I believe that being able to predict how things will turn out is an essential need for everyone who wants to get rich. Holding your eyes open and having an idea how things might turn out before they happen is always a recipe for success and money.

Our predictions for 2012:
(To see our predictions for 2011 go here.)

The World Will Not End in 2012

Despite popular opinion the world will still be here in 2013. Sure we might have more earthquakes, storms and catastrophies than usually but in the long run things even themselves out. It is my opinion that there are no real reason that the Mayans decided to end their calendar in 2012. The only one I can think of is that they ran out of space to add more years
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Obama Will Stay President of the USA

As I correctly predicted in our predictions for 2011 Obama has been losing credibility all throughout the previous years as president. At one of his lowest points of popularity it is difficult to believe that Barack Obama will be re-elected for a second term as president but that is exactly what will happen.

There is a major lack of a great Republican candidate and Obama will once again make America believe in a better future. This is a great situation for Obama to be in considering how much money the president makes.

The Euro Zone Will Not Collapse

In the beginning of 2012 the markets seem to agree that the Euro Zone will collapse.

The year 2012 will be a year of many difficulties for the monetary union but the Euro will persist.   I personally feel that countries like Greece that are in heavy debt should be evicted from the Euro Zone but this will not happen. The 2012 will not see a country kicked out of the Euro zone.

After surviving the hardships of 2011 and 2012 people will have renewed faith that just like the US dollar the Euro is a stable world currency.

New Apple Products

2012 will see a range of new Apple devices.

Ipad 3 – The Ipad 3 will launch as an all around better device than the Ipad 2 but there will not be anything revolutionally innovative. It will have better resolution, more memory, better processors and better cameras.

Ipad mini –  Although Steve Jobs has said that there will never be an Ipad with a smaller screen because it would be too small for a good user experience we will most probably see a device with a smaller screen. The market has shown that devices with smaller screens like the Amazon Fire and the Samsung Galaxy Tab can be popular. The new and smaller Ipad mini will become an instant hit.

Iphone 5 - In 2012 we will see the long awaited Iphone 5. It will have a  new design and hopefully a NFC chip. A NFC chip is basically an RFID tag that will allow us to make payments with our mobile phones by swiping the phone near a payment terminal. There will probably be a way to use it with your credit card. Going one step further we might see Apple launching a service similar to Paypal that allows us to make fast payments to other NFC devices and Apple Accounts.

Apple TV - Apple will come out with their TV. It will probably have apps and voice control.
I am also hoping it to have some sort of hand or body gestures (think Microsoft Kinect). Apple will also launch an app that you can use with your iPhone or iPad to control your new AppleTV. As always it will be absolutely beautiful, easy to use and people will generally like it.

Unfortunately for Apple the TV sales will not be as fast as they would like. Since everyone already has a TV it is a tougher market to conquer.

Apple Stock Price Will Drop

The Apple stock price has been increasing almost nonstop from 2003. On December 31st 2011 it was exactly 405 dollars and there was no sign of falling prices. Although Apple will launch some great new products in 2012 the stock price will not continue to increase.

Bitcoin Will Become More Popular

The digital currency Bitcoin that is still unknown to most people will start catching on. We will probably see a few Bitcoin booms and crashes. People who know what they are doing can use Bitcoin to make some relatively easy money speculating.

Bitcoin does not have any transaction fees, it allows immediate money transfers and is totally anonymous. This is all too good to be true and the governments of the world will try to shut it down. The main fear is that since it is totally anonymous it can be used for terrorism or for illegal activities such as paying for drug trafficking.

Occupy Wall Street Will Survive

In 2011 the government ignored the Occupy Wall Street movement and hoped that the problem will go away. In 2012 we will see Occupy Wall Street getting stronger and new protests with more people. Despite the media blockade the average Joe will slowly start to see that to get what he wants means he needs to take action.

Throughout the year there will be many politicians trying to win the support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I would not be surprised if the movement would play a major role in the upcoming presidential elections.

