In case you missed it…I’m constantly talking about how my husband is giving me blog advice. Like all the time.

Often times when he rattles off: “Hey babe, you should do {fill in the blank} with your blog”….I give him the side eye.

The really evil side eye. 

Not because I don’t think he’s right {because a lot of times he is – gawd, did I just admit that?}. Mostly because it’s just one more thing to add to my “blogging list of to-do’s”. And if you have a blog…you know the list I’m talking about, right?

Oh my word, it’s never ending. If only I had 23 more hours in a day. Then I could be the blogger I want to be. Bahaha!

When he approached me a few years ago about “starting my email list“…I instantly put my hands over my ears and started singing “row row row your boat….”!

He continued to hassle me about it for 2 years. Oh yes, he is persistent that husband of mine.

So I finally removed my ear muffs and let him fancy me with his “blog advice”. And wouldn’t-cha-know-it he was right again. Darn him.

Email lists are not only important, but they are a vital part of connecting with your audience. I wasted a good few years being too stubborn to start mine, but I am happy to report that I have gone from 0 to almost 3,000 subscribers in just one short year.

One thing I wasn’t super crazy about was the lack of design options when it came to my subscribe box. I adore AWeber, but they just don’t offer a ton of fancy options {and a girl likes fancy I tell ya}. 

I’m not exactly a web designer so creating my own custom subscribe box wasn’t an option for me. Kudos to those of you who can pull that off…can you teach me?

I wanted an easier solution.

In steps….OptinSkin. A WordPress plug in that lets you create custom {AND PRETTY} subscribe boxes! It is a premium plug in so there is a cost to it, but it has saved me hours of frustration.

Just to show you how easy it is to use I filmed this quick tutorial on how I use the OptinSkin WordPress plug in on my site, House of Rose.

If you are interested in setting up an email newsletter then check out Starting An Email Newsletter 101.

It’s time for the monthly income report.

Each month “The Wife” crunches the numbers on our earnings while I, “The Husband”, puts together a recap of what happened in our online business. A dangerous combo!

As a reminder, this is why we do the income reports:

1. Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at but seeing improvement. You can go here for all of our previous blog income reports.
2. Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases. (thankfully it has)
3. Truth. To show people that you really can make money online and in a non-scammy way.
4. Transparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it, too.

Remember: We started blogging in July of 2008 so it’s taken us A LOT of time to figure this blogging thing out. And truthfully, we still have a lot to learn. Don’t get the impression that you can start a blog today and turn a profit tomorrow. I promise you, it ain’t going to happen.

What went down in April

April.   Oh April.   Let me count the ways…..

April has always been one of my most favorite months for blogging.  Why?

Taxes.  Yes, taxes.

Not that I like paying taxes or filing taxes.  Heck no!  That’s what my CPA is for.

I like April because of several tax posts I have on Good Financial Cents and it always proves to be one of my best months. This year was no exception.

That leads us to the second installment of Blogger Showdown Husband vs. Wife……

Traffic Showdown

Last month I decided it would be neat to show traffic numbers for both my site and my wife’s site and then duke it out to see who gets the most traffic going forward. It’s a war.

My blog for the longest time always (yes, always) had more traffic.  Then my wife started taking this blogging thing seriously and she has been giving me a run for my money.   In our last income report, Mandy kicked my butt with about 40,000 more visitors for the month.

Let’s see how this month went down…..

Good Financial Cents Traffic

As mentioned, I love tax day!  As you can see by the screenshot below, on April 15th I had almost 20,000 visitors on that day alone.  That is an all-time high for my blog.  Yeah buddy!

For the month, I crossed 200,000 visitors for the 1st time ever.   I can definitely get used to this kind of traffic. 

House of Rose Traffic

My wife’s blog didn’t do too shabby either with 164,000 visitors.  It took a record day of traffic to beat her, but I’ll take it!

To give her some credit, notice how her pageviews killed mine: 355,000 to my 258,000.

Dang Pinterest.

Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner

This might be the only month that I win the traffic showdown so I had to take full advantage and get these pics:

Another one just to be safe….

Yes, I might be enjoying this too much.  Haha….

Who will win next month?   Stay tuned to the next income report  to find out.  

Here’s a look at the numbers for April….

Income Breakdown

Good Financial Cents

• Adsense: $2,273.63
• Adspeed: $2,340.98
• Commission Junction: $1,333.74
• Flex Offers:$929.38
• Direct Advertising: $0
• Media Net:  $516.61
• Personal Capital: $720.00
• Consumer Track: $42.00
• You Need A Budget: $30.00
• Google Affiliate Network: $1,045

• Total: $9,231.34

Dollars and Roses

• GoDaddy: $17.03
• ShareASale (Thesis Theme and Genesis Theme): $154.61
• Blogging Your Passion: $0
• AWeber: $44.09
• SEMRush: $0

• Total: $215.73

Other Niche Sites

• Adsense: $156.23
• Flex Offers: $576.00
• Direct Advertising: $216.62
• Media Net:  $93.11
• Main Niche Site Revenue: $9,816.09

• Total: $10,858.05

• BlogHer Ads: $651.30
• BlogHer Sponsored Posts/Touts: $300.00
• Direct Advertising: $245.00
• Adsense: $406.78
• Lijit Media: $137.31
• Content Ads: $118.80
• BlueHost: $630.00

• Total $2,489.19

• Equifax: $300.00

• Total: $300.00

Total Revenue for April: $23,094.31

Revenue Last Month: $20,204.01

• Difference: +2,890.30
• April 2012: $8,908.96
• Total for 2012: $115,289.16
  
• Running Total 2013: $77,485.95

Monthly Fixed Expenses

Many of you have asked what our expenses are each month running our online business.

• Hosting Companies

• WPEngine:    $250.00
• Liquid Web:   $25.00
• Lunar Pages:  $5.00
• Bluehost:         $5.00

• AWeber:                        $130.00
• Article Writers:              $225.00
• Unique Article Wizard:  $67.00
• Virtual Assistant:            $1,000.00
• SEMRush:                         $69.95
• Fiverr.com:                       $10.00
• Audio Jungle:                   $15.00
• Elance.com:                      $210.00
• TextBroker.com:               $50.00
• HoR Site Redesign:         $525.00
• Total:                              $2,586.95

This is a rough breakdown of our expenses that I’ll try to document each month as well as our gross income.  For a closer look at many of the tools we use to run our online business check out our monster post 24 Blogging Tools To Grow Your Blog.

What Happened in April

As mentioned above, I LOVE April.  My blog had it’s highest traffic month ever plus we set another record with our revenue for the month.

Amaze-balls!

The stars aligned with having crazy good traffic, my main niche site having it’s record month, and House of Rose continuing to turn in solid numbers.

Will it continue?  We hope so but don’t expect next month to be another record month.   Traffic is returning to normal levels and with it our income is too.

Notice Anything in the Expenses?

A few key things I wanted to highlight in the expenses in case you were curious.

1. Audio Jungle and Fiverr.com. In case you were wondering, let me explain.  First, I love Fiverr.com for so many reasons.  If you haven’t checked it out, you must.  Our podcast will be launching soon so we wanted to have a professional sounding intro.  First, we needed royalty-free background music.  That’s where Audio Jungle came in.  Next, we needed a voice that sounded professional.  Like television commercial.  That’s Fiverr.com.  For $10 (2 Gigs) we found a professional narrator that has done several commercials that you’ve probably seen on national TV.  It’s crazy the amount of stuff you can buy on that site.
2. Elance.com, TextBroker.com:  I used to write all my articles for my niche sites, but I’ve just got way too busy.  My niche sites are a bit more advanced and require someone versed in the topic to be able to write on it, however.   Enter Elance.com and Textbroker.com.   I’ve really been ramping up the content on those sites so I’ve been using both sites to diversify the quality of articles.   Even though it was a $260 expense  investment, it saved me hours because that’s about 10 articles that I would have had to write on my own.  Actually, I never would have completed but maybe 1 one of them.   Outsourcing at its finest.
3. HoR Site Redesign.   In case you missed that one, Mandy can’t wait to show what she’s been working on for the past few months.  Her site has never really had a site redesign other than changing the header a few times.  Even though I’m itching for a site redesign I thought I would be the good/loving/thoughtful husband and allow her to go first.  (Awwww!!!!)   She’s hoping it will be live within the next week so stay tuned!

Other Site Redesigns

As mentioned last month, we’re moving all our sites to Genesis.   Even though I want to move my site immediately, I feel there are two other sites that need to be tweaked before mine.   One of them is this site.  I originally bought a Thesis Skin for this site which made it look unique.  The only downside to using a Skin is that I have no idea how to tweak it and I hate that!  This site is getting much more recognition and we feel we need to step up or game.

