I was just looking at some of my personal finances, relieved to see that if this job market continues to suck, I'm still good to go all summer. That's a positive note.
Obviously that entails looking at the business as well, and I updated my ad revenue spreadsheet for the last four months. Wow, I guess I didn't truly realize just what kind of world of suck we've been living in since last fall. I look at two measurements, the obvious one being the total ad revenue from all of the ad networks. Wow does it suck. 2008 was pretty brutal, and this year got off to a rough start. This month is better, but only because Federated Media is really saving my ass.
The second thing I look at is the actual cost per page view, and that's down almost 50% from last year. If it weren't for a solid rise in traffic, I'm not sure what would happen.
Two things help, the first being club memberships. Just as it was in 2001, I'm not sure if I'd still press on with the site if it weren't for that. I'm really grateful that people think it's worth paying for (though I know some do it just for the events, which is fine). The other thing is self-sold advertising, but unfortunately, we didn't get any at all this year from hotel listings, which is a damn shame. Those were nice scores in previous years.
I think part of the drag comes from the comparison to late 2005 to early 2008, which were ridiculously awesome. Those were good times. But those times also came after a long post-2001 recovery. I sure as hell hope it doesn't take four years to come out of this!
The positive around this is that I've been working on things I can control to help improve the situation. I've been looking at radical traffic growth lately due to a combination of SEO, marketing, tweaks and various strategic efforts, and they're paying off. I don't know why I've used that expertise in my day jobs for years but wasn't applying it to my own sites, but I am now. I suspect that if I wasn't writing a book, I could do a lot more!
Now that I'm getting back into my roller coaster nerdness a little more, I have to admit that this is all a lot more fun again.
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