Kim Jong-Un Will Stay in Power in North Korea

After the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il the power has now gone to his youngest son Kim Jong-Un. Despite his youth and the general agreement that he will be overthrown from the government I predict that he will successfully stay in power. Being young and ambitious we will see several new things happening in North Korea.

What we will not see is Kim Jong-Un losing power.

Google+ Will Become Popular

After the launch of Google+ in 2011 we are seeing a growing amount of industry leaders voicing their opinions that Google+ is a flop and a failure. I believe that just the contrary is true – Google+ is just getting started.

Internet marketers and brands will slowly discover the enormous benefits they get from being in Google+. Having your product featured in Google’s newest social network means a better ranking in Google’s search engine and therefore increased traffic.

We will see major brands duplicating their Facebook campaigns in Google+. This will give the average users an extra reason to join.

Facebook Ads on Third Party Websites

Facebook will launch an expansion for the famous Facebook Ads. In addition to advertising on the social network they will allow advertising on third party websites.

This means that everyone can sign up and publish Facebook ads on their website and earn money. This simple move will over through Google Adwords and Adsense as the number 1 advertising platform on the internet.

The Ultra Rich Will Ask for Higher Taxes

Throughout 2012 we will see extremely rich people saying they would love to have higher taxes. Some of the ultra rich will let the public know that they are OK with paying more.

Nokia and Windows Phone

Although late to the smartphone party Nokia will aggressively move to get its mobile phone market share back. By the end of 2012 we will see Nokia starting to increase its market share and the Windows Phone platform getting more popular.

What are your predictions for 2012? Let us know in the comments!

The question on a lot of peoples minds lately is whether or not it is possible for them to make money on the internet automatically by not doing a thing themselves.

The answer is yes.

My automated blog

Recently I decided to look more into how a lot of people are making a living with automatically working blogs. I decided to make my own auto-blog to see if it is really a viable way to make money online.

Choosing the Domain Name

A little less than a month ago I did some topic and keyword research and decided to make an automatically working blog about Back Support Braces. I registered a keyword rich domain name www.backsupportposturebrace.net that cost me $9.69 – this was the only investment I made to get started.

I chose the domain because it has 4 words that are all significant in terms of search engine optimization. The words in the domain make up at least 3 terms that are commonly searched in Google. It is widely known that if you have a keyword or phrase in the domain that people search for – it will mean that you will rank high on Google.

How the blog works

The blog automatically takes most of its content from Yahoo Answers and posts it in a way where the original question is the blog’s post and the answers on Yahoo Answers are the blog comments. I also have the blog set up to seldomly post a video from Youtube or a product from Amazon.

The blog itself works on the WordPress platform and is hosted in a server where I also have some other websites – so I don’t have to pay anything extra for hosting.

Currently I have set the blog to post 6 new posts each day. The posts might be of bad quality but having constant stream of new posts is a good way to get more traffic from search engines.

The traffic

I am not doing any marketing or promotion for the blog.

The only traffic I am focused on getting is long keyword traffic from Google.  Currently I am getting about 20-30 visitors a day which is great compared to 0 visits just less than 1 month ago. I expect the traffic to rise significantly after 3 months of having the blog work automatically. 3 months is usually the time what it takes for a new blog to get the credit it deserves from search engines.

How much money does my automated blog make?

My automated test blog is currently not even half way finished but 1 thing I did was I installed as much Google Adsense ads on the site as allowed by Google – this means 3 ad units and 3 text link units.

The people coming to the site and reading the little content it has usually want a way out and often click on 1 of the ads. Since the website is a micro niche the content of the ads is highly targeted – that means that on average the % of people who click on the ads is very high – about 6 times higher as the ads here on Financial Jesus.

I know it is not much and that it is tens of times less I make with my other sites but it is essentially money for doing nothing. I know people who have 500 auto blogs that each make them 1 dollar per day. That’s an income of 182 500 dollars a year for doing nothing.

By getting my auto-blogs traffic up from 20 visitors to 100 a day would mean an extra income of 2 dollars per day. Furthermore I am positive that I can add adverts from other networks and improve the click through rates – helping the auto blog to make even more money.

