I have almost hit the panic button. I feel like my hand is hovering over it wanting to slam down. May and June of 2011 were the best ever for my affiliate websites. After a horrendous February, March really started to take off traffic wise and is probably my best month traffic wise.
During March and April I felt I was getting great traffic but my earnings weren't as high as they should be. I then implemented two ads per page instead of the usual only one. This made May and June explode in earnings. But the second half of June was starting to lose it's amount of traffic. This lead to a twenty percent drop in traffic over July, and when I had hoped that my traffic bottomed out.
Unfortunately this isn't the case and August's traffic is down roughly four to five percent from July. August's first week was great, but after that it has dropped dramatically. Bing and Yahoo are down 25 visitors a day that is more than ten percent from them. Google has been great since July and has carried August.
One trouble spot is my rankings are still down and appear to continue to lower. I really need Victoria Secret credit card higher and sears credit card.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Traffic Bottomed Out
My traffic seems to have peaked in May and has been on a slow decline since that point. It really took a dive in the beginning of July, but I was able to boost some of my keywords and I'm hoping I've bottomed out traffic wise.
I've been writing reviews pretty consistently lately. I completed one on the Shell credit card, I hope people find it worthwhile, actually read what I have to say, and think about what they want before they sign-up for any credit card.
I've also been doing a lot of research and reading on how I can effectively expand my websites reach. I've come up with a few ideas that I hope will help. The most important change that needs to be made is an upgrade from a late 90s website design to a more Web 2.0 kind of design. I hope this will help the visitors and give my site a little more respect and authority.
My rankings are still low for Bing and Yahoo, but thankfully Google has really been good to me lately and has carried me while I'm working on upping my other rankings.
I've been writing reviews pretty consistently lately. I completed one on the Shell credit card, I hope people find it worthwhile, actually read what I have to say, and think about what they want before they sign-up for any credit card.
I've also been doing a lot of research and reading on how I can effectively expand my websites reach. I've come up with a few ideas that I hope will help. The most important change that needs to be made is an upgrade from a late 90s website design to a more Web 2.0 kind of design. I hope this will help the visitors and give my site a little more respect and authority.
My rankings are still low for Bing and Yahoo, but thankfully Google has really been good to me lately and has carried me while I'm working on upping my other rankings.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Bing Plus Facebook Equals ?
In the middle of May 2011 Microsoft announced that Bing will start using Facebook Likes to help determine their search results. The week after this announcement I noticed my traffic from both Bing and Yahoo dropped by ten percent. My Google traffic remains pretty stable.
I checked my rankings on Bing and it appears my site has retained its ranking, but I've lost a significant amount of traffic from this change. I think part of the problem is when you log into Bing or Facebook and use their search they displayed more ads at the top of the page and this pushes the natural results down lower than they previously were before I signed in.
I also noticed when you use the Facebook search it uses Bing's results, but it only shows the top three with an option to see more. If you want to see more you will leave Facebook's site and go to Bing's.
This is very disappointing for me, and I think will be for many other small website owners who receive traffic from these sources. Before this change I earned a record amount of money from my website in May. Now with the less traffic I am getting I will be lucky if my June earnings equals Mays.
I think my best way to continue to grow my traffic is to focus on adding more and more content and reviews each month.
I checked my rankings on Bing and it appears my site has retained its ranking, but I've lost a significant amount of traffic from this change. I think part of the problem is when you log into Bing or Facebook and use their search they displayed more ads at the top of the page and this pushes the natural results down lower than they previously were before I signed in.
I also noticed when you use the Facebook search it uses Bing's results, but it only shows the top three with an option to see more. If you want to see more you will leave Facebook's site and go to Bing's.
This is very disappointing for me, and I think will be for many other small website owners who receive traffic from these sources. Before this change I earned a record amount of money from my website in May. Now with the less traffic I am getting I will be lucky if my June earnings equals Mays.
I think my best way to continue to grow my traffic is to focus on adding more and more content and reviews each month.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Monthly Updates
It's been very difficult for me to maintain and add new reviews to my credit card website every month. I'm not sure what the root of the problem is; I feel if I could just figure out why I'm so lazy I could correct my behavior and continue to grow my site traffic and make more money.
