Someone by the name of Jeremy Stein just pointed out that I had an old post on this site where I made some growth projections.
In particular, I stated:
“So with January coming to a close my monthly Adsense figures come out to just over 300 dollars. This is based on just over ten thousand unique visitors…”
My future projection, one year ago, was this:
“So looking ahead, we can see that in one year from now my search engine traffic will exactly double, as 12 months X 600 more visitors per month is 7,200. That is the level I am currently at so in one year I should be right around double the amount of search engine traffic. This will also mean approximately double the income.”
So Jeremy found this old blog post where I made these projections, and he rightfully asked “So, what happened?”
Good things happened, my friend, good things!
To be exact, my January totals for 2010 are as follows:
Adsense income: $654
Total unique visitors: 34,720 (87% from search).
This is a success, in my book, and I want to thank Jeremy especially for pointing this old post out to me. Sometimes we are too close to our own progress to really see it happening. One year is a long time!
Interestingly, the traffic more than tripled, but the income only doubled. Hmmm…….deeper into the recession? Chasing the long tail traffic and getting more smart priced clicks? Not sure on that, something to think about though.
To be sure, I am now working harder than ever at expanding this income stream, and I now know more than ever before about the secret of doing so! (Publish content, build links. Yup..it’s hard work).
With that in mind, I am also reinvesting almost all of my revenue back into the site this year, and I am also on track to publish over a 1,000 new articles within the first six months of 2010. I am going to hit $1,000/month this year even if it kills me! (It won’t, this stuff is pretty easy really…it just takes time, and persistent effort).
These concepts here also illustrate another favorite point of mine, and that is this: you probably overestimate what you can get done in a month, but you underestimate what you can get done in a year.
Case in point: I work hard on this stuff and expect to see growth every single month. Guess what? It doesn’t happen. Some months, income actually goes down. But over the course of a whole year, I beat my projections with no problem.
Over a 3 year span, this tendency is even greater (provided you put in the work). In other words, the longer the time line, the more you will tend to underestimate your potential for growth.
Neat stuff!