In Conclusion

It is certainly possible to make a living by creating auto blogs but it would mean creating a very large number of sites to make a decent living. You could essentially install all the automatic blogs to the same domain meaning that you can even have a thousand blogs for the cost of registering 1 domain for 10 dollars.

This post is about my Bachelor Thesis.

It has nothing to do with the main topics and content of Financial Jesus.

Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization

As a part of my thesis I intend to test some simple HTML elements and see how does using (or not using) them on a web page affect the search engine rankings of the pages.

The search engine that I am targeting is Google.
I will use different keywords and methods inside HTML tags on various ways to see which option is better for ranking higher in Google.

I have come up with a number of keywords that I will use in these files that when searched from Google, currently have 0 results.

After I have published this post with links to my made up files the files will get indexed by Google. After being indexed, I can use my special made up keywords to find the files.
For example if I intend to test how the <title> tag works I can make a simple HTML file that has a keyword called “asdeavasadhflweadjjjae” in it. Currently when you search for it in Google you will get 0 results but after the file gets indexed it will show up.

The things I am testing

Having links to other pages

Does having links on a HTML page benefit it SEO wise?

Here are links to the three files.

• The first file is intended to find out whether or not using external links in a file benefit the files ranking SEO wise.
• The second file is a test file without any links. This is necessary in order to compare the two other files against something.
• The third file is intended to find out whether or not using links to the same domain name benefit the search ranking.

Don’t worry if you click on the links and don’t understand what they are meant for – unfortunately I can’t go into great depth because that would make the experiment an immediate failure.

Matching the folder/file and keyword text

In this experiment I compare 3 different files.

1. A file with an unique keyword that has a random name and is in a random folder
2. A file that has the folder name and the keyword name match
3. A file that has the folder name, file name and keyword name match

Here are the links to the three files. ( in the order showed above)

This experiment is intended to figure out which of the 3 options above rank the highest in Google.

Keyword use in H1 tag

How should you use keywords in H1 tags in order to get maximum SEO benefits?

Here I compare 5 different files:

1. Keyword as the first word in H1 tag
2. Keyword not in H1 tag
3. Keyword twice in the same H1 tag
4. Keyword in the middle of H1 tag
5. Keyword as last word in H1 tag

Here are the links to the 5 files.

Using keywords as anchor text in internal links

Here I try do get an idea whether or not using keyword as anchor text in internal links offer any SEO benefits.

Here are the tehkupehku links. (The 4th word is a unique keyword made up by me – it has no meaning)

Keyword use in the title tag

In this experiment I try 5 different methods on how to use the keyword in a page title for maximum SEO benefit.

1. Keyword as first word in title
2. Keyword as first word in title + also keyword in somewhere in body
3. No keyword in title
4. Keyword in the middle of the title
5. Keyword twice in title

Here are the links to the 5 files.

Using the meta description tag

Is the meta description tag beneficial for your Google rating?

Here I compare 2 files:

• A file with meta description
• A file without meta description

Links to the files.

This is all for now!

10. Vietnam, Hanoi

For most people Vietnam is known for the Vietnam War that took place over 40 years ago but it is also becoming a more popular tourist attraction by the year. As one of the poorest countries in the world Vietnam and its capital city Hanoi are home to a growing number of pickpockets who are on the watch for your money.
Most tourist attractions in Hanoi are located outside in crowded areas so it is very easy to become an unsuspecting target for a pickpocketing master who has probably pickpocketed thousands of people.

Check out the video below to see just how brave some pickpocketers can be in Vietnam.

Technique used to steal your money in Hanoi:
Brute force. A thief can use a moped or a motorbike to steal your handbag while driving. When in Vietnam or other Asian countries  make sure that your handbag is not too easy to snatch. A good idea is to carry your bag on the side where there is less people and traffic.

9. Greece, Athens

Greece and its capital Athens are one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. In addition to a blooming tourist sector the city is also facing a rapid growth in pickpockets who make a living off of unsuspecting tourists.
It doesn’t matter if you are visiting the Parthenon or the Acropolis – make sure you never lose sight of your bags when you are admiring the countless ancient monuments. Someone who seems just like another tourist can be on the hunt for your wallet.

