Investing Adventures

Man did April fly by. Guess that means it’s time for another quick blog income and traffic report, brought to you by the great people at Mario Kart Wii, because without it, wii’d be bored during the summer months.

• TLA Links: $51.96
• TNX Links: $31.37
• Private Sales: $53.27
• Google Adsense (Finally!): $101.75
• Total for April 2008: $238.25
• Total for March 2008: $298.63
• % Increase / Decrease: -20.2%

And so another month’s in the books. As you can tell, I’m not particularly pleased with the results but there’s no one to blame but myself. Posting was extremely light last month with finals week and other commitments with school. Also, typically summer months have slower than normal advertising sales. If we can hold at these levels through the summer I think I’d be pleased. I’ve been trying to convert TLA links into private sales but that’s been a bit more difficult than I anticipated. I’m sure the current blog layout isn’t helping matters much as well. To be frank, at first the layout had potential, but recently I’ve thought more and more of purchasing a premium layout or potentially biting the bullet and hiring someone to redesign this site properly. We’ll see what happens.

In terms of traffic, I’m expecting a decrease across the board as well.

• Unique Visits: 1,994
• Pageviews: 3,335
• Current RSS Subscriptions: 97
• Highest RSS Subscriptions: 97

So close to that 100 RSS mark! Expect a great party once that happens. As with April’s income, traffic’s down about 20%. And once again, I need to force myself to produce content more consistently than the anemic April. If I could only trade the markets full time, I’d have all the time in the world!

And last but not least, the top 7 articles read this month. It’s always predictable when an FOMC meeting comes out to see what article’s at the top.

• FOMC Meeting Today; How to Read Fed Funds 30 Day Futures
• General Electric Fizzles – Market Retest of Lows? (Published in Seeking Alpha)
• April 28, 2008 Edition of the Festival of Stocks
• Discount Online Broker Review – TradeKing
• Discount Online Broker Review – Zecco
• Blog Income and Traffic – March 2008
• Crude Above $115 per Barrel, Short Oil Stocks?

I was excited to see my GE article on Seeking Alpha. Although in the end I may have been wrong, it was still nice to take some data and see a side of it some folks were anticipating.

So there you have it. Items on the agenda this month include trying to get a visually appealing layout going, better (and more frequent) content, and of course my transparency study on my tiny portfolio. Have a great week!