The second site is Soldier of Finance, my book site.  I now know what my real book cover is going to look like so I need to remove the mock cover I have on there now.  Plus, I’m going to start pre-selling the book soon preparing for the September launch.   I feel like the site is too military-ish, which is totally different from how I felt whan I had the site designed 3 years ago.

Speaking Again?  You betcha!

The last exciting announcement for the month is that I’ll be speaking again at the next Financial Blogger Conference (FINCON).   Some of the great speakers include Jean Chatzky of JeanChatzky.com, Pat Flynn of SmartPassiveIncome.com, Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com and David Siteman Garland of TheRisetoTheTop.com.

FINCON is my favorite conference ever so I can’t wait to present.   My presentation is “Screw Google Panda: How to Build Tons of Traffic and Strategically Build Your Brand“.  While I’m not keynoting, I want to bring my A game this year and give an awesome presentation to prep for future speaking gigs.  October can’t get her fast enough!

Until next month….

Thanks again for all your support!

Welcome to - Monthly Site Reviews by the Dollars and Roses Team!

Many of our readers have asked us to take at look at their sites to give them candid feedback.

Trust me when I say this:  We would love to review all of your sites!

Unfortunately, there is one small little factor interfering with this.   That little thing called “time”.  

If only there were 24 more hours in a day.

We thought the next best thing is to review one lucky site per month, do a video on it and share it with all of you.   That way you might pick up a few ideas from what we share with the site that we are reviewing.

We are not claiming to be experts by any means, but we have been blogging for over 5 years and have learned quite a bit along the way.

What’s good knowledge if you dont’ share it, right?

Site Review {May}

Thank you to everyone who submitted their site for the monthly review and please please please remember if we didn’t choose you this month, there is always still a chance we will get to you next time!

For May, we are reviewing the Double Saving Divas!

Identical twins, Tai and Tarin Perry aka “The Double Saving Divas”, are from Chicago, IL.

<<We love us some fellow IL residents>>

They are both financially savvy investment bankers turned money saving experts. And y’all know my wife likes a good deal. Ahem.

Plus, just look at their “As Seen On” line up…Dr. Oz, Rachel Ray, People, TLC…they are kinda awesome.

The crazy thing is that I caught The Divas on daytime TV a few years ago (please don’t judge ) where they where sharing some of their most favorite smartphone apps to help you save money.   One of the apps they shared is one that I still used to this day.

We almost felt a little star struck that they thought we were worthy of reviewing their site.

Thank you for the confidence booster!!!

Do you want us to look at your site? Either leave a comment with a link to your site or use our contact form and tell us you’re interested. There’s no guarantee will get to your site, but we’ll do our best. *Pinky promise*

Update: With Google up to their dirty tricks again with Penguin 2.0, I thought it would be a good idea to update this post. As I write this, both Mandy’s blog and my main blog are unaffected. My niche is down 23% however. Not cool. It’s still early, so time will tell. If you’re experiencing fluctuations in your traffic, consider the points below. I’ve added a few extras.

December 2010: Good Financial Cents gets over 100,000 unique visitors for the month for the first time.   My traffic keeps growing. I’m a rock star.

December 30, 2011: I see record numbers approaching year end.  I had 8,421 amount of visitors come to the site on this day alone.  Justin Bieber ain’t got nothing on me.

January 2011: I get over 120,000 unique visitors. I’m on top of the world!  I’m considering buying a T-shirt that says, “I’m a Baller”.

February and March 2011: Different months, same results.  I’m thinking 2011 is going to be a banner year. I Google “How much is a Bentley” to see if I can ever afford one because I’m going places baby!

April 14, 2011:  Panda hits. I now Google, “What the hell is Panda?”

April 17, 2011:  I’m left shell shocked wondering what in the heck just happened.  I’ve seen my traffic drop between 60-70% literally overnight.  I’m sick to my stomach.  Even In-N-Out burger doesn’t sound good to me.

Ouch!

June 2011: It’s the lowest that I’ve seen my traffic since starting my blog over two years back.  I’m still lost and helpless and not sure what to do. I now Google, “Blogger 24-Hour Crisis Hotline”.

September 2011:  5 months later of miserable traffic numbers and I finally figure it out. My traffic is finally coming back. This prompts me to go to iTunes and immediately download MC Hammer’s “2 Legit to Quit”.

May 24, 2013: Panda 2.0 tries its best to throw me off my game. It ain’t happening. Panda 2.0 doesn’t realize that my new theme song is Chumbawamba’s hit Tubthumping for that unforgettable lyric “I get knocked down, but I get up again and you’re never going to keep me down“. Eat that Panda 2.0.

When I say the phrase Panda Update, many of you may not what I’m referring to.  If you’ve been blogging for the past couple of years, then I’m sure you’ve heard of it and if you’re like me, you had a bit of a taste of it and one bite was good enough.

Spring of last year, Google made some changes to their algorithms effecting search traffic.  They claim that only a small percentage of websites were affected.  Unfortunately, that small percentage affected me.

As I mentioned, I literally saw 70% of my search engine traffic disappear overnight.  I felt that I went from one of the premier personal finance blogs in the nation to all of a sudden being a nobody.  When you’ve spent almost three years building up something and then to have it get whacked underneath you without any explanation whatsoever, I promise you it’s not a fun feeling.  There was a part of me that wanted to give up blogging, although I knew I never would, but it was frustrating knowing that I had no control over what had happened.

Thankfully after attending the Financial Blogger Conference in Chicago, I got a chance to meet an online friend, Pinyo from Moolanomy. We talked a little bit about Panda and he offered to take a look at my site and give me some suggestions.  Needless to say, I am so thankful that he did.

Some of the tips that he shared with me allowed me to see results literally overnight.  If you’ve been blogging for a while and you haven’t done any of these tips, I suggest you do so.

You might not have been hit by Panda YET, but Google has made it clear that this is an ongoing update and just because you survived one Panda update doesn’t mean you’ll survive the next.  In fact, several bloggers I know that avoided Panda are now getting hit by Google’s new update named Penguin.  (What’s up with all the zoo animal names?)

Here are some tips to protect your blog from the next zoo animal attack:

1.  Check for broken links (This Is HUGE!)

One of the first things that Pinyo suggested I do was to install the broken link checker plug-in.  This plug-in will go to your site and identify any time that you’ve linked out to another blog or article and the link no longer exists.

It also shows you how many outgoing links are considered redirects, which basically means that it’s not linking to the respected article anymore and it forwards onto an updated link.

When I first ran the scan with the plug in, I discovered that I had several hundred broken links and almost three times as many on redirect.  It took me about a week to go through all of the links individually, but after it was all said and done, I was able to clean it up immensely.

Mandy had a blogging friend who had never did such a check on her blog.  She unfortunately felt the wallop of Penguin 2.0 and ran this test on her site.   She discovered over 1,000 broken links.  If you’ve been blogging for any period of time, run this test.  And try to remind yourself to recheck at least twice a year.

Action:  Download broken link checker plug-in and install it into your site.  Start going through the broken links and redirect, updating accordingly. Although I don’t have any concrete evidence of this, it suggested not changing too many links in one given day.  Such an abrupt change could cause your site to be viewed upon Google in a non-flattering way.  For my redirect, I allocated to doing 50 a day and that’s it.

Also, only run this plugin at night or a period of low traffic. It’s a highly draining plugin that could slow your site down. Once you complete the check and get all the links and redirects fixed, unistall it.

If you don’t want to install another plugin, or you are not on WordPress then you can also use this free site: Broken Link Check.

2. Cut out all of the crap

You’ve heard the phrase “spring cleaning”; well the same concept applies to your blog.  When you look through your archives, I’m sure you’re going to come across a lot of articles that were written back in the day before you had mastered your writing craft.

I had several blog posts that were old and information that was outdated and provided little to no value to anyone that came across them.  But the truth is that nobody was coming across them, so they were taking up wasted space. Pinyo suggested that I go through my archives, identify any old articles that have no relevancy and then no index and no archive them.

He then suggested implementing a 301 redirect linking that article to another article on the blog of a similar topic.  Essentially what the 301 redirect does is if that article does have any appeal value, meaning that someone has linked to it in the past, you can transfer that link onto an existing article.

One example, I had a Roth IRA article that I had wrote in the first couple months of starting my site.  When I came across the article again, I almost laughed at how amateur I sounded.  I then implemented a 301 redirect to a more recent Roth IRA article that provides much more value to my readers.  For any article that provided little value and had no articles of a similar nature, I would then just redirect them directly to my homepage.