The funny thing is it seems like the more money I make each month the more I like to kick back, relax, and watch it roll in instead of working harder I don't work as much. What really gets me going is if I have a terrible month or week or even a bad day can sometimes motivate me get on the computer and do some work without checking how much I've made that day.
I was trying to write three reviews a month for 2011, but that hasn't really worked out yet. I do like my take on the Target Red card. I hope people read my articles and understand the risk of carrying a balance every cycle.
The funny thing is it seems like the more money I make each month the more I like to kick back, relax, and watch it roll in instead of working harder I don't work as much. What really gets me going is if I have a terrible month or week or even a bad day can sometimes motivate me get on the computer and do some work without checking how much I've made that day.
I was trying to write three reviews a month for 2011, but that hasn't really worked out yet. I do like my take on the Target Red card. I hope people read my articles and understand the risk of carrying a balance every cycle.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Best December Yet
Wow, I was blown away with how much money I made this past December 2010 with my credit card website. I had some pretty good keyword rankings through out the month and it was lead by a resurgence of American Express rewards and other older keywords that I haven't ranked for in a while suddenly shot back up into the top ten of Google results.
This bolstered my traffic and helped me to reach a new high for daily page views and visitors. Couple this with the increase in money that advertisers where spending for the holiday season it gave me my best December yet!
The first half of the month my site was literally on fire compared to previous years. Actually after Thanksgiving I noticed a huge increase by people searching for gift cards and credit cards. Unfortunately the second half of December things really cooled off, but I was still making decent numbers in traffic and profit, but it was no where near the peak.
Before this year I hadn't paid that much attention to increases/decreases provided by Google Trends, but now I have a better understanding of when people search for items and when there is going to be lower traffic for different niches.
This bolstered my traffic and helped me to reach a new high for daily page views and visitors. Couple this with the increase in money that advertisers where spending for the holiday season it gave me my best December yet!
The first half of the month my site was literally on fire compared to previous years. Actually after Thanksgiving I noticed a huge increase by people searching for gift cards and credit cards. Unfortunately the second half of December things really cooled off, but I was still making decent numbers in traffic and profit, but it was no where near the peak.
Before this year I hadn't paid that much attention to increases/decreases provided by Google Trends, but now I have a better understanding of when people search for items and when there is going to be lower traffic for different niches.
Monday, September 27, 2010
SEO Struggles
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the primary way I drive traffic to my websites. I am really getting frustrated. It seems pretty difficult to do well for some search terms. There is just so much competition, and we are all fighting over the same keywords/topics.
It seems like as soon as I crack the top ten I have to fight tooth and nail to stay on the top, or if I slack off I can expect my site to drop in the rankings. I understand that if I slack off I should drop in the rankings, but having to continuously keep adding more content, keep it updated, and getting more links to my sites is really wearing me out. I may have stretched myself too thin with having two main sites that I work on and one smaller site that I am just doing for fun.
A couple of my latest reviews; Capital One Rewards and the Staples credit card.
It seems like as soon as I crack the top ten I have to fight tooth and nail to stay on the top, or if I slack off I can expect my site to drop in the rankings. I understand that if I slack off I should drop in the rankings, but having to continuously keep adding more content, keep it updated, and getting more links to my sites is really wearing me out. I may have stretched myself too thin with having two main sites that I work on and one smaller site that I am just doing for fun.
A couple of my latest reviews; Capital One Rewards and the Staples credit card.
Friday, July 16, 2010
JPMorgan Announces Profits of $4.8 Billion
JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Thursday its second-quarter net income soared 77 percent to $4.8 billion as a slowdown in losses from failed loans helped offset a difficult spring in trading and investment banking.
The strong results offered hope that loan losses at the nation's big banks may have peaked in the first half of 2010, a critical step before banks can become stronger and boost lending to consumers and small businesses.
JPMorgan Chase, the first of the big banks to report earnings for the April-June period, easily surpassed analysts' expectations as it earned $1.09 a share, up 28 cents a share from a year earlier. Analysts had forecast a profit of 67 cents per share in the just-ended quarter. Net revenue, however, fell nearly 8 percent from a year ago to $25.6 billion.
