Thx

They are pulling in around $35,000 per month, yes, but it takes them 4 MILLION pageviews to do it. To say their CPM is miniscule would be an overstatement. And when you are getting 4 million pageviews per month, your costs aren't all that low, either. I wonder how much actual profit they're earning.

I missed this comment earlier. This is 100% incorrect. DF doesn't have to worry about "CPM" because that's not how he makes money. He sells a "sponsorship" to his RSS feed. It has nothing to do with clicks, there's a reason he doesn't have any crappy, terrible Google Ads plastered all over his site — he doesn't need them. There's the $35k per month. On top of that, he also sells ONE ad on his site via The Deck, and even that is not based on clicks. As for actual profit, his is a one-man operation. His only costs are his hosting fees. The rest of it is pure, pure profit.

 

It's not incorrect. Everybody has to worry about CPM, as its the industry standard whether you're paid by click, pageview, or action. Whether or not he needs clicks is irrelevant because all forms of monetization compete for the same space. CPM matters for everybody. The point is, he had to get to 4 million pageviews BEFORE he could justify charging $35,000 per month. And if you think hosting a site that gets 4 million pageviews per month is cheap, well, it's not. He's not spending $10,000 per month on hosting, but he doesn't have the $100 plan either, I can promise you that. And then there's the value of his time. His profits are almost certainly very low considering his traffic volume. Trust me, I've been doing this a long time and I work for a large dotcom. I've seen firsthand what this kind of operation costs to run.

I agree that it'll probably be hard to monetize, but since there are a few examples of prior art, we know it's doable.  Good luck, Mike.

Selfish would be aggregating the content of others on your site. In this case, the title itself leads to the work in question. As JP and Kyle point out, this approach has its downsides (e.g., makes it hard to interact with the person running it, lack of internal pages for search engines to find, etc.) but it's certainly not "selfish".

The challenge, as I'm sure Mike is aware, will be to become known as <i>the</i> place to go for curated financial links. Sites like daring fireball, marco.org, kottke.org, etc. are built on a personas that are (in most cases) well known for other reasons. Gruber created markdown, Marco helped build Tumblr, etc. So without that, how will you gain the notoriety/trust required for success? Not saying it can't be done, just saying that it will be hard.

Anyways... I wish you the best of luck, Mike. You're more than welcome to link to my stuff if/when you see fit. :-)

I have a completely different take and love what you've done with your blog! In fact, I'd be very sad if you changed. I think you have a great eye for interesting articles that are worth reading. I'm a little sad when you miss a day. Some of the material you've linked has given me information for articles I'm currently writing. I think your quick commentary is pithy and insightful.

However, I don't like the way the titles bring you to the article. Quite frankly, there are times I want to comment on your site and this kind of direct linking discourages it. It would be a nice place to discuss the article with others.

I also disagree with the idea that you are scamming on others work. As I see it, you are in fact directing people to worthwhile sites and I'd love it if you linked my articles on a daily basis. Especially if you were to become as big as Instapundit! I've never minded the 10,000 plus hits a day he's sent my way when he's linked.

Many of the commenters above are very correct on the model of your site for the topic you are writing. Yakezie, PF and most PF readership isn't into the drive by nature of the news cycle like politics, gossip sites or sites like the consumerist. It's more about connecting and helping than entertaining. You might be better off starting in the politics sphere and blending in finance as well. Politics readers are looking more for your type of content. Once you've built up credibility it would be easier to branch out (like how Legal Insurrection branched out into College Insurrection).

They are pulling in around $35,000 per month, yes, but it takes them 4 MILLION pageviews to do it. To say their CPM is miniscule would be an overstatement. And when you are getting 4 million pageviews per month, your costs aren't all that low, either. I wonder how much actual profit they're earning.