How do you do a 301 redirect?  I’m glad you asked.  One of my blogging friends who is more technical than I am was able to do this on the back end inside the server.  I personally have no idea how to do this. I’m sure I could learn, but it would probably take me half a day to figure it out.  Luckily, I use the theme “thesis” that allows you to implement the 301 redirect in your Word press admin.

3.  Keep the links on coming

When I first started my blog back in 2008 and continuing until 2009, I had a very aggressive guest posting strategy.  I was doing so trying to build up my reader base and also build up my blog’s credibility by getting linked from different personal finance sites.

Once I had reached my hay day of having record traffic, I got lazy.  My guest posting dropped considerably, but I didn’t see a need as I continued to see my traffic numbers go up.  While I don’t have any documented evidence that shows this, in my heart, I do believe by not continuing  to guest post consistently it eventually deteriorated my site.

Since then, I have went on another guest posting campaign, making sure to let Google know that my blog is on other site’s radar.

One easy way that I’ve been able to implement this is by going through old blog posts. A lot of the times the content was good, it just needed to be spruced up a bit.  So I’ve taken an article that I’ve already written in the past, added new fresh content to it and then repurposed that as a guest post on another site.

In this case, repurposing the content is a win/win.  I’m able to reuse content that I’ve already spent some time putting together and I am able to offer updated content to another blog and get that valuable link back to my site.  All three strategies have helped bring back some of the traffic to my site.

4.  Don’t get greedy with your ads

For the longest time I was running a 336 x 250 Google Adsense block under my post title. Money wise this paid off as that gave potential search engine visitors more ads to click. Panda, however, had other plans.

One of the main focuses of Panda was to improve reader experience so Google frowned upon sites that pushed their content below the fold because of heavy advertising.

One of the first things I did after being hit by Panda was to reduce the ad block to a 468 x 60 (see below). I also run two more ad blocks (one in the post and another at the end of the post) since Google does allow up to 3 per page.

Is this better Mr. Panda?

5.  The need for speed.

Google likes fast sites.  If you’re site is slow, it can hurt you.  You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to find out how fast (slow) your site is.   If your site is fast, good job!  If not, here are a few things to consider:

1. New Host.  Shared hosting plans are great when you’re just starting off.  After your site starts to grow, you’re now sharing bandwidth with hundreds of other websites, which will drag you down.  You’ll want to up your hosting package to make sure your site uploads faster.
2. Reduce Image Size:  Mom bloggers love BIG photos.  My wife included.  Unfortunately, many of them upload the full file size to their blog. This gets even worse on a shared hosting plan.  You’ll want to reduce the file size before uploading.  One easy tool is Yahoo’s Smush.it.  By uploading your pictures there, you can reduce the file size by over 50% without losing the quality of the picture.  Another advanced option is having all your pictures stored on an outside server like Amazon.

6. Keep it social

If you’re blogging and not using social media, you might as well stop now.

Seriously.

It’s been said that Google is now implementing social signals on your articles (how many Facebook likes, how many ReTweets, etc) to help determine how it ranks in search results.  If you’re a mom/DIY blogger, I don’t have to tell you about the power of Pinterest.

Point is, start using some, if not all, of them to start promoting your blog.

7. Get out of your comfort zone

I’m going to be bold and say, if you’re “just blogging” then you’re going to be left in the dark.

What do I mean by that?  I mean this…..

Starting a blog has become so easy nowadays that thousands of new blogs start up everyday.  Crazy! If you’re just going to “write blog posts” are you really going to stand out?    Using social media will help, but even that’s becoming the norm of blogging.

How are you really going to stand out?  I have a few suggestions:

1. Vlogging: This might be completely out of your comfort zone, but there’s so many powerful reasons why you should be using video in your blog:
   • Deeper connection with your readers.  I’ve experienced this with tremendous results on my blog.  Mandy has also done extremely well with her “Stop and Smell the Roses” vlog cast.
   • YouTube is owned by Google.  It ain’t rocket science.   Google owns search.  Google also owns YouTube.  You have a YouTube channel with your blog = helping you out with search.  Google also measures time on site as a valuable metric.  If you have videos that people watch while they are on your blog, that means they will be there longer.  That’s a win-win all around.
2. Podcast:  Podcasting is becoming huge.   Yes, that’s why we’re jumping on that train. Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income recently shared some stats where 25% of people that found his site did so because of his podcast.   That’s crazy because he already had a big community with his blog and social medial outreach.  The podcast was just icing on the cake.
3. Publish a book.  Amazon has made book publishing so much easier that anyone (yes, anyone) can publish a book.  I have a blogging friend that took a post that was already on their site, added some new content and turned it into an eBook on Amazon.  That book now makes him an extra $500/month plus introduces him to new readers every single day.

Don’t feel that you have to do all of these right now.  As soon as our podcast is launched and my book is published in September, I will be able to say that I’ve done all 3.  But it’s taken me over 5 years!   Start small and work your way up.

8. Claim your authorship

One of my main focuses this year has been Google Authorship.  In a nutshell, Google has been trying to figure out ways to crackdown on all the web spam that exists on the web.  One way of doing that is giving authors/publishers who are experts in their space or niche credit for sharing their expertise on the web.

For example, since I write guest posts for tons of other blogs, contribute to Market Watch, Equifax, and US News, claiming my authorship with these articles should give Google the signal that I’m knowledgeable in financial planning matters.  I’ve been trying to get my wife on board with this for months, but she’s hasn’t caught on yet.  <ahem>.

Here’s one of the best posts I’ve read that talks about why writers should claim their authorship.

Key Takeaways

I still have some room to grow, but I firmly believe that a combination of these  things have helped out immensely.

Have you been hit by Panda or Penguin?  If so, what steps have you done getting your search engine traffic back?

SEO is something that many bloggers don’t take into consideration before hitting publish on their post.

My wife has been one of those that used to miss out on easy search engine traffic <ahem> by not putting forth a little extra effort.

Now she finally gets it -yeah!- and by writing posts like this, our hope is that you’ll get it, too.

This past January we both had the pleasure of meeting Court Tuttle, his beautiful wife, and awesome blogger sister at New Media Expo in Las Vegas. Court has been building websites (hundreds of niche sites) full-time for years so he gets the online space; including SEO. Did I mention he loves to Crossfit, too?

Court is a super cool and humble dude and he definitely knows his stuff. That was even more evident on his guest post that was featured on SEO Moz.

Court runs the blog TheBlogBuilders.com and took time to answer some SEO questions for all our readers. In this interview, we address:

1. How do you start with SEO (even if you don’t know what SEO is)?
2. Is WordPress better than Blogger for SEO?
3. How important are getting backlinks to your site that are optimized for anchor text?
4. How important is Google authorship in regards to SEO?
5. How effective is using YouTube to help with search engine traffic to your blog?
6. What are most common SEO mistakes bloggers are making on their blog right now and how can they fix them?

This interview is a kickoff to another great interview we did with another SEO expert, so stay tuned!   Here’s us talking SEO with Court Tuttle:

If you are reading this post then either you have already started your blog or you at least have some curiosity of getting one going.

Blogging can be an awesome and an equally addicting adventure.

At the same time it can be a very lonely place, especially if you don’t know anything about blogging.

That is exactly where I was five years ago when I started my blog. I knew nothing about hosts, themes, HTML…nada.

I was absolutely clueless.

But after A LOT of research and making some strong connections, blogging has become a passion, and also much more simple.

Another thing that blogging can become is expensive.

There are so many tools and courses and widgets that you can buy that will supposedly get you more traffic or make your blog operate more efficiently.

Some of the stuff is legit.  Some of it is pure crap.

Starting off, it is easy to go “blog broke” buying stuff you don’t really need.

Trust me, I was one of those that wanted to buy everything that I could if I thought it would get me more traffic.

Thankfully, I have a smart wife {thanks baba!} to keep me grounded and to make sure I was being frugal with my blog starting off.

The following is a list of the blogging tools that we have paid for or are currently paying for to help us run our blogging empire.

If you are a newbie blogger starting off, do not think that you have to have all of these tools to have a successful blog. Many of these were purchased after I started making money.

Please Note: Many of the links below are affiliate links. That means if you click on the link and buy it, we are compensated a small commission for the sale. Which we greatly appreciate!

1. A custom theme

Personally, I think it is essential to have some type of custom theme; not only will it make your blog more presentable, but it can also help with search engines and rankings.

Currently, all of our blogs are hosted on Thesis, which has been a theme that I have loved working with. We bought the developer’s license, so that we could upload the theme on various sites.

At the time I’m writing this, Thesis has just recently introduced their 2.0 theme which has received enormous backlash from the blogging community. It is not as simple as the previous themes and after spending a few hours looking it over, I was overwhelmed.  I’m not a guy that likes to be overwhelmed.