JPMorgan Chase has been one of the strongest banks as it weathered the financial crisis and recession, so its performance shouldn't necessarily be taken as a sign of how well other banks did during the quarter. Many financial companies don't have such big investment banking operations, which includes trading of stocks and bonds. That has allowed JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank by assets, to make up for losses in its consumer lending division.
Yet it was a sharp drop in loan losses, not an increase in trading profits, that helped JPMorgan the most in the last quarter. The bank set aside $3.36 billion to cover bad loans, down 65 percent from a year ago and 52 percent from the first quarter. The improvements mean the bank is seeing fewer delinquencies in its lending business, though JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said loan losses overall "remain at extremely high levels."
"It is too early to say how much improvement we will see from here," Dimon said of declining loan losses. Bankers have been cautious throughout the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis when reporting progess in their loan businesses. Economists and investors are looking to those loan loss levels as an indicator of how well the economic recovery is faring.
Dimon also warned of possible "unintended consequences" to the bank's business from the financial regulatory overhaul awaiting congressional approval. The new rules would require banks to hold more capital and would restrict their trading of risky but lucrative securities like derivatives.
Notably, Dimon was less upbeat about the future than he was when announcing first-quarter results. At that time, the CEO said the economy was showing "clear and broad-based improvements" that should result in a "strong recovery."
A more cautious Dimon on Thursday called improvements in the bank's mortgage lending unit encouraging but he stopped short of predicting a return to pre-financial crisis conditions.
"Obviously, we hope it improves," Dimon said.
In the second quarter, a big drop in the stock market hurt JPMorgan's investment banking unit. Revenue fell 6 percent from a year ago to $1.4 billion as the bank earned smaller fees on financing for stock and bond offerings and advising on corporate dealmaking.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index, considered the best measure of how stocks have fared, fell 11.9 percent from April through June, its worst showing since the financial crisis devastated stocks in the fourth quarter of 2008. All the banks with big trading operations are expected to report a drop in their income from those businesses.
But a drop in loan losses helped the bank make up for the slowdown in investment banking. Revenue in the consumer lending unit jumped 10 percent from a year ago to $2 billion as the bank saw fewer loan losses across its major consumer businesses including mortgages, credit cards and student loans. However, JPMorgan Chase did report an increase in losses from commercial real estate loans, which have lagged consumer mortgages as they've gone into default.
Still, JPMorgan's drop in loan loss reserving is encouraging. The banking industry has struggled over the past two years to work through billions in bad loans made before the financial crisis. Until that happens, banks' capital will remain constrained and they won't be able to open the credit spigot and help grow the economy.
Analysts believe loan losses likely peaked in the first six months of the year. But it's unlikely that other big banks were able to slash their reserves during the past quarter as dramatically as JPMorgan, said Jeff LaFrance, banking analyst at Gradient Analytics.
"JPMorgan is a special case in how they prepare for loan losses," LaFrance said. "They've been extremely conservative, so we wouldn't expect these kind of numbers from the other banks."
Investors initially bought on the results but later eased sold JPMorgan along with many other stocks in response to more bad economic news. The stock fell 36 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $40.71.
The lukewarm reaction may also reflect the uncertainty facing JPMorgan and other banks, including how the regulatory overhaul will affect profits and whether the economy continues to recover or falls back into recession.
Most analysts say the new banking rules on everything from capital levels to credit cards and trading of risky securities won't dramatically affect revenue as some in the industry had feared. But they caution that it could take years before the full impact of the legislation is known.
Speaking to analysts, Dimon said the bank can work within the new rules but declined to quantify the potential impact to its business.
"We want to make sure we can service our clients (under the new rules), and we think we'll be able to," Dimon said. "Will it have some affect on revenue and margins? Yeah, probably."
Original Copy: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100715/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_jpmorgan_chase
The strong results offered hope that loan losses at the nation's big banks may have peaked in the first half of 2010, a critical step before banks can become stronger and boost lending to consumers and small businesses.