Technique used to steal your money in Athens:
A number of Gypsy children surround you and shamelessly start robbing your things. This boldness will take you by surprise – in the mean time the children pass your things quickly between each other and run in different directions. Your wallet, mobile phone and camera will most probably all go in different directions. Sometimes the children pass your belongings to older women who hide them beneath their clothes. The police won’t look under a skirt!

8. The Netherlands, Amsterdam

The night life in Amsterdam, legal marijuana and the red light district with its countless women are all great but only as long as you still have your money to pay for it all!
The pickpocketers in Amsterdam’s red light district take advantage of the “No camera policy”. No one is allowed to take pictures in the infamous area – this means that there are also no surveillance cameras that could help fight the crime.

A graffiti in Amsterdam

Technique used to steal your money in Amsterdam:
Someone pushes you from behind or from the side making it look like he just wanted to get past you on a busy street.
In reality there is another person on the opposite side who takes advantage of the fact that you are looking the other way to see who pushed you and steals your wallet and belongings.

7. Argentina, Buones Aires

Buenos Aires is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Latin America but it is also a heaven for pickpockets and thieves. Be on the lookout for groups of children following tourists and of course the usual running purse snatchers.

Technique used to steal your money in Buones Aires:
A group of children approach you with a piece of paper or a card with some writing on it. Their leader places the card under your chin to read and while you are focused on the text the other kids go through your belongings.

Below is a video of a pickpocket in action in Argentina

6. Italy, Florence

This renaissance pearl is facing major trouble with pickpockets. As people are losing jobs in the economic downturn more and more are counting on stealing as their primary source of income.

The reason pickpocketing is gathering popularity in Italy is that it is relatively easy to start – if you are beginning your career and get caught, just run away. It is almost certain that no one will follow you – people will be happy that they got to keep their things. After escaping successfully, just try to steal someone else’s wallet – this time you will be a bit smarter and there is a higher chance that you will get away with it!

Pickpocket warning sign in Italy

Technique used to steal your money in Florence:
While you are looking around in the local shops you will focus all your attention towards the goods on sale. A careful pickpocket notices that and gently opens your bag or purse to go through its contents.

5. France, Paris

France and Paris with its elegant Eiffel tower are one of the number 1 tourist attractions in the world. People from all over the world flock up to try out the famous French cuisine and meet the friendly locals. As it turns out – some people can be too friendly!

Technique used to steal your money in Paris:
Attractive young men walk around trying to find female tourists in order to give them a red rose as a present. This will make the lady happy and unsuspecting and she will be an easy target for pickpockets who are teaming up with the handsome young man giving away flowers.

If the thieves don’t find something valuable they might ask you money for the flower. Both ways you are in for an unpleasant surprise.

4. Spain, Madrid

Spain is another European tourist destination that is overpopulated with tourists. In addition to Barcelona holding the top position in our list, the capital Madrid is flooded with pickpockets.

When on your way to a bull fight you better look out – what seems like an ordinary crowd can be a crowd full of people hungry for your wallet!

Technique used to steal your money in Madrid:
Someone with a camera approaches you and asks to take a photo of them. You will drop your bag for a minute in order to take the picture – at the same time someone from behind snatches your bag and runs away

3. Czech Republic, Prague

Czech Republic – the home of cheap beer and all night partying! The capital Prague is known for its popularity among British lads who wish to enjoy the weekend but it is no place to be when you are too drunk and have lost all your friends.

In 2005 the city of Prague ran an ad campaign to notify tourists of pickpockets. Here is what 1 ad looked like:

Here is what a victim had to say about how he lost his money in Prague:

Technique used to steal your money in Prague:
A young women makes eye contact with you on the street. This temporarily gets your attention while you are being robbed by the beautiful girl’s accomplice.