I say this as a disclaimer if you are considering buying Thesis.

Currently the 1.85 Thesis theme is what we are using and I love it. Other bloggers have talked about Genesis as being super easy to use. I have personally not had a chance to work with Genesis, but some of my closest blogging allies have.

We are in the process of trying to switch most of our sites over to Genesis. (Mandy is moving her site now)

Ready to rock one of the best themes on the planet.  Check out the Genesis Theme.

2. Hosting

To get started blogging, you have to have a host; that is plain and simple. What is not plain and simple is who your host should be.

If you are a newer blogger having a shared hosting plan with someone like BlueHost, Lunar Pages or Liquid Web is a great way to start. It is super cheap and their customer service is decent enough for a service that costs you less than $10 a month.

Keep in mind though that these are shared hosting plans, so it basically means that your domain is shared with hundreds of others. In the five years that I have been blogging, I think my sites have gone down approximately a dozen times using these type of hosting plans.

If you don’t get a lot of traffic then it’s no big deal. The frustrating part is when it is down for an extended period of time during a high traffic time period {like during the day}. Again, for the price, and if you are just starting off then using a shared hosting plan like Bluehost or Lunar Pages is well worth it.

Looking to start a blog and want a cheap host?  We recommend Bluehost.

Stepping Up Your Plan

The next step up is using something called a dedicated server. However, this gets much more expensive.

Currently we have a few sites hosted with Liquid Web. The difference between Liquid Web and Bluehost is that instead of being shared with other domains, you would have your own dedicated server. That should mean that you have a much faster site and won’t be taken down if one of the other sites is hogging your resources. This type of plan can cost you anywhere from $25 to $50 a month, so it is definitely more expensive, but if you have more traffic and are more concerned about the speed of your site, than that is the way to go.

Since I am as non-techy as they come, trying to manage my own server is something that I had no interest in. I wanted a host that would take care of everything that goes on the backend to make sure that my site was running as efficiently as possible and also was able to back up my site on a daily basis.

Upon doing research, the host that I found was WP Engine. Initially starting with them, I was paying $100 a month for them to host my site. Immediately upon switching to them, my site speed increased dramatically; I loved it!

The only {good} problem was I started to get more traffic and based off WP Engine’s pricing, I went from the $100 a month package to the $250 a month package; ouch! Once again, my site was running the fastest it ever had with them, plus they were instrumental in taking care of all the security measures that I didn’t want to have to worry about.

Since it costs $250 a month, we decided to move my wife’s blog over to WP Engine as well. Her site is filled with tons of high resolution pictures and was running really slow on the shared hosting plan. By moving over to WP Engine, her site sped up dramatically, too.

I have since added a few other sites to WP Engine to fully maximize the $250 a month hosting package. As you can see, it was a natural progression going from the shared hosting plan all the way up to the $250 a month hosting package.

3. Design

This is one of the areas where you can spend a lot of money very easily. The design of your blog is something that you are never ever satisfied with; trust me. Just when you think you have it the way you want it, there is always going to be another tweak that you will want to make.

If you are good with coding and design work than that is great; you can do it yourself. If you are a coding challenged like myself, that can get rather pricey. Luckily, I found a good designer, Larry from Side Income Blogging that has been instrumental in developing GoodFinancialCents.com along the way.

Since Thesis was relatively easy to do some of the basic design stuff like colors, text, background, etc., I saved a lot of money by doing research on my own.  For some of the other custom things like the large subscribe box on the homepage, I had Larry do them.

If you are open minded to get design work done on your site, I would strongly encourage you to get a few quotes. Designers can vary extremely on cost. Make sure also to get some referrals and whatever you do, don’t pay 100% up front.

4. Article writers

When I first started my blog, I just saw it as that, a blog. I never really looked at it as an online publication. As you get more traffic, you start to realize that there are certain topic ideas that you’ll want to cover on your blog.  Some of these topics that might not be your specialty or you just don’t have time to research and write them.  At that point it might make sense to bring on a writer to cover those topics. This helps keep your readers engaged and it can also help generate even more traffic.

Miranda Marquit has been a writer for Good Financial Cents for a number of years. If there’s a topic that I think my readers would have interest in but I know I’ll never have the time to write it, that’s where Miranda comes in.

Even my wife has been able to get contributors to her blog. She’s done a better job than I since hers are free. 

5. Virtual assistant

Had it not been for Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Work Week, I would still be slaving over my blog, doing basic administrative tasks that I should not be doing. In his book, he talked about hiring a virtual assistant to take on some of the tasks that allow to focus on the tasks you should be doing.

In the early days of Good Financial Cents, I was spending a lot of time going through Flickr’s creative comments trying to find pictures to upload to my site.

Since I was routinely posting three or four times a week and each post would have one to two pictures, I figured I was spending anywhere from three to four hours a week trying to find the perfect picture. Yes, I’m anal – haha…..

Having stumbled upon a virtual assistant that randomly contacted me, I inquired to see if she had time to work on my blog inserting pictures. I gave her a step-by-step tutorial on how to do it.

It was so comforting to realize that I had just freed up that many hours a week that I could spend either writing more articles, networking or just doing whatever I wanted to do. The same virtual assistant now is basically a full-time employee doing anything from keyword research, SEO work and any other blog tasks I need her to do.

#gamechanger

6. AWeber

I’ve stated several times on this blog the importance of having an email list.  In fact, in a previous post I wrote about the biggest mistake I made blogging was not starting an email list.  I’ve been able to get a much more deeper connection with my readers through emails than I have with Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest combined.

AWeber has been my go-to email marketing service from the onset.  You can read an in depth post on how to setup an email newsletter with AWeber.

They start off at $19/month for the 1st 500 subscribers.  As my wife’s and my email lists have grown (over 11,000 email addresses) we are currently paying $130/month for their service.

AWeber offers a 30 trial period for $1.  Go here to sign up.

Keyword Research

If you are not doing keyword research before you hit publish on your next blog post, you are making a mistake. Do you have to do it on every single post?

Absolutely not.

But, I am confident there have been posts that you have published, had you done some keyword research, you would be getting more traffic than you currently are.  How do I know this?  Because I’m guilty of it, too!

Here’s how you do it.

6. Google AdWords Tool {free}

The best part about Google AdWords is that it is free. Using the Google AdWords Tool, you are able to see what advertisers are currently bidding for certain keywords and also what they are willing to pay.

The other key element is that it shows how competitive that keyword might be. Before trying to rank for something like “red wagons”, you might see that in Google AdWords it is extremely competitive. Instead, you should go after “tiny red wagons” or something similar. This is what is referred to as “long tail keywords”.

I found this video on YouTube that shows you the basics of using Google’s Adword Tool:

7. Market Samurai

Market Samurai was one of the first blogging tools that I ever paid for.  For the price, it is well worth it. I think it retails for about $100 but the cool thing it is a one-time payment.

Market Samurai is like Google AdWords on steroids. It gives you everything that you need, the ability to do keyword research in a much simpler fashion than what you get in Google AdWords.

My virtual assistant uses this tool on a monthly basis to track our positions on several hundred keywords.

Market Samurai offers a free trial with some great training videos.  Sign for your free trial here.

8. Raven Tools

A tool that helped me immensely in identifying keywords and also doing research on competitors was Raven Tools. When I first started Raven Tools, it was a bargain price of $20 a month. For all of the information that you got out of it, it was more than worth it.

After being with them a year, they restructured their payment plan and it went from $20 a month to $100 a month. I debated dropping it but it was a tool that I used literally almost every day.  It helped identify several keywords on my site that I could rank for.

The tool does a lot more than that.  For example,  you can check back links to your site, you can check to see how many back links a competitor site might have, you can track social media campaigns and much more. It is very robust and definitely offered more than I needed. It wasn’t until they changed some of their keyword research tools that I ended up dropping it.

Raven Tools offers a free 30 day trial period to see if it makes sense for you.

9. SEMRush

SEMRush is what I currently use that replaced Raven Tools. Unlike Market Samurai, it is a monthly payment of $69.95, not a one-time payment, so it is an ongoing expense.

Why I prefer it over Market Samurai is that it is not as clunky as Market Samurai. Market Samurai is a great tool, don’t get me wrong, but upon doing research, sometimes it takes a while for it to process all of the information. SEMRush, being completely web-based, I am able to get similar information super fast.

SEMRush offers a 7 day money back guarantee. Try SEMRush here.

Social Media

I don’t think anyone would argue that social media has a major impact on how much traffic you can drive to your blog, but for many that have full-time jobs, families, soccer games, etc, it’s hard to keep up on all the different social media channels. There are some tools that you can pay for, that can help out.

