An Update After 2 Years of Blogging

With this post Full Time Finance celebrates 2 years of existence.  2 years of 2-3 posts a week on personal finance.  Today to celebrate I’m going to give you a bit of a behind the scenes peak at the site and the latest on our household.

Background

If you are new to Full Time Finance allow me to first familiarize you with why this site exists.  I created this blog to talk about personal finance and economics.  Basically in my every day life most of my family and friends are not interested in this topic, at least to the degree of myself.  So this all started with wanting an outlet.  Where could I write and discuss topics in personal finance and economics pertinent to a high income mid career individual?  This blog is that place.

Goals and Stats After 2 Years

The goal of the blog since day one, as with any site, was to grow readership.  I wanted to ensure I had someone to discuss these topics with.  In that respect this site has been fairly successful.  At the time of this writing this site has approximately 2500 comments, less than half of which are my own.  The site has had over 97K page views in the last 2 years, over 52K sessions, and 31K unique users.  We are still a fairly small site averaging about 6-8K views a month across about 5000 Sessions and 4000 people.  I continue to work to grow this site, though honestly my goals are not as ostentatious as some of the larger sites.  My end goal from the beginning was about 10K views a month.  We have actually had one month at that level in the past.

Most Read Post Over 2 Years

The top read post over the last 2 years interestingly enough is my post on Rental Car Arbitrage.  If you found this site through that post, welcome.  I hope you stick around and discover other posts that interest you.    For those who read that article recently, a brief update.  I had the rental car for 4 months before getting my old car back.  I had no problems with the process or the car.  Ultimately I came out ahead.  You can read more about the conclusion here.

Finances of Blogging

Which brings me to my second goal for Full Time Finance, be revenue neutral on the blog.  First to be clear making money doing something you enjoy like blogging is great and I wouldn’t turn down a profit if there was any.  But it’s also just not the goal of the blog.  I could monetize much more then I do, but I have no desire to do so.   At present I haven’t done a new affiliate link in about a year, so basically the only income from this site is from the two ads and some old affiliate links.  The only expenses are a PO box (required to legally do email newsletters, feel free to signup on your right) and some portion of the hosting fees.  After those expenses some month’s I might be able to buy a beer on what is left.  

Blogging Is Usually A Passion Project

I tell you this for those that think Field of Dreams style they’ll build a blog and suddenly everyone will come.  This is the wakeup call for those people who feel they’ll write a blog and it will someday lead to being able to quit their job.  The reality is even if I went hog wild on monetization I’d be looking at maybe $50 a month at my current levels of traffic.  After 2 years.  Could I have gotten higher views with more aggressive guest posting, investment, and marketing? Definitely, though with a  full time job that isn’t in the cards.    Even with these steps few blogs become wildly successful overnight, it takes years of building and even a bit of luck.  All the marketing in the world doesn’t make up for time.

Ancillary Benefits of Blogging

The third and final reason I started this blog was to develop skills in digital marketing.  At the time when I started this blog I’d also recently changed jobs.  That position was around the marketing and E-commerce program management space.  I’ve since moved on from that role but I will say dabbling in social media, data privacy laws, and even SEO on this blog as a sandbox helped tremendously in that job.     In addition this blog has helped me with a number of decisions through the 2 years, from buying a generator to decisions related to the new tax laws.  So while the direct revenue impact of Full Time Finance on our household is at best beer money, the general financial impact of the site on my household is not insignificant.

An Update On the Family Behind the Blog After 2 Years

Over the last 2 years my life and that of my family has changed a lot.  Shortly after starting the blog my wife became a stay at home mom for our 2 boys.  That lasted all of about 6 months before she decided in addition to kids, work was needed for sanity.  She’s now a year into her engineering consulting business.  Me meanwhile, I’m in a new job.  I’m still enjoying significant work business travel in my new position.   I still have not taken action on finding a part time adjunct economics professor position goal I once mentioned, I’m just too busy with everything else.  

Lean Fire and Still Going

Financially the Full Time Finance household passed the 4% rule delineator of Lean Fire sometime this year.  Why do I say sometime?  For a while there it was jumping in and out with the movement of the market.  Really a good illustrator about my point of net worth not being a goal for me, just a milestone.    Our goal is still not to retire before 55, regardless of finances.  However, I still noted the milestone on the way to the number I estimate we need to lead a worry free retirement (which will most likely occur long before 55).

The Future?

So what does the future hold for Full Time Finance?  More of the same.  As always I have a queue of articles already written waiting to be posted.  I continue to augment these on a 2 a week basis with no end in sight.  So as long as I keep coming up with posts to write I’ll keep posting.    Most posts will continue to be on economics, travel, and finance.

In addition to the posts on economic and finance I’ve written a few series posts this year exploring basic and advanced how to topics.  These included a piece on the Administrative parts of setting up a business and an in-depth look at travel hacking and underlying hacking strategies.  I really enjoyed writing these posts.  They also gave me something to point people to in my everyday life when they ask me about these processes.    I suspect you’ll see a few more of these in the next year, probably at the same rate.   Finally, the posts on our various travel hacking exploits along with our other goals will continue.

Year 3 Begins

Beyond that, as always I’m open for ideas from you my audience.  If you have any topics you’d like to see me write about, feel free to throw them in the comments.  Thanks again for reading and here is hoping we continue growing as an entertaining community in year 3.