Suite101.com - One Year Review

I applied to Suite101.com on June 17, 2009, was accepted the next day, and posted my first article on June 21, 2009. By the end of June I had 10 articles posted, had less than 100 pages views, and a whopping 2 cents in income. So I'm going to transpose my effective anniversary to June 30, 2009. Having just passed a year, then, I thought I'd pull together some statistics. Here's a summary.

Articles posted: 105

Page views: 68,033

Earnings from articles: $106.07

Earnings from contests: $101.00

Typical $/article/month: $0.15

Range $/article/month: $0.06-$0.20

Earnings /1000 PVs: $1.56

Even though I don't like the way images load into this blogger template, I'm attaching several charts from my Excel spreadsheet. I hope they come out readable, though they never seem to organize themselves on a page the way I want them to. Each can be clicked on to get an enlargement. The first is a basic page view record with daily page views and 7 day running page views, the second page views per article per day. Both of these show the number of articles posted. The third is a revenue chart showing daily revenue, 7 day running revenue, and revenue per 1000 page views. The fourth is revenue per article per month, and the fifth is revenue per month.

These charts tell a story. First, that the amount of page views I'm getting has drastically reduced from a peak in November, but especially this last couple of months. Second, that I've never been able to figure out how to make money at Suite. The subjects I write in just don't seem to generate much revenue. Third, that revenue is generally growing, not because my articles are becoming more popular with age, but because I've added more articles. Fourth that revenue simply hasn't stabilized much; it's still all over the place.

A year is a good time to evaluate whether this endeavor is a good use of my time. Probably not, but it's something I mostly enjoy. There is a good community feeling in the Suite forums, and I've made friends there (Hutch, if you read this, may the Internet Force be with you). Possibly the 85,000 or so words I've posted in articles have made me a better writer and added in some way to my writing resume.

I'm going to keep at it, but at a significantly reduced rate than I did in my first year.

Now, time to post this and see how it all formats.