But, more importantly, how to spend more money than you make blogging! 🙂
I’m changing up the format of these updates as I have mentioned in the past. We have been producing so much content that it is going to be impossible for me to keep running the stats per post that I was doing. Many thanks to Damien, Tabjabber, and all of the fiverr contributors we’ve had! Coming up with good, fresh content every day is hard when you also have a day job. In this month’s update, I’ll breakdown our income and costs . I’ll give some details on what I’ve been doing to help drive traffic to the site and what our site stats look like, and then a brief view into the future of Big Guy on Stuff.
How We Make Cash Blogging
We have a few ways that we monetize the blog. Currently, our biggest source of income is Google Adsense. For the lifetime of this blog we have pulled in a whopping $14.64! This comes from anytime someone is presented or clicks on one of the ads you see in the posts, on the right side of the page, or at the bottom. They look like this:
See what I did there? Yes it’s a way for us to make money, but it also fits into the post!
To date we have had 3,246 views of our Adsense ads, and we’ve had someone actually click through them 17 times. Somehow, through the magic of how people bid on ads through Adwords and other Google channels, this equates to the $14.64 that I mentioned above.
Another way we are working on bringing money into the blog is through the use of affiliate programs. Whenever the other Big Guys or I review something that we like, we’ll sometimes drop in links or banners to those items. I actually talked more about this in Big Guy on Affiliate Links. Amazon
How Much DOES it Cost to Make a Blog
I think the answer to this varies, and you can totally get away with spending little-to-nothing to get your blog up and running. Here at Big Guy on Stuff, we want to do two things overall. We want to provide fresh, new content as often as possible, and we want to provide the best user experience that we can. For this to happen, we have opted to spend a little to make sure we are able to provide these things. So far our spending has been on mainly Google Adwords (more on that later), site hosting, artwork for the logo, and articles that I’ve sourced from fiverr. Oh yeah, and I also decided to buy me a Google Pixelbook so that I could update the blog without having to actually come down to my office. This one is a little more for my convenience I guess :). I don’t like being away from the family so much. Oh, and this is a little preview of things to come, but I also have been building a relationship with a sticker manufacturer. Soon, you too will be able to put the Big Guy… on Stuff :). When you total all of these things up, our total investment in Big Guy on Stuff is currently sitting at $1856. If you do the math, that puts us at -$1841 when you take out our $14.64 in earnings.
What Drives Traffic to Our Website
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on looking at how to drive traffic to the site more now that we have established a content pattern. The only real way I have done this in the past is by use of Google Adwords. I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m not really sure that there is real value in Adwords for us. It definitely sends users to us, but they very rarely stick around or contribute. In the last couple of weeks, I have setup the @BigGuyonStuff twitter account, I’ve been reading and contributing over in r/Blogging and a few other subreddits on Reddit, and I have also done just a little with Facebook. Currently, the links from these social media sites has driven more, “sticky” traffic to Big Guy on Stuff than any of the Adwords ads have. If you are one of the folks who have joined us from these channels, welcome and thank you!
As of a few days ago, I’ve also started looking into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), to help Big Guy on Stuff have a chance when it comes to people searching for stuff that we write about on Google. You can read more about that in my introduction piece, SEO. What is it, and how does SEO Ranking Work?. Trying to do this without sacrificing the intent of what we are doing will be the struggle, and I will document more of my findings as we go.
Increasing Web Page Stats
Since we started back in October, we have consistently been bringing in more page views and more unique visitors every month, either through the channels mentioned above or via word of mouth. According to Google Analytics, we have had a total of 2606 page views and 798 users visit us here at Big Guy on Stuff. I hope you all found something you enjoyed or otherwise found useful! Breaking this down by month, we had 840 views and 135 users visit us in October, 844 page views and 282 users in November, and already in December we have 922 page views with 412 users. So, we are definitely growing. Thank you again for your part in this!
Stay Tuned
Wow, this one has gotten a little more lengthy than I wanted it to. If you’re still with us, stay tuned in 2018 for more Big Guy on Stuff fun. As I mentioned earlier, we will eventually have stickers! I’m also looking into other ways of saying thank you for using the site and allowing you to spread the Big Guy word if you want! Until next time, stay Big!
If you did not have told about the AdSense, I would’ve continued to keep my AdBlock on.
Everyone nowadays absolutely LOVES to black that annoying ads. I’ve whitelisted your website, but maybe you should consider installing a plugin or a script that blocks your access if you have an active AdBlocker.
I had a plugin like that on my old news website.
But make no mistake, some people will get irritated if you force them to view your ads and whitelist your blog.
It is really such a thin line to manage; a line between light and darkness, LOL.
Yeah. I used to use an ad blocker as well. My number one goal is for a good user experience, so I’d never force them on someone who doesn’t want to see them, but for those that don’t mind, I certainly appreciate and kickback if you find an ad useful.