JPMorgan Chase, the first of the big banks to report earnings for the April-June period, easily surpassed analysts' expectations as it earned $1.09 a share, up 28 cents a share from a year earlier. Analysts had forecast a profit of 67 cents per share in the just-ended quarter. Net revenue, however, fell nearly 8 percent from a year ago to $25.6 billion.
JPMorgan Chase has been one of the strongest banks as it weathered the financial crisis and recession, so its performance shouldn't necessarily be taken as a sign of how well other banks did during the quarter. Many financial companies don't have such big investment banking operations, which includes trading of stocks and bonds. That has allowed JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank by assets, to make up for losses in its consumer lending division.
Yet it was a sharp drop in loan losses, not an increase in trading profits, that helped JPMorgan the most in the last quarter. The bank set aside $3.36 billion to cover bad loans, down 65 percent from a year ago and 52 percent from the first quarter. The improvements mean the bank is seeing fewer delinquencies in its lending business, though JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said loan losses overall "remain at extremely high levels."
"It is too early to say how much improvement we will see from here," Dimon said of declining loan losses. Bankers have been cautious throughout the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis when reporting progess in their loan businesses. Economists and investors are looking to those loan loss levels as an indicator of how well the economic recovery is faring.
Dimon also warned of possible "unintended consequences" to the bank's business from the financial regulatory overhaul awaiting congressional approval. The new rules would require banks to hold more capital and would restrict their trading of risky but lucrative securities like derivatives.
Notably, Dimon was less upbeat about the future than he was when announcing first-quarter results. At that time, the CEO said the economy was showing "clear and broad-based improvements" that should result in a "strong recovery."
A more cautious Dimon on Thursday called improvements in the bank's mortgage lending unit encouraging but he stopped short of predicting a return to pre-financial crisis conditions.
"Obviously, we hope it improves," Dimon said.
In the second quarter, a big drop in the stock market hurt JPMorgan's investment banking unit. Revenue fell 6 percent from a year ago to $1.4 billion as the bank earned smaller fees on financing for stock and bond offerings and advising on corporate dealmaking.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index, considered the best measure of how stocks have fared, fell 11.9 percent from April through June, its worst showing since the financial crisis devastated stocks in the fourth quarter of 2008. All the banks with big trading operations are expected to report a drop in their income from those businesses.
But a drop in loan losses helped the bank make up for the slowdown in investment banking. Revenue in the consumer lending unit jumped 10 percent from a year ago to $2 billion as the bank saw fewer loan losses across its major consumer businesses including mortgages, credit cards and student loans. However, JPMorgan Chase did report an increase in losses from commercial real estate loans, which have lagged consumer mortgages as they've gone into default.
Still, JPMorgan's drop in loan loss reserving is encouraging. The banking industry has struggled over the past two years to work through billions in bad loans made before the financial crisis. Until that happens, banks' capital will remain constrained and they won't be able to open the credit spigot and help grow the economy.
Analysts believe loan losses likely peaked in the first six months of the year. But it's unlikely that other big banks were able to slash their reserves during the past quarter as dramatically as JPMorgan, said Jeff LaFrance, banking analyst at Gradient Analytics.
"JPMorgan is a special case in how they prepare for loan losses," LaFrance said. "They've been extremely conservative, so we wouldn't expect these kind of numbers from the other banks."
Investors initially bought on the results but later eased sold JPMorgan along with many other stocks in response to more bad economic news. The stock fell 36 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $40.71.
The lukewarm reaction may also reflect the uncertainty facing JPMorgan and other banks, including how the regulatory overhaul will affect profits and whether the economy continues to recover or falls back into recession.
Most analysts say the new banking rules on everything from capital levels to credit cards and trading of risky securities won't dramatically affect revenue as some in the industry had feared. But they caution that it could take years before the full impact of the legislation is known.
Speaking to analysts, Dimon said the bank can work within the new rules but declined to quantify the potential impact to its business.
"We want to make sure we can service our clients (under the new rules), and we think we'll be able to," Dimon said. "Will it have some affect on revenue and margins? Yeah, probably."
Original Copy: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100715/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_jpmorgan_chase
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