Advertising Revenue and Charitable Donations

Over the past week or so, I’ve spent a bit of time trying to decide what I want to do with this site. I like reading and writing about personal finance, and I’m putting some financial “experiments” into play to give me more to write about (the latest being Sharebuilder). But I’m a bit limited because I’m posting at Blogger, rather than at my own site.

I do plan on moving this site off of Blogger in the next few months. I’m already putting the infrastructure in place, and I’ve got hosting space on an account I use for another site. What I don’t have yet is a domain name. Sure, I could just buy one for $10, but I’m being a bit stubborn. I have decided that I want this site to pay for itself. Why? Call it another experiment, I suppose.

Unfortunately, my ad revenue is down, so it might take longer than I hoped. The majority of my ad revenue comes from the BlogHer ad network. It’s pay per view, rather than pay for click, and I think they’ve had some great ads lately. Additionally, I’ve come across a few new PF blogs by checking out the links below the banner ad. They change daily, and different bloggers may have different links, so check them out (please note – I get nothing from these clicks, I just don’t want my readers to miss out). Other BlogHer members may be seeing the same thing. It seems that the ads being shown are the remnant ads for random products rather than some of the specifically targeted ad campaigns – though I’m seeing those as well. The ad campaigns pay significantly more than the remnant ads (I might make the same amount on one campaign ad as I make on 200 remnant ads). BlogHer sends checks every time your account hits $25, and I’m almost there, but not quite. Last month, I would have said “Oh yeah, I’ll make it to $25 in June, no question.” The remnant ads are making that less likely. But soon enough!

Not much I can do about that, of course. I’m not in this for the money, and I don’t plan to become rich by blogging. I think the only reason I’m at all antsy about it is because I really want to move to the new site!

At first, my plan was to take all blog revenue and put it back into the site, use it to pay for hosting and such. I’m starting to think that instead, I will put half of the revenue back into the site and donate half to charity. We’re not talking a lot of money here, but I think it would be a nice gesture. Additionally, every so often, I may designate a month to be 100% for charity – meaning that every penny I earn from ad revenue that month will go directly to charity. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Anyone want to join me?

Megan Smith

Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:

In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance.  It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information.  It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck.  While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.

While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.

Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.

So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan.  I needed to budget.  I needed to know what I was spending my money on.  I needed to prepare for the future.

I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way.  I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.