10. TweetAdder

One of the easiest ways that I’ve been able to get more Twitter followers is to find an influential person in my niche.  I’ll then follow everyone they are following. Next, I’ll start going through all their followers to see if there’s anyone that might have some similar interests as me.  This strategy alone has helped me get a ton of new followers.

The only problem with this method is that it takes time. A service that I found that automates this process is TweetAdder.   This has been super easy to setup and I’m constantly adding new followers daily. 1 profile will cost you a one time payment of $55.  Since adding it, I’ve added a couple thousand new followers.

Go here to begin adding new Twitter followers automatically with TweetAdder.

11. Buffer

Buffer allows you to integrate multiple social media accounts and also allows you to schedule when certain tweets or messages may go out. This is something that I typically frowned upon, as I think social needs to be active. But I also realized that many times people are missing updates from the blog if I only Tweet it or share it on Facebook once.

I’m currently working with my virtual assistant to come up with a game plan where we can have scheduled tweets, highlighting certain blog posts throughout the day.  I’ve been testing this process for a few months and the results have been very promising.  I’ve been able to get more social media shares from older posts giving them new life and, in turn, more traffic to my blog.

The other cool thing with Buffer is that it offers analytics so you can see how well your strategy is going.  Right now I’m posting at 10am and 2pm to my Twitter feed and 7pm to my Facebook Fanpage. If those times don’t generate a ton of shares, I can always tweak it.

Buffer offers a free account, but I’m currently using their paid service that costs $10/month.

12. OnlyWire

One way to get easy backlinks to your site is by submitting them to bookmarking sites.  Boomarking sites are free, but you have to setup individual accounts with all of them.  When you have new posts to share, then you have to manually upload the post to all of them (if you want maximum value).  Yes, this is a real pain in the butt.  That’s if you’re not using Only Wire.

OnlyWire is a social media and bookmarking automation tool that allows you to send your content to 51 different networks. I primarily use OnlyWire on my niche sites to help get the content indexed with Google much faster.  The faster it gets indexed, the faster it will be found in the search engines.

OnlyWire also offers a free trial (7 days) and then goes to $12.99 per month.

Premium Plugins

Adding plug-ins to your blog can give it new life and new features that you and your readers will love. Most plug-ins are free, but there are some premium ones that I have opted to pay for that have done wonders.

13. OptInSkin

OptInSkin allows you to add awesome-looking opt-in forms and social share boxes to your blog in seconds. Since email marketing is something I’ve really focused on over the last couple of years, I was looking for something more engaging than the typical templates that AWeber offers. Introducing OptIn Skin.

OptIn Skin is super easy to use and only costs $67 to get going. They have tons of choices and, also, awesome tracking tools so you can see where people are actually signing up on your newsletter.

Get more email subscribers, by using OptInSkin today.

14. LeadPlayer

Lead Player is another cool plug-in that I’ve been testing out. The only downside of having You Tube videos on your blog is if you’re trying to get the individual to take action. For example, you want them to sign up for your newsletter, or click on an affiliate link to buy a product, you would have to include a link in the blog post underneath the video.

With Lead Player, it allows you to upload your YouTube video to its interface inside your blog.  You can then choose if you want want to add a subscribe box to the video or a call to action button that takes them to a specific affiliate link.  If you’re reviewing a product that you’re an affiliate for, this plugin is magic.

To use LeadPlayer on one site, it will cost you $107.  If you want the unlimited license to use it on multiple sites, it’s only $40 for a total of $147 (this is the one I bought.)

15. Hello Bar

Hello Bar is a tool that I’ve been using on and off for the last couple years. If I’m trying to drive specific attention either to a blog post, an affiliate program, or say, my book, I can put the Hello Bar at the top of my site to draw more attention.

Hello Bar also offers a free trial to see if you like it.  After that, it can cost as little as $5/month up to a certain number of clicks.

16. Pretty Link

If you’re using any type of affiliate marketing on your site, I can’t stress enough how important it is to have Pretty Link. Pretty Link allows you to shrink or mask your links using your domain name instead of the ugly looking long affiliate links.

For example, our affiliate link for Pretty Link looks like this: http://prettylinkpro.com/amember/go.php?r=5050&i=l0

By using pretty link we can make the link look like this: http://dollarsandroses.com/prettylink

See. Much prettier. 

The other cool thing is you can track what links are being clicked inside your blog. There is a more complicated way of doing redirects on the back end of your site, but if you’re a newbie blogger, I wouldn’t suggest this. That requires logging into your server which is a pain in the butt.

Pretty Link can all be done on the back end of your blog and it’s super easy.

Make all your affiliate links look like pros do it.  Get Pretty Link Pro Here.

Others

17. Copyscape

If you ever plan on accepting guest posts from contributors, you always want to make sure that the content is original and not published elsewhere. The easiest tool to do that is Copyscape. For as little as 5 cents a scan, you can copy someone’s guest post into their tool to see if it is published anywhere else on the web.

I also use this tool myself when I’m offering guest posts to other bloggers. When you write a lot about the same topics, you have a tendency to borrow similar ideas that you may have written elsewhere. To prevent “getting an egg on my face” I always double check myself before I send it out.

18. Elance.com

The one thing about the online space that is ironic is that even though it is huge, it can often feel like a lonely place.  Especially when you don’t know how to do something such as coding on your site. When you are needing to hire someone to help you out, it can be tough trying to find a good referral.

Elance.com is a marketplace for freelancers that can do anything from building websites, transcribing interviews, writing content, designing graphics, and on and on and on. I just started using Elance recently and thus far the primary freelancers I have hired have done video transcription for some of my video interviews, as well as writing content for one of my websites.

Before you hire someone on Elance.com, make sure you are very descriptive in what you are looking for. If you put out a very general ad looking to hire someone, you could have 100′s of applications.  The more specific you are the better.

You can (and should) also ask up front for a sample of their work and referrals to other clients they may have worked with.

You have to treat it like a real job interview making sure you ask up front everything that you need to know.

19. Mobile Assistant

This is something that I could not live without. I hesitated listing this as a blogging tool because I also use it for my financial planning practice. But I love it that much that I could not leave it out.

Mobile Assistant is a mobile transcription service that runs me $55 per month. It is a number that I have on speed dial on my cell phone and after placing a simple call, all I have to do is talk. Within a couple of hours, I will receive an email of the complete transcription nicely typed out and formatted to my specifications.

The reality is that I hate to write and Mobile Assistant has been a savior for me.  Where it would usually take me a couple hours to write a 500 word post, I could have 1000 words written using Mobile Assistant after a seven to eight minute phone call.

Now that is efficiency at its finest!

Mobile Assistant uses real people that transcribe and their first language is English, which means less typos and much better transcriptions. If you want to give Mobile Assistant a try, they offer a 20-minute trial to see how much time it will really save you.

The monthly package usually runs $72 per month, but if you use the coupon “financialcents” you will be able to get the rates I pay, which is $55 a month.

P.S.  Much of this post (over 90%) was written using Mobile Assistant.  That’s why I love it!

21. Survey Monkey

One of the best things that you can do to continually engage your readers is to take surveys and find out what they want. Google docs offers a way to do this free, but if you have a lot of people responding, the information can get very jumbled.

Survey Monkey is a tool that I use when I’m looking for feedback from my readers about what content that they want from me. It is super easy to set up and offers charts and graphs that make deciphering the information so much easier than any other counterparts.

Recently, when I was trying to find the perfect book cover, I sent out a survey to all of my readers. If it were not for survey monkey, trying to figure out which book cover my readers like the most would have been very difficult. Thankfully, Survey Monkey saved me hours and I was able to get concrete feedback immediately.

Survey Monkey offers a free version that you can test out.  Although, I’m currently paying $25/month for the Gold Package that offers a few more customizable features.

22. Dropbox

This is another tool that I have used both for my financial planning practice and also for blogging. If you work on different computers it could be very frustrating when you are trying to find the documents that let’s say is on your home computer, but you are now at work. Dropbox is your solution.

By having a folder “in the cloud,” you can upload any file type to it and then access it anywhere. This is also really good if you are trying to share documents or video files with other bloggers or virtual assistants.

Mandy recently did a video collaboration with the people from Blissdom prior to her attendance. Since the video camera we use is a DSLR, the video file is very heavy, so trying to email that to anyone would be very difficult. The solution is Dropbox.

By uploading the video file to a drop box folder and then sharing it with the person from Blissdom. She could then share that folder with that person and then they could download it to their own computer; it’s that simple.

Building Niche Sites

We’ll be talking more about niches on this site in the coming months.   Besides OnlyWire (listed above) the following tools have been instrumental in growing one of my main niches site from 0 to 15,000 unique visitors per month.   I’ve also tested these tools on my main blog targeting keywords that were outside the top 10 of Google’s 1st page results.  After a little work, I was able to move many of them to the front page.

