It’s always fun when you see your site popping up in Google’s search results. I remember the first time I saw WallerBlog come up on the first page of a Google search. It felt like I was legitimate, I had proved myself, I was successful. It’s a bit of an ego trip.

Anyways…I was doing some keyword research today. I went over to Shoemoney’s SERPs tool and found out it was down. No good. It’s a great tool. You type in your site and a keyword and this tool will tell give you the position that Google is currently listing your site for that keyword.

Since Shoe’s tool was down, I went digging for something comparable that I could use for some keyword research. Low and behold, I came across SeoDigger. SeoDigger spits out a list of keywords for which your site ranks high enough to be in Google Top 20.

Here are my results:

Check that out, number 1 for my name (that’s always good) and number 1 for “nerds making money”

I guess that proves it. I am a nerd making money!

I made over $4,500 profit from Market Leverage last month!

This is the first real monthly earnings report since this blog was resurrected at the beginning of this month from an 8 month hiatus. Year to date income for WallerBlog dot Com has averaged $47.03/month. Blog income for May was down from the YTD average, but has increased from April’s $34.13.

Total Blog Income for May 2008: $37.32

Here is the breakdown:

• PayPerPost: $20.00
• Private Ad Sales: $7.00
• Google AdSense: $5.40
• TNX.net: $4.92
• Grand Total: $37.72

Blog income has decreased since the beginning of the year. This is primarily due to Google’s PageRank update. My blog went from a PR 3 to a PR 0. This has effectively killed all income from Text-Link-Ads and LinkWorth. Before this month LinkWorth was my biggest money maker. That loss has been mitigated by the addition of PayPerPost.

Traffic Stats

Traffic this month is up to 1,294 page views from 608 visitors. The top traffic sources were:

• Google: 138
• Direct: 119
• StumbleUpon: 125
• Entrecard: 95

As usual the big G was the top referrer. The biggest surprise though was the 125 visitors from StumbleUpon. The Blogging Tips Carnival was Stumbled and received more traffic than any other post this month.

Determination is the key

Determination is the only thing that will make your small blog a success. Determination to write good content, determination to research monetization opportunities and determination to network to drive traffic to your blog. This month I am determined to work to gain quality backlinks in order to gain more green on my PagerRank. This will give me many more opportunities to increase this blog’s income and get me closer to my goal of earning a full-time living via the internet.

This is part 3 in the series of “How to Succeed in 2007.” This series is about my thoughts on the CNN Money Article “How to Succeed in 2007.” You may want to start with part 1 and part 2.

Jeff Goodby
Co-founder, Goodby Silverstein & Partners
Remake Ad Campaigns for the Digital Age

“Our campaigns are a lot more work now. Our “Got Milk” campaign was based on the fact that milk made you sleep better and rebuilt muscles. So we created TV commercials where aliens came and abducted cows and took them back to their planet, because their bones were weak and they needed more sleep. Then we made a website for angry farmers, Cowabduction.com. We put up notices around the city about the missing cows. And we made another website promoting the aliens’ point of view. The campaign was such a success that we’re releasing it in theaters.”

This one just cracks me up. I loved that commercial series.

While this may seem totally unrelated to finances, I promise you it is. [Read more →]