I missed this comment earlier. This is 100% incorrect. DF doesn't have to worry about "CPM" because that's not how he makes money. He sells a "sponsorship" to his RSS feed. It has nothing to do with clicks, there's a reason he doesn't have any crappy, terrible Google Ads plastered all over his site -- he doesn't need them. There's the $35k per month. On top of that, he also sells ONE ad on his site via The Deck, and even that is not based on clicks. As for actual profit, his is a one-man operation. His only costs are his hosting fees. The rest of it is pure, pure profit. 

What is it about your site that will bring in a reader?  I don't know much about the DF site but if you look at the archives it goes back to 2002.  That's like the stone age of blogging meaning he got in and built an authority site probably before anyone else was doing it in his niche. . . . They are adding value to the article by breaking it down and giving their opinion.

I'm a month into it, give me a little time to find my footing. But yeah, DF is the gold-standard (and Rotoworld, which follows the same, "spammy" style) -- I obviously don't expect to be able to be that good.

My sole reason in bringing him up as an example was in response to those who immediately -- right off the bat -- questioned the legitimacy of the format, like:

All you did was create a tumblr site.

And:

it seems like you're trying to take a shortcut here. 

And: 

just capitalizing off other's hard work

And:

It feels spammy and very self-serving

And yet I'm the one accused of being "condescending" when all I did was ask for some feedback?

At any rate, as I said, I'm sure everyone else is tired of this thread. So am I. Thanks to Kyle for providing some valuable insight. 

I think the thing here is scale and added value.  There are already site that aggregate like Alltop and Money Index.  

What is it about your site that will bring in a reader?  I don't know much about the DF site but if you look at the archives it goes back to 2002.  That's like the stone age of blogging meaning he got in and built an authority site probably before anyone else was doing it in his niche.

Also look at the links. They mention other articles but they look like they write about the article itself and not just send the reader off to read somewhere else. They are adding value to the article by breaking it down and giving their opinion.

 Do you really think the only way to blog is to write one, 750 word post per day about signing up for credit card rewards programs? 

And this quote is specifically what I'm talking about. No one here is going to respond positively to this type of statement. And just to be clear, most here are actually helping people on a personal level, not just churning out garbage about credit card articles. Personally, I have helped others get on a budget, get out of debt and start hitting some financial goals they never thought possible. And since most others here have the same heart to help others (re: Yakezie – selflessly helping others), if you come in here, link to a bunch of posts with some basic comments without writing your own, and want to start seeing traffic and income, it basically goes against what this place it about. Just fair warning, as others have said, this may not be the right place to build your readership.

That being said, I'm not saying you won't be successful. You have obviously research the model you're going after, and those sites are doing extremely well. Maybe you can email them directly and ask some specifics on how they got started, let them know about your mission in the personal finance niche, and see what they say. Couldn't hurt.

I mean, if your site grew and had 4M views a month, then it would be a big benefit to others in this community for the links you are providing.

So your issue is not with the format of my site per se, it's that, right now, it's not benefitting you with extra clicks? Put another way, if my blog was sending you readers, you'd be totally cool with it? I think you need to re-examine your logic here. Do you think DF started off with "4M views a month" from Day 1, or do you think he started out with zero, kept to his format regardless, and then built up his audience that way? And if you want to talk about "gaining traffic off other people's catchy titles", have you ever heard of Techmeme, or Drudge? Do you really think the only way to blog is to write one, 750 word post per day about signing up for credit card rewards programs? 

Jake's sentiment is the exact reason why the Yakezie is likely not the place to promote that kind of site. 

Yes, I am starting to see it that way too. Thanks.

Correct me if I'm wrong here...

I can see how they can become popular if I like the same stories as you, but to be frank I don't think Yakezie is your primary target audience.  Everyone here is a personal finance blogger they aren't going to want read a link to the WSJ or they would have just went to the WSJ themselves b/c that is what they are reading anyway.  You need Non-Pf bloggers who want you to first screen the info and give them the good stuff...pf bloggers are going to want everything and screen themselves.

I wish you luck but again I repeat if you are caring about seo, permalinks etc inside month 1 you'll quit.  You do You and build a following.