23. The Best Spinner

This is a tool that I primarily use for building our niche sites. By using this tool, you can take this one written article and upload it to the tool and then “spin it” so that one article can become five to ten new and unique articles. Those articles can then be uploaded to other web properties to build a back link to your main site. The Best Spinner runs you $77 a year to use if you are ever considering developing some sort of niche site.

The Best Spinner for 7 days for $7.  (then $77/year after that).

24. Unique Article Wizard

After you spin all your articles using The Best Spinner, you now need to get them published on the web.  There’s the manual way which would take hours a day to do.  Or there’s the smart way using Unique Article Wizard.

My VA uses Unique Article Wizard to submit all the new posts that we are writing for article directories and other sites.  This is a tool that they use daily which is why I’m okay spending $67/month to have it.

No free trials for Unique Article Wizard.  $67/month gets you going.

Bottom Line

Don’t feel you need all of any of these tools to get you going.  As your blog grows, you can start incorporating some of these tools to make blogging that much easier for you.

<<pin me>>

It’s time for the monthly income report.

Each month “The Wife” crunches the numbers on our earnings while I, “The Husband”, puts together a recap of what happened in our online business. A dangerous combo!

As a reminder, this is why we do the income reports:

1. Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at but seeing improvement. You can go here for all of our previous blog income reports.
2. Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases. (thankfully it has)
3. Truth. To show people that you really can make money online and in a non-scammy way.
4. Transparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it, too.

Remember: We started blogging in July of 2008 so it’s taken us A LOT of time to figure this blogging thing out. And truthfully, we still have a lot to learn. Don’t get the impression that you can start a blog today and turn a profit tomorrow. I promise you, it ain’t going to happen.

What went down in March

When it comes to writing and publishing a book, the one thing that I continue to learn is that it never ends.

Never.

After writing the book and going through several rounds of edits, you have so many things that you have to address.  I knew writing a book was involved.  I just never imagined how involved.

I am so thankful that it’s nearly complete and soon it will be in bookstores {near you}.

The fact that I’ve been able to publish ANY posts across the web is something short of a miracle.  But, if you’re a blogger that’s what it takes to #hustle.   <<< One of my favorite hashtags. 

Husband Vs. Wife

If you haven’t noticed yet, there’s a bit of a rivalry between the wifey and I with our blogs.

At one time I had way more Facebook fans than her.  But in the past couple of months, she’s been able to do some big giveaways with other bloggers so now she’s killing me.  {At the time of writing this it’s 6,433 to 4,099. Yeah, no contest}.

For the longest time my traffic was always way more than hers.  Then this thing called Pinterest began to exist and, once again, I got lost in the dust.

Thankfully, my wife has been generous at lending some of her Pinterest traffic tips to my blog and now I’m seeing some decent traffic from it.

So now our traffic levels are much closer together.  Because of that, I thought it would be fun to show traffic numbers between the two of us each month so we can “duke it out” for you all to see.

March Traffic Numbers

First month goes to the wife.  You knew that was coming, didn’t you. 

In March she had 189,178 visitors (146,819 being unique).  You don’t see her page views in the screenshot below, but she’s also killing me there.  In March she averaged 1.85 pageviews per visitor for a grand total of 350,830.

For my site, I was able to get 155,679 visitors for the month.  I only average around 1.3 pageviews per visitor so my grand total is much lower.

P.S. If you have any suggestions on how to increase pageviews on my blog, I’m all ears.

Overall, I know we’re both pleased with our traffic numbers. We’ll see how next month looks. I know its early but I think the wifey is going down! Haha…

Here’s a look at the numbers for March….

Income Breakdown

Good Financial Cents

• Adsense: $2,157.90
• Adspeed: $1,801.45
• Commission Junction: $1,357.00
• Flex Offers:$2,150.81
• Direct Advertising: $0
• Media Net:  $473.13
• Consumer Track: $84.00
• You Need A Budget: $54.00

• Total: $8,078.29

Dollars and Roses

• GoDaddy: $22.72
• ShareASale (Thesis Theme and Genesis Theme): $179.85
• Blogging Your Passion: $55.50

• Total: $258.07

Other Niche Sites

• Adsense: $152.19
• Flex Offers: $308.00
• Direct Advertising: $282.57
• Media Net:  $84.69
• Main Niche Site Revenue: $7,715.03

• Total: $8,542.48

• BlogHer Ads: $802.19
• BlogHer Sponsored Posts: $0
• Direct Advertising: $310.00
• Adsense: $462.54
• Lijit Media: $54.94
• Content Ads: $325.50
• BlueHost: $1,170.00

• Total $3,125.17

• Equifax: $200.00

• Total: $200.00

Total Revenue for March: $20,204.01

Revenue Last Month: $16,424.84

• Difference: +3,779.17
• January 2012: $3,120.93
• Total for 2012: $115,289.16
  
• Running Total 2013: $54,391.64

Monthly Fixed Expenses

Many of you have asked what our expenses are each month running our online business.

• Hosting Companies

• WPEngine:    $250.00
• Liquid Web:   $25.00
• Lunar Pages:  $5.00
• Bluehost:         $5.00

• AWeber:                        $130.00
• Article Writers:            $250.00 (average)
• Unique Article Wizard:  $67.00
• Virtual Assistant:            $1,000.00
• Total:                              $1,732.00

This is just a rough estimate of our fixed monthly expenses.  I’ve been working on a comprehensive post that shows everything that we pay for but it’s turning into a monster post – over 3,000 words at this point.  I promise that it will be ready next month.

What Happened in March

Ba-da-bing! After getting very close a few times, we finally reached our monthly gross revenue goal of $20k.  Woop woop!  So many things came together in what turned out to be a solid month.  A couple things that really worked out:

• Good Financial Cents continues to put out solid numbers even with $0 in direct advertising last month.  I recently introduced Kevin Mulligan as my full-time blog editor to allow me to focus on creating more great content.  It’s hard to believe that my blog has grown to a point to needing someone to come on full-time, but that’s the reality of where my site is now. Crazy!
• Dollars and Roses is starting to add to the bottom line with conversions for hosting companies and other affiliates.  Although I never intended this site to be a revenue generator, the reality is that it has the potential to do so.  Exciting….
• Our niche sites continue to hum along recording a record month last month, too.
• House of Rose put up another record month surpassing $3k for the 1st time.  Yeah baba!  I’m sure you never imagined that she could replace her previous day job income from her blog, but she’s getting close.  Real close!

What’s next?

For me, it’s finally getting our podcast launched.  I’ve been saying that for a the past couple of income reports but no more excuses.  It’s time.  I’ve given myself the month of April as my deadline to finally get it going.  Hold me accountable!

For Mandy, I have bigger plans for her.    I thought it would be a really good idea for her to write her first eBook and publish it on Amazon.   Here was her announcement on her Facebook Fanpage:

She obviously knows her stuff for decorating on the cheap so I thought it was a perfect fit for her.  It’s just another way for her to stand out from the competition, monetize her site even more, and work on something she enjoys doing that will really help people.  Trifecta!

Until next month….

Thanks again for all your support!

Welcome to – Monthly Site Reviews by the Dollars and Roses Team!

Many of our readers have asked us to take at look at their sites to give them candid feedback.

Trust me when I say this:  We would love to review all of your sites!

Unfortunately, there is one small little factor interfering with this.   That little thing called “time”.  

If only there were 24 more hours in a day.

We thought the next best thing is to review one lucky site per month, do a video on it and share it with all of you.   That way you might pick up a few ideas from what we share with the site that we are reviewing.

We are not claiming to be experts by any means, but we have been blogging for over 5 years and have learned quite a bit along the way.

What’s good knowledge if you dont’ share it, right?

Site Review {April}

This month we had a ton of you submit your site to be a part of our series {thank you for that, by the way}. And please please please remember if we didn’t choose you this month, there is always still a chance we will get to you next time!

The site we will be reviewing for April? Fresh and Organized!

Is there anything I missed? Do you have any suggestions for her blog?

Do you want us to look at your site? Either leave a comment with a link to your site or use our contact form and tell us you’re interested. There’s no guarantee will get to your site, but we’ll do our best. *Pinky promise*

Have you ever heard other bloggers say, “It’s all in the email list!”

I spent over 3 years hearing my husband make claims that I needed to start an email list for House of Rose. THREE LONG YEARS I didn’t listen to the man.

Mainly because I didn’t view my blog as a business or as “worthy” of anything more than an online family journal.

Finally, one day, roughly 6 short months ago, I decided to take his advice and start my “list” {as they call it in the online space}.