2. Italy, Rome

Pickpockets are an increasing problem in Italy. In addition to Florence (number 6 in our list), Rome is the countries busiest tourist center. But that is not all it is – it is also a heaven for pickpockets. The pickpocketing problem in Rome is so big that it is mentioned in almost all materials intended for tourists. The thieves however are almost never local – they are poor immigrants looking for a way to make a living.

The pickpocketing problem is especially big in public transport. The inner city bus number 64 is known as “the wallet express” – it is the best way to get rid of your money.

Below is a video of pickpockets in action in Italy:

Technique used to steal your money in Rome:
A young gypsy girl or a woman near you will appear to trip and accidentally drop her baby – it almost seems that she throws the baby into your arms.
You reach to save it from falling and in the process drop whatever is currently in your hands. The accomplices quickly pick up whatever you dropped, go through your things and leave.
You will of course realize that instead of a baby you are holding a doll.

1. Spain, Barcelona

Barcelona is the number 1 tourist attraction in Spain! In addition to a number of sights it also has a dozen or so pickpockets for every attraction. If pickpocketing would be on the Olympics, Barcelona would be the definite gold medalist!

When you disregard pickpocketing, Barcelona is a relatively safe place to be. Spanish people are not very fond of drinking, they much more prefer smoking pot – and that makes people sleepy and friendly.

When walking on the famous pedestrian street La Rambla be sure to wear your backpacks in your front. Pickpockets work in teams – 1 person distracts you and another one opens your bag or goes through your pockets. They don’t hesitate to use scissors or a razor to cut their way in!

Technique used to steal your money in Barcelona:
A friendly local notices that your clothes are dirty and offers to provide you with a napkin so that you can clean yourself.
What really happens is that the local himself or his partner in crime has secretly spilled something on you to get your attention. After accepting the napkin and starting to clean yourself your mind is occupied and it becomes easy to go through your bag or your pockets.

What Google Thinks

Below is a screenshot of the places that Google thinks have the most pickpockets! Here is what people usually search for:

It looks that our list is dead on – 8 out of 10 places searched in Google are all somewhat featured in our list. As you can see – pickpocketing tends to be a larger problem in Europe than in anywhere else!

I happened on an interesting blog post at EmptyVoices.com about some job interview questions being asked at Google.

Here are the 10 along with some of my thoughts that I found most interesting.

1

How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

This question is not as difficult as it first seems – everyone has a sense of how large a bus and a golf ball is – so what you have to do is calculate the approximate volume of the bus and see how many times it’s larger than the golf ball.

2

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

There are a number of different solutions proposed to this question on Reddit but it seems that none of them are 100% accurate. The most popular answers seem to be “lie down and hope that the blades won’t hit you”. Someone tested this solution with an actual nickel and found out that the air drag generated by the blades will make it impossible for the coin to be still. Other popular answers include “climb out because the wall of the blender is sloped” and “you’d be able to jump out”. Someone also noted that this might be a trick question because “one wouldn’t survive the throwing into the blender”. It seems that the objective of this question is to get an understanding of the interviewee’s problem solving skills – it might be that there is no one and only correct answer.

3

How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

To answer this question you should have an understanding about Seattle – how many people does it have and how many windows does the city have on average per person. With these numbers you should be able to come up with a pretty good ball park figure.

4

Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.

I don’t have an eight year old nephew

5

How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

This one is a logic question and is actually quite simple if you are any good at visualizing things.

6

Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?

This one is quite difficult! I looked around the internet and found an answer that seems to be true but in order to make it more interesting for you I will publish it on Wednesday in the comments.

7

If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands?

This is another logic question – and no the answer is not zero!

8

You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present including you and the friend. your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. would you accept the wager?

No? According to an article on Wikipedia when there are at least 23 random people in a room the probability of meeting someone with the same birthday as you becomes greater than 50%.

9

How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

This is another easier question. If you know that the total world population is about 6.5 billion and make an educated guess that every 50 000th person in the world is a piano tuner you get 130 000 piano tuners

10

You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it?

The correct answer is that one pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold. But the important question is which pirate and why? Check out Wikipedia for the answer.

