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Five Months Of Frugaling: A Reflection

By Frugaling 8 Comments

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Frugaling.org was founded on May 4th, 2013, as the spring semester of graduate school was just wrapping up. I wanted to write about my efforts and find an audience. Since then, nearly 69,000 people have visited the site. I’m proud to announce that today marks the 5th month anniversary!

Some of this month’s highlights included, learning to say no to more responsibilities, how Facebook makes you spend more, and how I was paying off massive amounts of student loan debt. Overall, this was the highest grossing month and one of my most productive writing periods.

For this reflection, I decided to separate the website’s growth and my personal finance accomplishments. Read below for more details:

Website Growth

  • Continued growth in Google traffic
    • The organic traffic to my site has continued to grow for older articles
    • Google appears to be ranking my site higher more regularly
    • Joined the Google Authorship program after reading Modest Money’s article
      • Noticed a positive bump in traffic because of it
  • Increased RSS Subscribers
    • Google’s Feedburner has shown tremendous growth in subscribers of the RSS feed
    • There are now over 130 subscribers of the site
  • Strong influence and commentary from personal finance community
    • The personal finance bloggers have increased commenting on my site, which has really made me feel like I have more of an audience and conversation going on
    • I’m deeply grateful for their time and effort
  • Nearly breached the 200,000 mark on Alexa
    • Got incredibly close to surpassing the top 200k on Alexa! Wow!
    • Very excited to pass that hurdle over the next month – I’m crossing my fingers
  • Progress with AdSense
    • Revenue grew from $26 to over $40
  • LinkOffers Affiliate Revenue
    • Affiliate Revenue continued to be a highlight, as I made thousands of dollars this month from this

Personal Finances

  • Paid off $4,000 in student loan debt
    • Hoping to get below $30,000 by January 1st
    • People started commenting that this site may be more than just a hobby
      • This is both a flattering and startling reality, as it’s only been five months of work
  • Testing out an all-cash lifestyle for 2 weeks
    • Putting all my credit and debit cards away

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Comments

  1. Debt RoundUp says

    October 4, 2013 at 11:39 am

    Nice work Sam. You are really killing it over here. I noticed that my adsense revenue has increased as of late. Not sure what caused it, but I will take it.

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      October 4, 2013 at 11:42 am

      Thanks for the encouragement! Hah. It’s been a heck of a ride, and I’m excited to be making this kind of progress.

      Yeah, not sure what’s affected the revenue, but I’ve been getting more per click recently, too! Maybe Google is generally ranking us higher these days?

      All the best,
      -S.

      Reply
  2. thebrokeandbeautifullife says

    October 4, 2013 at 2:10 pm

    Ok, I want the secrets to the your Affiliate Revenue :)! Looks like you’re right at the 200,000 mark, just hit it this week myself, feels good. Congrats!

    Reply
  3. Justin @ RootofGood says

    October 4, 2013 at 3:23 pm

    Sam, you appear to be doing great! I hope I am where you are when I have my five monthversary (in 4 more months!).

    I’m definitely envious of the affiliate revenue. I’ve just made my first affiliate links active, so we’ll see how it goes.

    I hope you continue to find blogging rewarding. It’s pretty awesome knowing other people enjoy and appreciate reading your posts.

    Keep it up!

    Reply
  4. Nick @ AYoungPro.com says

    October 4, 2013 at 3:29 pm

    Haha, you make me look bad Sam. My site has been around for 7 months but you have definitely made a lot more money than me! Keep rocking it!

    Reply
  5. MoneySmartGuides says

    October 7, 2013 at 7:18 am

    Great work!! I feels good to earn some income and use it pay off debt. I enjoy the end of the month when I total up all of my income and begin to allocate it. I re-invest most of it, but do use some for savings. It’s a great feeling.

    Reply
  6. Sam Lustgarten says

    October 11, 2013 at 10:44 am

    Thanks for all the positivity everybody! Means a lot to have your support and commentary. I feel like it’s been going well – just need to keep it up! 🙂

    Sam

    Reply
  7. thepotatohead says

    October 14, 2013 at 7:49 pm

    Wow, awesome job Sam. Definitely killing it on the affiliate revenue. Our adsense revenue took a huge hit at the end of july/start of august, working on getting that back but its been tough.

    Reply

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