Changing your name to more local sounding can significantly help you earn more money.

If you are a foreigner living in a country where you are also looking for a job it could be a good idea to change your name in order to find a job and get a significant boost in your income.

The Survey

In 2009 two Swedish scientists – Mahmood Arai and Peter Skogman Thoursie from the University of Stockholm – conducted a study where they found that immigrants who changed their names to more Swedish-sounding ended up with an average increase of their income of 141%.

The scientists analyzed data from 641 immigrants between the years 1991 and 2000 that had came to Sweden from Asia, Africa and Slavic countries and had also changed their name.

The income of an immigrant was analyzed 3 years before the name change and 3 years after.

The analyze took into account a number of statistical information, including inflation, age and place of residence.

Results of Changing Your Name

Mahmood Arai and Peter Skogman were stunned to see that the results of changing your name had a huge impact already 1 year after the name change took place.

The earnings increase was largest in the group that reported very little or no earnings at all before the name change. It was found that they had a increase in income between 0.5 and 2 years of changing their name. In some cases the increase in income was as high as 1000%.

Why Changing Your Name Can Make You Money

Scientists conducting the study found that changing one’s exotic and foreign sounding name had huge benefits on landing a job interview and thus increasing chances of finding work.

It was found common for employers to sort out job applicants with foreign names just because of the bias they evoked.

The bias toward foreigners was so strong that even smart law abiding people were not called for a job interview just because of their name.

In other words – if you have a foreign sounding name you will have a smaller chance of getting a good job simply because you are not called to the job interview at the first place. It is impossible to leave good impression of yourself when you are not even called to a job interview.

I am mainly keeping Financial Jesus as a hobby but as a nice side note it also brings in a little money.

In 2009 it made me an extra 851,97 dollars.

Where I Got My Money From

Google Adsense – $519.31

Amazon.com referral program – $1.93

CPALead.com – $3.71

Direct Sales - $327.02 (101.4 dollars in December)

Total Blog income in 2009 – $ 851.97

As you see from the numbers, Google Adsense is still my number 1 earner – I am having a difficult time coming up with something more profitable. In December however I looked into direct sales and managed to pull in a rather decent income of 170 dollars. That is almost twice what I made in November.

Goal for 2010

My Blog income Goal for 2010 is 5000 dollars. That’s $416 per month on average!

I have a number of things in my mind to achieve this:

• More articles – Write constantly more articles to get more traffic. Maybe even pay someone to help me write more stuff. A poll on the website seems to suggest that people want at least 1 new article per day.
• Sell my own products – I will come up with my own digital products that I can sell on the website. This way people that are interested in some topics can find out more and at the same time they will help me to keep the site going.
• Online store – put a store on the site that would enable people buy books and other things I recommend.
• A forum – I’ll probably add a forum to the website. That way I will get more traffic and find a way for my readers to engage with each other.

Have you ever wondered what is the yearly salary of the president of the United States of America? Well – you don’t have to look any further.

President Barack Obama’s Yearly Salary:

In 2009 the presidential salary for Barack Obama is 400 000 dollars per year.

In other words the president makes 33 333 dollars a month or 8 333 dollars a  week.

The president of the United States has always been the highest paid member of the government – that means that no one working for the government has a larger income than the president.

Up until 2001 the yearly salary for  president was $200 000 but thanks to a decision approved by the congress and former president Bill Clinton it was raised to 400 000 dollars.

The presidential salary had been 200 000 dollars since 1969. If adjusted for inflation it is actually the equivalent of 1,175,000 today’s dollars.
This means that the president makes about 3 times less in 2009 than he made 40 years ago in 1969.

Additional Money The President Gets to Spend:

In addition to the 400 000 dollars that the president of USA makes yearly he also has a whopping 169 000 dollars to spend on the things he likes.

$ 100 000 – The presidents non-taxable travel account.

This is the money Barack Obama can use if he wishes to travel or make purchases while outside of the United States.

In reality all the presidents travels and visits are paid by the government. The president always uses a private plane or an helicopter that flies wherever the president wants to go. The operating cost of the president’s plane Air Force One is over  $56,000 per hour! With that rate it would about 2 hours to go over Obama’s travel budget.

