# Weekend Edition: the blog so far

## By Mr. Money Mustache

## Sun, 24 Jul 2011 18:14:00 +0000

Sometime earlier in July, I was perusing the WordPress site stats that prove so addictive to bloggers. I noticed that during my distracted days of lake swimming and cottage building, this blog had hit a nice round number milestone of having had individual articles read a total of 100,000 times. That seemed like quite a lot to me, seeing how triple M was just born in April.

But now, just a couple of weeks later, I see that number is already creeping up towards 200,000 views. Even more significantly, there are now almost two THOUSAND subscribers – people who get the articles directly and thus do not show up in the page view statistics above. Exponential growth, thanks to the magic of the Internet. Just when things start to get slow, another random event seems to happen – this month it was getting a few mentions on the very popular site Lifehacker.com. (Thanks very much to David over there for the mention, by the way).

In June, I experimented with adding some Google Adsense ads to the sidebar. They have been a moderate success. It turns out the bloggers get paid surprisingly little for just having them (i.e., “per thousand impressions”), but surprisingly well when people actually click on them. Unfortunately, a surprisingly small number of people actually click – probably because we are all wise anti-consumers who pride ourselves on NOT noticing or clicking on advertisements. Good for us! I’d have to start a blog on fashion or ‘Celebs’ if I wanted a consumery crowd. According to the terms of service, you’re not allowed to discuss actual dollars per click, but in total, the blog is now earning over TWO DOLLARS per day. That’s far below minimum wage, but it’s still more than enough to pay for our monthly batch of beer brewing.. so thank you, readers!

As for the mental aspect of being a blogger: it is increasingly addictive. I find myself turning more and more into Mr. Money Mustache in real life each day. I buy less stuff than before, not wanting to contradict my own advice.. and I think up dozens more things that need to be said every day. I jot them down in the iPhone’s little notepad and only wish I had more time to write. Life is too busy and fun this summer, although with the young lad starting Kindergarten next month, I expect a fantastic amount of new time for hobbies to open up. The comments and readers, i.e., YOU, are the real things that make this fun, since we are an actual virtual community now.

Finally, as search engine traffic has continued to grow, so has the hilarity of the searches that bring people here. Here is a summary of some of the top and/or most interesting ones.

For fun, I’ve added a few links to the articles that I think generated these search engine hits:

mr money mustache (and various misspellings thereof, such as “mister money moustache”): 4000

bad superman 9
my money mustache 9
earth day 9
stock market 7
mr. mustache retirement 6
mortgage 6
car 5
“my gray hairs” 4
universal men’s grooming device 4
rei bookpacker plus 4
early retirement family man 3
investing 3
real estate 3
hasselhoff 3
lunch 3
stock market p e ratio 2011 3
401k 3
mustache cash stash 3
student loan 3
japanese man 3
raising children on no money 2
home renovation 2
true cost of raising children 2
how much does it cost to run my electric oven for 1 hour 2
food 2
vbinx versus vfinx 2
insurance 2
getting rich with rental property 2
“dave ramsey” good guy 2
old woman weightlifter 2
mustache bar shortage 2
“ramit sethi” 2
beer 2
what’s a good work food stash? 2
evil gut with long mustache 1
colourful 1
man grooming head in mirror 1
old muscle big moustache 1
ways native americans kept hair clean 1
mr money mustache that guy who knows loads about money and early retirement and investment for a return of 7% 1
wealth, fuck you money 1
mrs money mustache 1
why retire if you like your work? 1
herbert salisbury simple retirement calculator 1
“the magic of thinking big” and warren buffet 1
superman 3 junk yard bad fight 1
there is a higher cause 1
sarah gets a bank loan of 200000 for the purchase of a house the mortgage is to be amortized through monthly payments for a term of 15 years with an interest rate 1
double mcpancy 1
do a lot of canadians have mustaches 1
mr money mustache baby angels 1
why are wealthy people still buying gas guzzling cars? 1
amsterdam bicycles 1
getting rich off rentals 1
the most badass person you’ve met 1
retired from corporate life at 28 1
vin diesel wealth 1
millionaire car buying strategy 1
mustache saver blog retire early 1
mr money muscle 1
mr money mustache investments 1
“summer mustache” 1
rich bar owner 1