From now on, I will be posting site updates over the weekend. Call me a super-nerd, but sometimes I like to talk about blogging. I don’t want to write posts about blogging during the week (unless it’s about how to generate income via blogging, which is a fantastic personal finance topic that I’m really not qualified to write about at the moment).
Speaking of making money blogging, I haven’t forgotten about my promise to give away half of my advertising revenue during 2011 to my readers. I have one more giveaway that will cover all the money I’ve made from Oct-Dec, so you can probably expect the giveaway in January. Here’s the bad news for you giveaway lovers; I haven’t made very much money in the last two months.
You guys know that I don’t like to assault you with ads and affiliate marketing. You have to look really hard to find any ads on my site at all. I will post affiliate links when it’s a product I believe in and would recommend anyway, but I’m not going to promote a product to you if I don’t believe in it. My readers deserve better than that. For that reason, I turn down a lot of advertising opportunities.
Here’s what I’ve made over the last two months:
$559.46
Half of that is $280, which pales in comparison to the almost $700 I gave away last time. I guess that’s just how the cookie crumbles. I think with the stock market tanking quite a bit over the last few months, advertisers are holding back a bit.
So while it’s not as big as my last giveaway, you can at least look forward to a decent sized giveaway in January. And who knows, maybe I’ll sell a lot in December and make it more lucrative.
One thing I know for sure, the next giveaway is going to be “winner takes all”. You’d be surprised how much work it is to track down a bunch of different people and make sure they get the right prize. I’d rather spend my time blogging and making music videos.
Speaking of Music Videos…
Just a heads up, I’m going to do my best to get you a new video this week. It’s going to be a shorter song than usual, and is going to be a very simple (think acoustic style but without me actually playing an instrument) video. It’s going to be a sad song about a topic that I’m sure a lot of working people can relate to. Stay tuned.
Carnivals This Week
Carnival of Personal Finance at Compounding Returns
Yakezie Carnival at The Saved Quarter
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie at My University Money
Totally Money at Retire by 40
Canadian Finance Carnival at Canadian Finance Blog
Carnival of Wealth at Control Your Cash
Personal Finance Whiz Carnival at Personal Finance Whiz
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
Hey cool! You have some interesting viewpoints. Interesting enough where I actually pop in on the weekends some times, so it will be good to see some weekend content!
I think your ad handling is respectful to your readers. A few PF sites are completely offensive with ad handling. They feel even more offensive than many big time commercial sites. … Needless to say I never visit them anymore.
I know it’s not Whatever Wednesday, but with all the GOP traffic about Federal tax alternatives, I got to thinking about state taxes. What are your thoughts on how some states survive (and sometimes thrive) without any income tax? Maybe you can put that one in the idea hopper!
Thanks for sticking around, even on weekends sometimes.
I wrote an article about state taxes before…
http://174.37.190.189/~thousand/blog/increase-your-income-up-to-11-instantly-by-moving/
While it can save a lot of money to moving to a state without income tax, that doesn’t always tell the whole story about the tax situation in a state. For example, there’s no state income tax here in Texas but we have property tax rates of around 3% (depending on your county and city), which I’m told are the among the highest in the nation.
It’s a great topic though, and one that would take a lot of in depth research to address to compare the state public services and overall tax rates by each state. I don’t know if I will have the time to do that, but it would absolutely interesting.