So today I thought it would be a good opportunity to share with you the “WHY” behind starting my list, as well as showing you “HOW” easy it is to set up.

Here’s to hoping your skull isn’t as thick as mine and it doesn’t take you 3 long years to take good advice {picture me holding a glass of wine and toasting to your wonderful thick skull.} 

What is a E-mail Newsletter and Why Do You Need To Have One? 

First, let me specify that I am not talking about print newsletters {although I am sure those are fabulous too}…I am going to specifically be discussing email newsletters.

First let’s address, “What is an email newsletter?” 

An email newsletter is a way to offer your readers a way to subscribe to get emails from you. Those emails can contain a lot of different kinds of information and, most often, they contain additional things that you don’t include on your website. A way to give your readers a deeper insight into YOU and your brand/image/blog.

*An important thing to note is that this is completely different than someone signing up to your RSS feed. I want to make that clear. I hear this statement all of the time: “I already have an email subscription option through my RSS feed.”

Yes, that is true, if you are using Feedblitz through your FeedBurner account {or some other feed subscription service} then you do have the ability to offer your readers an email subscription. But THAT email subscription ONLY allows your readers to have your blog posts delivered directly to their inbox. ONLY your blog posts. Nothing more.

The email newsletter is completely separate from the content you provide on your blog. Let’s call it “additional content” per say.

Why is that good? Because it allows you to email your readers whatever you want to, whenever you want to! Score!

Confused yet? Pssst, this ain’t nothing compared to some other posts we have written.

Moving on…….

Are you wondering, why worry about trying to get readers to subscribe to your newsletter if they already signed up for your RSS feed?

Awesome. I wondered that same thing for three long years {insert thick skulled blogger<<<aka<<<<ME}.

The reason is simple…because you have the ability to COLLECT email addresses.

Yes, when someone signs up for your newsletter they are subscribing by entering their email address. RSS feed does not allow you to “collect” email addresses.

3 reasons why collecting email addresses is so important

I’m sure the most frequent answer you will hear to this question is: “Because the money is in the list!”

That is an expression that has been thrown around since the beginning of email-list-time.  I’m not going to disagree with it completely, although I’d like to address {later on in the post} why that should absolutely NOT be the focus or the “WHY” behind starting your email list.

1| Deeper Connection with Your Readers

First things first, it’s a great way connect with your readers on a more one-on-one or personal platform. Don’t you feel way more connected to someone through email rather than through reading a general blog post?

2| It Never Goes Away

Another great thing to keep in mind is that an email list will never die! I’m sure you’ve heard my husband complain about Google’s Panda or Penguin updates {the ones that made him lose over 70% of his traffic in 2011}. Well guess what? When you collect email addresses you will always have a way to communicate with your readers…even if Google comes out with some new animal update. Ahem. 

3| Money is in the List (with patience)

Let’s address the money issue. I whole-heartedly believe that the money CAN be in the list. But it has to be done right. Just like blogging, if your sole purpose it to make money? You will most likely fail.

Same goes with the list. If you are starting an email list with the sole purpose of profiting in some way? You will lose.

Your desire has to be more than blasting out affiliate links or trying to push your latest e-book. Although the email list CAN be a good marketing tool when selling things…you have to remember there has to be more to it.

In my opinion, an email list allows you to build relationships with your audience. You are able to gain their trust by offering helpful tips or tutorials. By sharing real life stories. By being transparent about your ups and downs.

Once you do that, and you gain the trust of your subscribers…then it’s not big deal if you ask them to buy through one of our affiliate links or promote one of your new books. They will WANT to help you since you have helped them for so long.

Alright, now that you see the importance of starting your email list…let me show you how easy it is to set up.

 How to Start Your Newsletter

1. Sign Up For AWeber

There are many options out there, but AWeber is, BY FAR, my favorite choice when it comes to newsletter subscription services. Head over to AWeber and sign up for an account.

Click “Order”

It even allows you to create a trial account for $1. How’s that for a test drive?

2.  Set Up Your Email List

After you register for an AWeber account and sign in you will be directed to your control panel. This is where you are going to set up your first email list. Woot woot!

You will need to click on “Create and Manage Lists” and then “Create a New List”.

Follow the prompts to enter in your personal information, including the name of your list and list description. For example, our list name would be dollarsandroses. You can name it anything you want since this is more for you to identify with then anyone else.

**Note: it will ask you to enter your address. The address you enter will show up on all emails that are sent out so it’s important that you know that. We use our business address so that our personal address does not get distributed. If you don’t have a business address – that’s fine, you can use your personal address. If that makes you uncomfortable you may want to consider using a different address.

You will need to personalize your list by adding a company name {which can be the name of your blog}, website url, and email signature. It also gives you the option of uploading your logo or header.

3. Set Up Your Confirmed Opt-In Email 

This is where I started getting glossy eyed. But I promise, it only sounds confusing. It’s not hard to understand. Stay with me.

The Confirmed Opt-In email is what will get sent out to the reader immediately after they subscribe to your newsletter. There is a link in the email that is used to confirm that the person is human {and not some alien – aka spammer} and that they are interested in joining your email list.

There is a template email that you can use to send out, but I prefer to customize it so it’s a little more personal.

Here’s an example of what our Dollars and Roses Confirmed Opt-In email says…

4. Set Up Your Success Page

Underneath your Confirmed Opt-In email message you will see a section called “Success Page”.

You will want to insert a URL back to your website in this space. The URL you insert here is where readers will be taken after they have clicked on the confirmation link in the email.

My suggestion is to create a “new page” on your own blog. The new page should welcome the reader to your newsletter and thank the person for their confirmation. You also may want to ask the subscriber to “white list” your email address so it will not be blocked by spam filters.

I also like to link to my most popular articles and to my social media pages.  You can see an example of my House of Rose success page here.

5. Create a Follow Up Message

Understanding a Follow Up message is easier than it sounds. Think of a Follow Up message as a pre-written email. You can create a series of Follow Up messages that are pre-written and can be sent out in different time intervals to your subscribers. The first Follow Up message is always a welcome message that the subscriber will receive immediately after they have clicked the confirmation link.

You have probably heard these Follow Up messages referred to as “autoresponders”. Essentially, that is what they are. They are automatic emails that are pre-written, by you, and sent out to the subscribers in a time interval set by you.

Jeff currently has 30 pre-written emails set up to be sent out every 15 days. It doesn’t matter when someone signs up, they will automatically be taken through the series of emails from the very beginning. I am still working on building my Follow Up messages so I currently only have 5 pre-written emails set up. This is something that takes time to create and I would suggest adding one new Follow Up message a week to your series.

To add a new Follow Up message simple click on “Messages” at the top toolbar and then click on “Follow Up”.

Click “Add New Follow Up Message” to create your first Welcome Email.

 6. Create a Welcome Email

The welcome message is essentially the very FIRST email that your new subscribers will receive so it’s important that you “welcome” them to your list.

It’s a good idea to include a thank you message in this first email as well.

You may also want to set your subscribers expectations. In other words, what can they expect to get out of your newsletter and how often will they receive it. Don’t forget to include links to your social media pages and a way for them to contact you. Remember this is all about becoming personal…so you want them to have easy access to you.

When you go to start writing your welcome message you will see that you have the choice of writing in plain text format or html format.

If you want to “spruce” up your newsletter then you will need to explore the html format. There are templates to choose from and you will also have the ability to change the font, make things bold, etc.

If you aren’t too concerned about being fancy then you can choose to write your emails in plain text. This is the preferred method suggested by Aweber.

7. Test, Test, Test…

It’s very important to send yourself a test message after you finish writing your first email. This will allow you to see EXACTLY what your subscribers will be receiving.

No surprises. Plus, this is a great way to re-read and edit your messages before they are sent to thousands. When you are under Follow Up Messages you will see the list of messages. Next to each message you will see Spam, Test, Copy, Delete.

To test your message just choose “Test” and you can send it to any email address you want. 

If you test it and decide that you want to change something, no fear. You can go back in and edit the message at any time. Just make sure you “Save” so that the changes will take effect.

8. Create Your Web Form

The web form or email opt-in is what you will place on your site to collect email addresses. Here is the web form we currently use for our sidebar…

…and here is one we use on our “Income Reports” page.

As you can see, they are both very different. That is the beauty of web forms, you can customize them however you want. Keep in mind that if you are using a web form for your sidebar then you will want it to be smaller than one you would use on a blog post or page.

Click on “Web Form” at the top of the page.

Then click “Create A New Web Form”.

You will have the ability to choose different colors, sizes, fonts, etc. to create your own form. There are plenty of templates you can customize. My suggestion is to play around with them until you find a design you like.