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One of my intents when launching Financial Jesus in May 2008 was to make some money!

I wanted to have a blog that looks good, has quality content, is well known and makes enough money to live on!

While I haven’t fully reached any of these goals – they seem more attainable than ever.

After reading thousands of blogs on the internet I dare to say that the quality of blog posts here at Financial Jesus is top notch (is this my ego talking?).

When it comes to my blogs design and the ability to make money – there is a lot to be done! I feel that the website should be a lot simpler and also incorporate some ads to pay for itself.

My Google Adsense Check

Despite many challenges – today is an important day for Financial Jesus. We just received our first Google Adsense Check!

Click for larger image

The Check is for 112 dollars and 31 cents and it took a total of 6 months to make this money.

I know – it isn’t millions but everyone has to start from somewhere! After all – I can promise that the next $100 comes a lot faster! After my post about how much money a website can make it feels that there are no limits!

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I am a big fan of Firefox and use it almost exclusively for all my web surfing.

Firefox was also the only browser that I used when redesigning the theme that this blog comes with.

Here is what I thought FinancialJesus.com looked like to our visitors:

And indeed it looked like this for 75% of all my readers – because they use Firefox.

Here is what FinancialJesus.com looked for the 24% of visitors who used Internet Explorer or Safari:

Notice the magically appeared Google Adsense ad on the right! It was not inserted there by me and until yesterday I had no idea that it was there at all!

Whose ad was it?

The ad was included by the author of my blogs theme. When redesigning the theme I tried to comment out the code for the ad but I did a sloppy job! The ad did not show up in Firefox but it displayed just fine in Internet Explorer.
This was totally against my policy of keeping the site clean and ad free. I have recently added some experimental ads but none of them were above the fold (the part of the website that is visible without scrolling down).

This ad had probably the best CTR on FinancialJesus.com. Unfortunately I have no way of knowing how it did, since it made money to someone else and I don’t have a way to getting my hands on its statistics!

If you want to be sure what your website looks like and you don’t like making money for someone else you should check your website with different browsers.

You never know when something strange (and somewhat stupid) like this happens!

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Don’t be too happy if you want to be rich

Something nice happened on May 24th 2008 – I got stumbled! The fallowing is a detailed analysis of the traffic that StumbleUpon.com sent me during the 13 days that I was Stumbled.

What is StumbleUpon.com?

StumbleUpon is a social media toolbar that is used by more than 5 million people to find new and interesting websites. It lets you specify your interests and afterwards presents you with a button that takes you to a random page that matches your pre-selected topics and that have been recommended by other StumbleUpon users.

StumbleUpon allows you to give a thumbs up when you like a page and thumbs down when you don’t. This teaches the program what you like and ensures that it will refer you to websites that most match your interests.

The more thumbs up a website gets the more traffic StumbleUpon will send it.

Total Effect from Being Stumbled

On May 24th one of my articles – Top 10 richest countries of the world – got stumbled.

During 13 days from May 24th to June 5th FinancialJesus.com got a total of 4313 visits from StumbleUpon.

During this time the total number of visitors to FinancialJesus.com was 6787 – over 63% of my traffic came from StumbleUpon.

Highs and Lows

During the 13 day period I got an average of 308 visitors from StumbleUpon. During that time the number of visitors StumbleUpon sent to FinancialJesus.com was in no way consistent.

Best day – 1082 visits – 8th day after being Stumbled

Worst day – 30 visits – 13th day after being Stumbled

Daily unique visitors from StumbleUpon.com

As you can see there are actually 2 peaks on the graph. The higher one on May 30th and the first one on May 26th.

This is because there were actually 2 different articles Stumbled. The first article was Stumbled on May 24th and the second one on May 30th – that’s why the sudden jump in visitors. The second article that was Stumbled – 3 experiments with money – experienced a lot more sudden increase in traffic than the first one.

During the first day the post 3 experiments with money (2nd article that was stumbled) got a total of 981 unique visitors from StumbleUpon. I was initially expecting the article to get a slow but steady flow of traffic just like I got with the first post, but I was wrong!

