic has grown each week as I have tinkered with SEO, Blogpros, and google ad words. I don’t think this is all quality traffic from engagement but it shows I am on course for exponential growth… just kidding… we’ll see where this goes.
Step 6: Pushing Through the Wall
I have gotten pretty discouraged at times launching the blog as I (as with anyone else) want to be successful right out of the gate with 100,000 visitors a month.
I have continued to fight this doubt off as posts like this help put in perspective how much I have accomplished in a short period of time.
Step 7: Lots of Small Tweaks
While launching a website extremely easy – the number of small tasks that are optional to get everything up and running was MUCH more than I thought it was. It’s so easy to customize so there is a lot of small decisions to make!
Every single of one these are very easy it just a lot of small tasks (register here, set this up, promote here, make sure this is updated). None of it is hard but this likely is overwhelming for some – the good news is you can slowly tweak over time! It doesn’t all have to be done at once!
Step 8: Show Me the Profit and Loss Statement
The below is for July + August:
- Revenue: $48 all from AdSense
- Hosting: $14 to Bluehost.com (two months of hosting)
- Promotion: $27 from blog pros and $5 to google ads net of credits
- Profit: $7 of profit
Step 9: Profit per Post
I am a big believer in metrics and Profit per Post is the one I think will keep me grounded.
- $7 of profit
- 18 posts
- $0.40 per post
We’ll see where this goes from here..
Inspired to Start Your Own Blog?
I took the time to put some extra screen shots and explanations on my site here: How to Start Your Own Blog or eCommerce Site
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