November 2008 Site and Net Worth Review (-5.87%)

By Pinyo, on December 1, 2008

Before I begin my net worth review, I would like to point out that Larry Swedroe recently published The Only Guide to Alternative Investments You’ll Ever Need. The book got several great reviews on Amazon.com and my copy is on order. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share some insight from the book with you soon. In the mean time, you can check out Larry’s Ask The Expert With Larry Swedroe series, and feel free to send in your questions.

Net Worth Review

November continued to be a very volatile and bad month for the stock market with the S&P 500 declined another -7.5% from 968.75 to 896.24 — in fact, it was close to breaking 750 at one time. I know it’s fun to have all kind of historic events, but this is a bit much. According to NetworthIQ, my net worth dropped another -2.65% and my net investable assets dropped -5.87% — not bad, all things considered.

Highlights

Home value dropped another $7,000 according to Zillow; but the thing that’s hurt more on the home front was the $874 I spent on a new washer. Here’s the story about my broken washer.
Retirement investment dropped another -6.89%. I did make some minor adjustment to investment allocation to buy more under-allocated investments. This way I avoid incurring any fee associated with rebalancing too often.
I don’t know if I shared this before. In my taxable account, I traded out mutual funds that I held for over 5 years at practically no capital gains for some B Shares of Berkshire Hathaway. I’ll tell you why in another article, probably later this week.
There’s not much going on in the peer-to-peer investment front. In November, it was a net withdrawal since Prosper doesn’t accept new loan, and I haven’t add any new money to Lending Club.

Alternative Income

Alternative income from my web businesses dropped -23%, but this type of fluctuation is expected — in fact, I am beginning to see some deterioration of my online income due to the economic crisis. This brings my projected alternative income against my total income (salary + alternative income) from 19.05% to 17.61% — still beating the 17% goal.

Blog Review

November was a good month considering that I published about 40% less than normal due job-related matters. And depending on the outcome, I may not be able to continue with the daily pace; however, I have a plan to supplement my content from other contributors — if you are interested in featuring your article on Moolanomy, please do not hesitate to send me an article to review and publish.

Performance

Here are the key statistics for this month:

Subscribers increased slightly from 2,213 to 2,224
Search traffic increased +2% from 36,047 to 36,681
Visitors increased +7% from 56,738 to 60,499
Page views increased +3% from 85,448 to 88,144

Top 10 Referrers

Thank you to all 925 web sites and blogs that sent visitors my way. Despite listing only the top 10, I do appreciate everyone’s help. Here are the top referrers and referring articles this month:

* Indicates the winners of 125×125 banner ad spot.

Again, thank you to my readers and fellow bloggers for your support.

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Pinyo is the brain behind Moolanomy personal finance blog and a few other web sites. If you like this article, please subscribe for free daily email updates.

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11 Comments

Emily@remodelingthislife
December 1, 2008, 23:05

I look forward to hearing more about the purchase of the B shares. Hope you got them when they dropped below $3K
DebtKid
December 2, 2008, 3:15

It’s a crazy time right now. Keep the posts coming Pinyo! You’re stuff is great.
DebtKid
December 2, 2008, 3:15

And by that, I mean “your” stuff, not “you’re” stuff. Sigh. Late night commenting = fail!
Pinyo
December 2, 2008, 10:16

@Emily — I got one at $2,700, but the first two was from the $3,600 level.

@DebtKid — Thank you for the explanation. I was getting worried.
Online Dividends
December 2, 2008, 11:40

The economic crisis has decreased my Google Income significantly – i managed to double my traffic, while Google earnings kept even. Luckily I have other ad programs for my sites, otherwise I wouldn’t have increased my income in November.
Pete
December 2, 2008, 11:45

last couple of months my adsense income has gone up 5-fold, as has my traffic. I attribute it almost directly to the crisis, and people looking for answers about what government help they can get, how to make extra money, etc. The crisis sucks for my 401k, but so far its been good for my blog income!
Patrick
December 2, 2008, 16:18

I wouldn’t stress too much about your net worth going down due to stock valuations. Stocks have been fluctuating like crazy and will continue to do so for the next few months. As long as you stick to your plan, you are setting yourself up for success.

And I’m always glad to send a few folks your way.
Pinyo
December 4, 2008, 12:28

@Online Dividends — I am seeing similar trend where traffic increased by revenue either stayed the same or declined. However, my ad income is well diversified with AdSense representing only about 30%, so I am okay.

@Pete — Yes, AdSense income is highly correlated to search traffic and that’s what you’re seeing. My blog is seeing similar traffic surge due to searches about the economic crisis and stimulus check.

@Patrick — Who’s stressing . And definitely thank you for sending readers my way.
FinancePuzzle
December 6, 2008, 23:55

Are there good resources out there to setup additional ad revenue streams outside of Google Adsense? Would like to setup some direct, private placed ads but not sure of what paperwork I should complete before hand…Any help would be greatly appreciated
Make Friends, Earn Money
December 7, 2008, 13:12

nice to see that you are continuing to maintain the growth of your blog. In relaity I think this will continue as the financial crisis worsens as people will be looking for better ways to invest and for other money making ideas, thoughts and opinions.
Pinyo
December 10, 2008, 0:14

@FinancePuzzle – There are a few things you could try, but in general it breaks down to affiliate sales (i.e., CJ, PepperJam, etc.), CPM (as in per impression – i.e., ADSDAQ, BURST, ValueClick, BlogHerAds, etc.), and PPC (i.e., AdSense, InfoLinks, etc.)

Paperwork depends on each advertising network requirement.

@Make Friends – The financial crisis helps with traffic, but I did lose a few advertisers over the past few weeks.

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