Around Christmas of 2020, I decided to start my own personal finance blog Finance Throttle. My objective with this blog was to help people accelerate their net worth and learn more about personal finance along the way. Within a week, I created the blog and website through a Bluehost referral link and published the site on December 31st, 2020 for a January 1st, 2021 reveal. I started off publishing a new blog post EVERY DAY. This wasn’t easy since I had a full time job and a family. After a few weeks, I felt that the quality of my posts were suffering from the daily post schedule. I decided to change up my blog post schedule to three times a week. I posted on Monday’s, Wednesdays, and Friday’s. Half way through March of 2021, I decided to reduce my weekly posts again with a new post every Monday and Thursday. Now that we are in the month of September, I will be providing a 9 month update on the blog. Read my 6 month update here.
Advertising and Page Views
Facebook and Pinterest are still my main sources of traffic and advertising with Pinterest leading the pack by far. I am still sticking to two posts per week on Mondays and Thursdays @ 9:00 AM EST. From my 6 month update to my 9 month update, my Pinterest monthly page views grew by 25% to 8200 per month and my blog traffic increased by 50%. As for Facebook, I created a FinanceThrottle Facebook Page where I also post twice a week. If you don’t want to subscribe for a monthly newsletter, consider liking my Facebook page to stay up to date.
According to Google Analytics and Monster Insights, the majority of my readers are based in the U.S. with Canada being 2nd and Netherlands 3rd. As of September 2021, approximately 83% of readers access FinanceThrottle.com from their cell phones and the remaining access the site from their desktop computer or laptop.
As I mentioned in my 6 month update, my posts on Door Dash were the most popular posts on my site. In fact, 8 of my top 10 most popular posts are Door Dash posts. The Crypto content is still my second most popular category, but velocity banking is close.
My Blog
Including this post, I have published a total of 108 blog posts in 9 months. My post popular blog post by far is Top 10 DoorDash Driver Hacks. My second most popular post was on Paying taxes in 2021 as a Door Dash driver. As you will see throughout my posts, my wealth building strategy revolves around paying off debt with velocity banking and long term investing in retirement and real estate. Visit my Recommendations Page to learn about some of my favorite finance apps, services, products, and books.
In my last update, I talked about my new spread sheet templates, changes to the blog, and the Full Throttle Strategy for growing your net worth. I am continuing to provide updates on my 6-7 year mortgage pay off journey here on this page.
Spread Sheet Templates
Interested in a Budgeting Spreadsheet, F.I.R.E Spreadsheet, Amortization Table, Door Dash “Dasher Tracker”, or my Full Throttle Spreadsheet? You can now request these spreadsheets through my Shop Page.
Blog Earnings
I didn’t expect to make any money in the first year. It could take years for bloggers to start making $100 per month or $2000 per month. I signed up with Bluehost to host my site during a promotional period where I pay only $3 per month for the first 3 years. Costs have increased since then, but hosting is still very affordable at $2.95 per month for 36 months. Sign up with Bluehost using my referral link to get the $2.95 monthly offer. With Google AdSense, I make just over $7 per month. It’s not much, but it’s way more than the $0.04 I earned in my 1st month and it’s enough to cover my hosting fees with Bluehost.
As for referrals, I have had two people sign up with Yotta Savings earning me higher interest earnings and I had two people sign up with Coinbase earning me $20 in Bitcoin. Through Amazon affiliates, I have sold 5 items and made a commission of $3. However Amazon disabled my Affiliates account because I did not make enough sales to keep the account. I can sign up again anytime I want, but I will wait until I double or triple my web traffic to ensure the account is not disabled again. Through my spread sheet templates, I made $20 so far with an additional $21 pending.
Finally, I made over $100 in experimenting with different apps, credit card strategies, and more for the purpose of providing more content for the blog. So far I have made over $25 just by taking surveys once a week. You can do it too with the app 1Q. I was also able to save money on gas using the BPme Rewards app, earn money with the micro-savings app Stash, and earn way more cash back using my new Chase Freedom Flex card.
If anything new comes up, I will be sure to blog about it. Stay Tuned and please consider subscribing to my monthly newsletter. The next 10 subscribers will get a free copy of a loan amortization table in Excel or Google Sheets.
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