Different kinds of traffic

StumbleUpon has the ability to drive different kinds of traffic.

1. Consistent traffic

Here is a graph of the traffic that my first article generated. Notice that after the traffic slows down by May 29th, it suddenly gets a small boost and stays consistent for 5 days.

The day this post got a sudden boost – May 30th -  is also the day my second article got Stumbled. Could there be a connection?

Statistics

The average StumbleUpon visitor spent 2 minutes and 21 seconds reading the article - slightly less than the post’s average of 2:44.

The bounce rate was 83%. This means that 83% of visitors from StumbleUpon decided to leave FinancialJesus after reading the article without bothering to read other posts. After taking a look at Navigation Summary in Google Analytics I discovered that for some reason 9% of visitors reloaded the post. This probably means that the actual bounce rate was over 90%.

I managed to get the average bounce rate down to about 75% by May 28th and keep it there by putting a larger than usual link at the end of the article to one of my other posts.

9.93% of all the people clicked on this link:

I also use the Similar Posts plugin to recommend other posts but it seems that writing the link larger than usual has a good effect on click through rates.

2. Sudden burst of traffic

Here is a traffic graph of my second article getting Stumbled. Notice the sharp increase and then the sudden decrease of visitors. The traffic to this article form StumbleUpon is totally different from the traffic I got with my first post.

The article in focus gathered fast popularity on May 30th in StumbleUpon.com – It got picked to StumbleUpon Buzz which is kind of like the front page of Digg. Some sites picked the article up from Buzz and that gave me additional traffic.

Additional traffic from hitting StumbleUpon Buzz

Popurls.com – 93 unique visits

Jimmyr.com – 55 unique visits

Charlierb3.blogspot.com – 29 unique visits

Theweblist.net – 20 unique visits

Statistics

The average StumbleUpon visitor spent 2 minutes and 41 seconds reading the article - slightly under the post’s average of 2:54.

The bounce rate was 89%.

I managed to lower it down to 75% by June 3rd by taking a similar approach as mentioned earlier – I put a larger than usual link at the end of the article to one of my other pages.

Unfortunately this link couldn’t get the overall average bounce rate down, since almost 90% of visits came before I added the link – on the first day of getting Stumbled.

Here is a graph comparing traffic from StumbleUpon to both articles

Article 1 is green Article 2 is red

By May 29th I wasn’t expecting much StumbleUpon.com traffic anymore to the first Stumbled article, but it seems that the discovery and popularity of the post 3 experiments with money gave a boost to our first Stumbled article. It remains unclear whether these events are connected to each other or not. It could be possible that the StumbleUpon algorithm is built in a way that when a certain page on a domain gets a sudden rush of “Thumbs Up” it will also increase the amount of traffic sent to other Stumbled pages on that domain.

A boost in RSS feed readers

During the 13 days of being stumbled I got 26 new RSS readers. That was a big jump from the 13 readers I had a day before getting Stumbled. On my best day Feedburner reported a total of 52 subscribers (a 400% rise). It seems that some of these people unsubscribed the next day – RSS readers dropped from 52 to 33. After that the total number of RSS feed readers kept crawling up – on June 4th it had climbed back up to 39 (300% rise).

It took an average of 165 unique visitors from StumbleUpon for one person to sign up for my RSS feed.

Conclusion

StumbleUpon can generate different kinds of traffic. It can give you a steady flow of visitors or a sudden peak. The visitors are not eager to click on links to other posts but their behavior can be influenced by adding an extra large link to another article at the end of the post.

StumbleUpon also gives a decent amount of RSS readers of whom some unsubscribe a few days later. Depending on your current amount of readers the boost can be significant or you may not even notice it!

After 14 days of getting decent traffic the flow of visitors has dropped significantly but has yet to come to a standstill.

For more in depth analysis of traffic from different social media websites sing up to my full feed RSS or subscribe via e-mail

Does your domain pass the phone test?

Just 10 minutes ago I was doing something that millions of people online do every day and I bet that you have done it already at least once today!

I was searching for information on Google!