Follow the prompts to customize your web form.

Once you are satisfied with how it looks then you can customize your “Basic Settings”.

You can name your form anything you want. The purpose of the name is to help you keep track of the different forms you create. Under “Thank You Page” you can choose “Custom” and direct people to the URL of the thank you page you created earlier. Remember?

If you’ve been slacking {ahem} and haven’t set up your thank you page yet then you can choose “Basic Version” and Aweber will send them to a generic page that lets the subscriber know that an email will be sent their way that contains a confirmation link they must click in order to verify their subscription to the newsletter.

9.  Grab the Code

You have finished designing your web form, customized your basic settings and now you will need to grab the code that you insert into your site that will allow your form to be visible to your readers.

Please do not only read “code” here and X out of the screen. It’s SIMPLE. Pinky promise.

Even if your degree is not in html coding.

Under the “Publish” tab click on “I Will Install My Form”.

You will have the choice of grabbing the “Javascript Snippet” or the “Raw HTML Version”.

I would recommend choosing the “Javascript Snippet” because if you go back to Aweber and update/change your forms, it automatically updates on your site without you having to reinstall the code.

Copy the code that looks like this:

You will want to paste this code in to your site wherever you want your web form to show up.

Here is how to install it if you have a WordPress Blog. 

If you want the web form to appear on a certain page or blog post then paste the code into the Text tab for the post/page. The Text tab is right next to the Visual tab in the right hand corner of your post/page.

If you want the web form to show up in your sidebar than you will need to paste the code in to a “Text Widget”.

 *Tip: If you want the web form to be centered, just add <center> to the front of the code and </center> to the end. 

PHEW! Are you exhausted yet?! You can relax now because YOU ARE DONE!

Trust me, you will be so happy you set this up.

Start growing your list! 

Interested in trying out AWeber?  Sign up for a $1 trial account now.

It’s time for the monthly income report.

Each month “The Wife” crunches the numbers on our earnings while I, “The Husband”, puts together a recap of what happened in our online business. A dangerous combo!

As a reminder, this is why we do the income reports:

1. Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at but seeing improvement. You can go here for all of our previous blog income reports.
2. Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases. (thankfully it has)
3. Truth. To show people that you really can make money online and in a non-scammy way.
4. Transparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it, too.

Remember: We started blogging in July of 2008 so it’s taken us A LOT of time to figure this blogging thing out. And truthfully, we still have a lot to learn. Don’t get the impression that you can start a blog today and turn a profit tomorrow. I promise you, it ain’t going to happen.

What went down in February

A blur.  That’s the only way I can wrap up what’s going on with all our online activities.  2013 continues to be a banner year and the skies the limit.

One common theme that I’m noticing with doing these income reports is that although this section is always  titled “What went down in <fill in previous month>”, I can never remember what happened that far back.    Going forward just know that I’ll be writing about what’s going on currently to keep it fresh.

The Podcast Is Coming Along

Starting a podcast is definitely a lot harder that it seems.  We have all the equipment setup correctly and we even did our first interview – yeah!   But we still need to create a podcast graphic, an intro/outro for the podcast, get approved through iTunes, and on, and on, and on……

Right now our plan is to get some good interviews in the queue so that when we do launch it, you’ll have plenty of selection to choose from.

Our first interview was with Emily Eddington (now Dihle) who is a YouTube Sensation. You can check her YouTube Channel Beauty Broadcast that has almost 400,000 subscribers.  (I’m sure by the time you read this she’ll have passed that mark).

Emily was able to quit her job as a morning news anchor to focus on her YouTube channel full-time.   How sweet is that?

We also recorded the interview, and we’ll be sharing that really soon.  Stay tuned!

Blissdom

We both recently returned from Dallas where Mandy was able to attend Blissdom for the second time.   This time, however, she was selected to be a community leader.

As a community leader, she was in charge of welcoming first time attendees and making them feel at home. It also allowed her to film this video where she does the robot.

Yes, the robot. See for yourself:

*****insert Mandy

Huge thanks to the hubby for sharing that amazing video of me doing the robot. Much appreciated. And I am glad that my terrible dance skills have at least given you all a decent laugh.

I just wanted to pop in to say that Blissdom was a great experience again this year. As most of you know I credit Blissdom with giving me the desire and inspiration I needed to see my blog as more than just an online journal. Last year when I left the conference I finally realized that my voice matters. That this lil ole blog I have is more than just a place to share pictures of my kids.

This year there was tons more inspiration as we heard from Jon Acuff again. He.Is.Amazing. Be sure to check out his latest book called “Punch Fear In The Face”! If you click on the link below it will help my husband and I possibly win a dinner with him and Dave Ramsey. I am determined to win! Ha!

I was honored to be chosen as a community leader this year and it gave me the chance to be pushed out of my comfort zone. I talk to more people this year than I can even count. I tried to go out of my way to introduce myself to others. It truly stretched me.

My biggest take away from this years conference was definitely the relationships that I created at the conference. It was beyond what any amazing session could have given me. To be surrounded by hundreds of women who “get you”. Who all speak the same weird-o blog language that you geek out over. And just the ability to be able to learn from other women who are all in a similar place as me. Well worth the money I paid to get there.

Here’s a look at the numbers for February….

Income Breakdown

Good Financial Cents

• Adsense: $2,043.32
• Adspeed: $636.40
• Commission Junction: $949.55
• Flex Offers:$2,179.05
• Direct Advertising: $810.30
• Media Net:  $513.79
• Click Bank: $92.29
• Consumer Track: $294.00

• Total: $7,518.70

Dollars and Roses

• GoDaddy: $16.17
• ShareASale (Thesis Theme): $114.84
• Blogging Your Passion: $92.50
• Lunar Pages: $415.00

• Total: $638.51

Other Niche Sites

• Adsense: $77.17
• Flex Offers: $865.55
• Direct Advertising: $800.00
• Media Net:  $42.41
• Main Niche Site Revenue:$4,308.61

• Total: $6,093.74

• BlogHer Ads: $514.08
• BlogHer Sponsored Posts: $0
• Direct Advertising: $140.00
• Adsense: $373.41
• Lijit Media: $45.47
• Content Ads: $91.93
• BlueHost: $810.00

• Total $1,974.89

• Equifax: $200.00

• Total: $200.00

Total Revenue for February: $16,424.84

Revenue Last Month: $17,762.79

• Difference: -1,336.95
• January 2012: $3,551.65
• Total for 2012: $115,289.16
  
• Running Total 2013: 34,187.63

What Happened in February

Two months in a of row of being down.  On no!   Haha…..  Just kidding.  No stressing here.

For my main blog, I saw a decrease of 20,000 visits from last month.  Some due to Google being Google.  Other to the fact that February was a short month.

The biggest hit for the month was for my CPM ad network (Adspeed).  They ran out of inventory February 7th – boo! – so I was left with Google Adsense and Media.net to fill the void.

It’s another testament to why it’s important to have multiple ad networks in the event this ever happens to you.

Even though we had a down month, we’re still almost $13,000 more that where we were last year this month.   That makes the down month not feel so down. 

Good Ad Networks

Another disappointing event in February was that one of our main affiliates pulled from Flex Offers and decided to go direct.   My ad rep never bothered to inform me of this.   After a few weeks we emailed him to inquire why we hadn’t any conversions in a while.

4 days went by with no response.   Second email….

3 days goes by with no response.  Now I’m fed up.

I asked a few of my blogging buddies (which I should have done in the beginning) what the deal was and learned they had gone private.  I immediately asked for introduction to their internal rep (and got it) and I’m now back and running.

I’m in the process of finding another network that I can run my affiliates through because of that experience.    I still haven’t received an explanation as to why – it’s been over a month!

If you get into an affiliate network, get on good terms with your ad rep.  They can be your biggest ally or your biggest foe.

What’s Next?

Another podcast is underway and our next monthly site review will be coming up soon.  Did you get chosen?  Only time will tell.

One BIG change is that after being with the premium theme Thesis for almost 5 years now (basically since I started blogging) we’re moving all our sites over to Genesis.  It’s bittersweet because I loved Thesis for so long, but their recent upgrade to Thesis 2.0 was a major letdown.

When I first bought Thesis I was able to do a lot of the customizations myself.  Remember, I am not a coder so that really impressed me.

Almost 5 years later, I’ve become decent with HTML to hack my way through the basics.  When I first took a look at the new Thesis 2.0, I was lost.  I have no desire to become a designer and that’s what I feel the latest upgrade forces you to be.  #notcool

There are a few other reasons why we’re switching, too; but that’s the gist of it. If you haven’t checked out Genesis yet, you should.

See you all soon…..

Thanks again for all your support!