$ 50 000 – Annual Expenses account

In addition to the 400 000 dollar salary and the 100 000 dollar travel account the president has a 50 000 dollar annual expenses account that he can use for pretty much everything he needs to help him be a good president. Obama can use this money if he wants to buy a new tie or even an apple if he is hungry but just like with the travel account – he rarely has to use this money. The president gets everything for free.

$ 19 000 – Entertainment Account

In addition to everything else there is a 19 000 dollar entertainment account that the president can tap into if he wishes. The necessities of life are however covered – the White House has its own movie theater, bowling alley, pool room, tennis court, jogging track and putting greens for practicing golf. Needless to say – the $19 000 will only be spent if the president wants to do something not already present in the White House.

Full Amount the President Can Spend Every Year:

What Else Does The President Get

The president sure does get paid a lot when you compare him with the average American but you could also say with a degree of certainty that there is no one who wants to be a president for the presidential salary.

That being said – in addition to the US presidential salary and the presidential pay compensation – there are a lot of things that the presidents get for free.

He gets to live in a mansion with 132 rooms, 32 bathrooms, its own staff and the world’s best cooks. In addition, he gets to travel around the world wherever he wants with his private plane.

On top of all of that, the President gets  to use all the White House employees and services as he wishes. This includes  cooks, housekeeping, doctors, barbers, security and taking the Presidential limousines for a spin

Retirement

After a president leaves office he gets a life time pension. Today the pension is set to the level of the current administration’s cabinet secretaries or 191,300 dollars per year.
Additionally the ex presidents get travel accounts and free mailing privileges.

The Vice President

No one really cares about how much the vice president makes but nevertheless it is an interesting fact to know

The salary for the vice president of United States is 208,100 dollars. He also gets to spend $10,000 for expenses.

Here are the income stats for www.financialjesus.com in September 2009

Google Adsense - $79.23

Direct Links – $10

Total Income – $89,23

What happened in September?

1. I redesigned the website using the premium Thesis WordPress theme. I have to say that using Thesis is the best decision I have ever done. It has an insanely huge number of tweaking options – you can change everything without writing a line of code.

2. I also decided to use ads on every blog post that is older than 7 days. That way I will spear my usual readers from seeing ads but at the same time cash in from the people who find their way here from Google or other search engines.

3. I discontinued textlink ads. It was a great program that brought me in more than Google Adsense does but for some reason Google has dropped my pagerank from 3 to 0. I don’t know the exact cause but I suspect that using textlinkads.com can be behind it. So I am discontinuing the program for a few months to see if my pagerank will change back up!

Changes in Traffic

There were 25 216 visitors to Financial Jesus in September 2009. That is a 32.1% rise from August 2009.

The daily average visitor count went from 615 the month earlier to 840.

Goal for October

My minimum income goal for Financial Jesus in October is $100 dollars. I expect the income from Adsense to decline a bit since the initial effect of a new design is going to wear down and people are starting to get ad blindness.
At the same time I will most probably break the 1000 readers a day on average mark which will also mean larger earnings.

If time allows – I will also try some new money making sources – I am getting more and more into affiliate marketing and I am thinking of leveraging the traffic here to get more money

My income goal in February was $77.63 - I didn’t achieve it but came pretty close. While my income in January 2009 was only $22.37, I managed to almost triple it in February.

Here are the income stats of Financial Jesus for February 2009.

Google Adsense – $16.65

Text Links Ads – $22.61

Direct Links – $21.5

Total earnings for February 2009 – $60.76

What happened in February?

New kinds of ads

I tested Adbrite.com ads but after only 2 day I felt that they were not working and abandoned them. For some reason the code I used never showed real ads but only a link that allowed those interested to buy a link on my website – I am pretty sure I messed up and therefore will probably test Adbrite again pretty soon. If you are familiar with Adbrite and know what I did wrong – let me know!

I managed to sell a link in one of my posts for 20 dollars – I am not sure if I will manage to do it again in March so achieving the same amount of income can prove difficult.

New Theme

I spent 168 dollars on the Thesis WordPress theme to radically improve the design and layout of financialjesus.com. This is the first time ever that I have spent money doing something for this blog – hopefully it will help to lift things up to a new level eventually!

As you are probably noticing right know – the new theme is not up yet and I am not certain when it will be – probably not before April.

Working on a new Website – LOL Finance

I am working on a new site called LOL Finance – it is a website that publishes daily funny pictures, stories and videos about finance. The site is currently under construction and I have not officially launched it yet but I am hoping to do so in March.
It is also my first test regarding the use of the Thesis theme – before converting Financial Jesus over I will try to get the feel of it to make the customization process easier!

