Weekly Income Report - 3
Every week on Sunday I will report on the performance of this blog. Target is to give full transparency on money and hours spent and money earned. DO ask questions if things are not clear.
I put more hours into Scraping Pennies, but haven’t invested more money yet. There is a surprise income this week, although it’s only a fantasy until it hits a payout minimum. Cash flow is what I focus on. Earnings are only earnings when they hit your bank account (or paypal for that matter).
Key Performance Indicators
| $ 0 / hour | |
| $ 0.67 / hour | |
| Cumulative hours spent: | 27.5 hours |
| Cumulative result: | - $18.51 |
Money spent
No money out this week. Only hours.
Money earned
After I was surprisingly allowed in the program by Kontera, they also have the honor of earning the first pennies for Scraping Pennies. Two pennies to be exact, and with a payout minimum of $100 it’s a long way from becoming cash, and real earnings.
The same goes for the affiliate program of the SEO Book. If you apply to it, you will get $20 bonus in your account. But with a payout minimum of $50, it’s a gift that needs to be earned.
Nevertheless, there’s $20.02 in virtual earnings right now. Which would mean this site is profitable already 
Well in a fantasy maybe… cash is king, remember that one.
Hours spent
- Technical: 0.25 hours
- Changing redirects
- Creating Content: 7.75 hours
- Three posts, and preparation for two more
- Monetization: 0.25 hours
- Setting up accounts at the SEO Book and SEOMoz
Total hours: 8.25 hours
Budget status (this week)
| Balance (start): | $ 181.49 |
| Cash In: | $ 0 |
| Cash Out: | $ 0 |
| Balance (end): | $ 181.49 |
Early Stage Strategy: Getting Traffic
If there’s one thing new blogs are lacking it’s traffic. Getting visitors to your blog is one of the first priorities, especially if you’re interested in monetizing it like I want to do with Scraping Pennies.
Traffic comes from various sources:
- Referral Traffic
- Search Engines
- Social Media
- Direct Traffic
- Ad Traffic
I’ll cover each of these sources in this article.
Referral Traffic
Refferal traffic are visitors that found your site, because another site linked to you and they used that link to visit you. One of the best links to get is when someone else talks about you and recommends you. That way they are actively promoting you. But there are various ways of getting links to you on other sites. And as they are important for search engines and advertisement networks too, I will cover them in another article in the Early Stage Strategy series.
Search Engines
Search Engines sent targetted traffic. Someone entered keywords in that little search engine box, and they suggested your site. So the people who come to you in this way are more likely to like what you offer, because it fits what they were looking for in the first place.
Search Engines can be a major source of traffic! So much so, that an entire industry evolved around them. It’s called SEO, Search Engine Optimization. The subject is way too elaborate to fully cover here, but it involves both technical aspects (being friendly to the search engine spiders) as the content aspects (making sure the right keywords score).
Click to continue »
Creating Redirects for Affiliate Links
You may have noticed already, but I use redirect pages when I link out to different programs. Some of those programs are affiliate links, but not all of them. I will use these redirect pages for almost all the links out for advertiser programs, for three main reasons.
Reason 1: Protecting affiliate links
Not all the links are affiliate links, but some are. Affiliate links are often formed in a way that the affiliate information is easy to derive from the address. These parts can easily be stripped if someone doesn’t want you to receive the commissions that are associated with that. While I don’t like it when people do that (it won’t make it cheaper for you in any way), I don’t care about the people who do it. I care about the software that does that.
There is malicious software out there that hijacks affiliate links, stripping my affiliate-id and replacing it with the id of someone else. This is what I really don’t like, because the intentions of the visitor are good, but they and I are harmed by someone with malicious intent.
As far as I’ve been able to find this happens by software on the visitors pc. But there are also reports about hacked websites, where files and links have been replaced. Serious stuff!
Reason 2: Central Link Management
The outbound (affiliate) links are all placed inside a nice little folder on my server. If a program decides to change the structure of their affiliate link (I know TLA did this once) I can simply go to that folder, modify the appropriate file and all my links are okay again.
This is also a benefit in case you might want to sell you blog at one point. Not all affiliate accounts are transferrable, and for the ones that aren’t you (or the new owner) can simple replace the affiliate links in the redirects and the entire archive of posts links to the new affiliate id. Easy as pie!
Reason 3: Easy Opt-Out
It’s feasible that I change my mind about a program, or have other reasons to not wanting to link out to a program any longer. In that case I can easily replace the redirect page, with another page with the same name, explaining all the reasons why I don’t promote that program anymore.
It’s the easy opt-out. I want out, but I don’t want to go back through all my articles to find where I linked to that particular program (would take hours). I simply replace it with another page (which would take minutes).
Click to continue »
Monetization Policy for Scraping Pennies
This is only a small post now, but I will expand it as a page later on.
My aim is to give full transparency on Scraping Pennies, and I call upon you to ask me questions when things are not clear. One of the main things I’m disclosing right now, is the monetization policy. In fact it’s pretty short and simple:
“If it can be monetized, it WILL be monetized. Unless…”
The “Unless…” part is my escape. It’s a highly subjective part, and I will define it along the way, as I encounter situations in which I choose not to monetize.
This can happen for instance when terms and conditions prevent me from giving any transparency. There are some advertisement programs who state that you can’t disclose any part of their service. Text Link Ads for one, has a service that has this condition. I declined it, because it goes against the spirit of Scraping Pennies.
On the other hand I know Google Adsense prevents the disclosure of some metrics in their program. While this doesn’t give full transparency, the amount of transparency I can give is enough to align with the aim of Scraping Pennies.
I can also imagine that there are opportunities that clash with my personal values and ethics. I don’t want to promote scammy, spammy, sneaky and shady activities. In those situations I will go with my gut feeling and report my decision here as well. Scraping Pennies is as much about what I do to make money online, as it is about what I choose NOT to do.
Weekly Income Report - 2
Every week on Sunday I will report on the performance of this blog. Target is to give full transparency on money and hours spent and money earned. DO ask questions if things are not clear.
This week I invested hours, not money. This caused an increase in the money/hour figure, but only fictional. There’s no money inflow, so I’m only diluting the loss with hours. It’s still a loss at a little less than $1 per hour. This week I’m setting out strategies, and I’m probably going to invest some money.
Key Performance Indicators
| $ 0 / hour | |
| $ 0.96 / hour | |
| Cumulative hours spent: | 19.25 hours |
| Cumulative result: | - $18.51 |
Money spent
I did not spend any money this week. I mainly put in hours, using free resources. Check the credits page to see what resources exactly.
Money earned
Nothing…yet.
Hours spent
- Technical: 0.75 hours
- Creating hoplink pages
- Creating Content: 3.75 hours
- Three posts
- Credits page
- Design: 10.5 hours
- Browsing free themes
- Finding and editing images
- Changing the design in CSS
- Monetization: 1.5 hours
- Setting up account in affiliate program Amazon
- Applying to Text Link Ads, ReviewMe and Kontera
- Affiliate program e-Junkie
Total hours: 16.5 hours
Budget status (this week)
| Balance (start): | $181.49 |
| Cash In: | $ 0 |
| Cash Out: | $ 0 |
| Balance (end): | $ 181.49 |