How cool is that?

While doing another one of my searches I suddenly had a revelation.

What I know for sure:

1. A lot of people are searching something
2. A lot of people are using Google to find what they are searching

How to take advantage of that?

In order to take advantage of the fact that a lot of people are searching(and hopefully finding) something, we should produce content that is relevant to other people. I know, basic stuff -  but keep reading!

What is relevant content?

This is where I had my revelation.

Relevant content is the content about the things you are searching yourself

Instead of trying to do what millions of bloggers are trying to do – writing content about the things that they think are of interest to other people. You should turn your eyes to the person you know best – yourself.

If I am searching for something, then chances are that other people are searching for the exact same thing using exactly the same search terms!

If you are using a certain term or keywords to search for something specific and you don’t find what you are looking for then you have a perfect chance to produce the relevant content yourself.
Make a post about what you were looking for and use the keywords that you used in your first search that didn’t provide any relevant results.

This way you will ensure that when someone googles the exact same phrase they will find your post and end up reading your blog.

Using Google Web History

Have you ever heard of Google Web History?  It records all the searches you make in Google (while logged in). That way it can be extremely useful to get an overview on what exact search terms you used to find the information you were looking for.

During the last 2 years I have made a total of 1921 Google searches. For example in December 20th 2006 at 9:45 pm I searched for “political map of europe” and on the 7th of September 2007 I searched for “hutchinson effect”.

The best part about Google Web History is that it also records the search results you clicked on. After searching hutchinson effect I visited a page in Wikipedia about John Hutchinson and read an essay about his discoveries.

Until now I really didn’t like the fact that Google saves my searches. I felt that it was somehow compromising my privacy. Now that I have realized how I can turn these searches into good and relevant content I am very happy!

Stay tuned to find new posts about the things I have been googling! The best way to do that is to sign up for our full feed RSS or subscribe via email.

Good news everybody!

FinancialJesus.com has been up and running for 15 days straight and it looks that things are getting better by the day.
Sunday(that’s yesterday, baby! ) was our record breaking day with 579 unique visitors.

Here’s what happened during the first 15 days

FinancialJesus.com has a total of 34 posts and exactly 70 comments.

The comments part is what I am particularly satisfied with! It shows that there is already starting to form a small community around this website and that is exactly what I have been trying to do!

During the first 15 days I have had 1596 unique visitors! This is an average of 100 visitors a day! I am very satisfied with this, but to tell you the truth this number is very far from what it will be. All my next efforts will be made in order to get more visitors to FinancialJesus.com and eventually get the average to 1000 unique visitors per day.

My number 1 traffic source?

StumbleUpon.com – I can’t recommend it enough! I spend a lot of time on StumbleUpon to find new interesting stuff, and to tell you the truth I have submitted a few of my more interesting posts to StumbleUpon as well… If you are a user, add me as a friend

Most viewed post

My most viewed post is Top 10 richest countries of the world. I wrote it only 3 days ago, but it has already got 1134 unique visitors and 1253 page views. Nothing compared to big sites, but pretty OK for FinancialJesus.com.
The traffic to Top 10 richest countries of the world has mostly come from StumbleUpon. Guess who adds his own content to StubleUpon? That’s right – ME I only do it for posts I feel are StumbleUpon material, so, to tell you the truth, I don’t feel bad at all.

What have I learned?

Basic things actually.

1. If possible make lists – they are easier to read.
2. Use a lot of titles and highlighting – This make it easier for visitors to read your content as well
3. Use spell check – you always make mistakes!

Ads?

As you have maybe noticed financialjesus.com is ad free. But it is not my intention to keep it ad free forever. In fact just about 2 hours ago I added some Google Adsense ads to my top post – Top 10 richest countries of the world. Since I have almost no experience with ads I have yet no idea on how it will turn out. The reason I decided to post some ads is to make a small case study for myself – that way I’ll get a little experience on whether the ad formats and positioning that I used work or not!

For information on how my next 15 days will go and how the “ad placement project” went, sign up to my full feed RSS or subscribe via email.