Income goal for March 2009

$100

I sold some links in February that allowed me to temporarily pump up the income, but at the same time I didn’t react on some offers that would have allowed me to increase my revenues even more. Hopefully I will have more courage to take up these extra offers in March!

If anyone has positive experience with some ad networks in addition to Google Adsense – please let me know so I could test them out. I am willing to become your referral!

Don’t forget to sign up below to get updated how I did in March!

Congratulations everybody – as of today Financial Jesus is exactly 6 months old!

Running this blog has been one of my favorite hobbies during this time but  I have never began to think that it could be something more.

Some time ago I got an email from an advertising company asking about how much money Financial Jesus charges for putting ads on our blog.

This got me thinking.

What is the maximum amount of money this website could make with my current amount of visitors?

In order to find the answer I had to calculate how much money an average visitor of Financial Jesus makes me

In November 2008 FinancialJesus.com had 13 147 visitors and my Google Adsense revenue was 28.2 dollars. (The only ads we have are on the menu and on 3 posts that are ranking high in Google  – compared to established websites this is about the same as not having ads )

Calculating the average income per visitor

To find how much each visitor makes you on average you have to do the fallowing calculation:

Average income per visitor = total website revenue / total number of visitors

In our example the average income per visitor is $28.2/13 147 = about 0.00214 dollars.

This means that whenever someone visits my website I will always make $0.00214- even if the visitor never clicks on an ad. It also means that in order to make 1 dollar Financial Jesus needs 468 visitors.

How much is someone else making in your niche?

Estimating competitor’s monthly traffic

This is the tricky part – you need to find an established website that has a similar topic to yours and that gives out details about their traffic and income. This data is often unavailable but it is possible to get some educated guesses from traffic estimation services like TrafficEstimate or Alexa.

Estimating competitor’s monthly income

Albeit more difficult – it is also possible to guess a website’s revenue. This is easier with larger websites that generally sell their ads directly to advertisers and who usually have their ad rates up on a special page. If there are no Google Adsense ads then you are in luck – simply count how many ads does a website serve and multiply them with the ad prices. This should give you a pretty good ballpark figure on how much a website makes. If a website runs ads from Google or other contextual advertising programs then I’m afraid you’re out of luck – it is very difficult to estimate how much money they make.

Example Calculation

For my calculations I used JohnChow.com. Our topics are only about 25%-30% the same, but thanks to John’s monthly income reports I know for sure that in October 2008  he made $34,350.93 and from his advertising page I learned that his website has over 200 000 visitors per month. Everyone knows that John’s blog is one of the biggest money making machine’s in the blogosphere, so I use his website as an estimate on how much Financial Jesus could make in a month.

By doing the above calculation with John’s numbers I find that on average he makes 0.172 dollars from every visitor.

$34,350.93/200.000= 0,172 dollars per visitor

Compared to the 0.00214 dollars per visitor that Financial Jesus makes, JohnChow.com is over 80 times more effective in turning visitors into money. (You get this number when dividing your competitors income per visitor with your own – in my case 0.172/0.00214 = 80.4).

If Financial Jesus would be as effective as JohnChow.com in turning visitors into money it would have made 2267.28 dollars in November 2008. (You get this number by multiplying your real income with the number your competitor is more effective than you – in our case $28.2 x 80.4 = 2267.28 dollars )

Conclusion – You can make decent money without a lot of traffic

By adding more revenue sources and ads it is possible for a website to dramatically increase its income. If FinancialJesus.com would do exactly what it has been doing but would also try to monetize itself then it would be possible to make over 80 times more money in a month than it has currently made – while 28 dollars a month doesn’t seem like much, 2267 dollars looks a lot better!

Its natural that getting the kind of efficiency that the big players have is going to be a difficult goal to achieve, but it is also true that any rise in a website’s efficiency is a great thing – while making over 2000 dollars a month could seem impossible, I am certain that increasing FinancialJesus.com’s efficiency 40 times and making 1000 dollars a month is something I can achieve in a few months.

Think about it!

How much money are you leaving on the table? How much money are you practically throwing away by not making your website more efficient?

By doing the same calculation I did, it is possible for you to estimate how much money a website can make.