It is over half a year since I published my first post on Kacper Wrzesniewski dot com. Looks like a good moment for some kind of summary, so I decided to prepare short breakdown and list my top 5 traffic sources since the beginning.

Entrecard – 30 %

Entrecard is my best source of traffic since the beginning. Definitely my Entrecard Contest helped a lot and I’m planning to run one more in near future. The disadvantage of Entrecard traffic is that it has high bounce ratio, due to people who mainly drop and run. The good point is that slowly Entrecard traffic gives place to my other sources which are increasing shares.

Stumble Upon – 13,6 %

Second traffic source is Stumble Upon. I think it is better traffic than most coming from Entrecard, however it is still with high bounce rate and short time visits. Usually, I got some traffic spikes after my best posts and few days later I get some more traffic from it. Later the traffic diminishes.

Wykop – 6,7 %

Wykop is kind of Polish Digg. I used it often in the past; nowadays I don’t submit articles there. Strong and short spikes of traffic, but I find it difficult to convert Wykop users into loyal readers.

BlogCatalog – 2,9 %

I don’t dedicate to much time to BlogCatalog and despite of this, it constantly sends me some significant traffic. Sometimes I only add some friends, drop some comments and review blogs. I rarely take an active part in some groups. But of course it is very nice, that without too much work I can get some traffic.

Google Organic Search – 2,5%

It is possible, it surprised you that Google is only on the fifth place with such a poor result. It is concerning me as well. Does Google hate me or what? Something wrong concerning SEO? I honestly don’t know, but for the long period I almost get no organic traffic from Google. Now I’m less worried because it started to significantly increasing and soon I think Google would be my first or second source of traffic.

That’s my short review of my top traffic sources. I would be really happy if you drop below your best traffic sources, with or without short comment on them.

Why did I invest so little?

This question is in my head all the time since yesterday.

Recently I stayed away from the stock market. Mainly because of the bearish market. Most investments are very risky nowadays. I’m also not an investing guru and when I don’t feel comfortable and don’t know what is going on concerning stocks I prefer to stay away and watch the situation from the side.

Watch the situation from the side.

Exactly, staying away from market doesn’t mean I do not learn, observe and look for investing opportunities. All the time I read books, comments, analyses and of course I analyze many charts. I’m passionate about this so it’s not a problem for me. But if you have to force yourself to spend some time with charts, maybe investing is not for you.

Yesterday I found interesting stocks which I bought. Technical situation was quite interesting and additionally, fundamental situation was very attractive. Actually, I can’t say too much about fundamental, as I’m evangelist of technical analysis, but there were good comments about it from my trusted friends, who are more behind this approach. Technically, stocks have just started short-term uptrend. It was very tempting to jump in, and so I did.

Why did I invest so little?

Despite of attractive technical and fundamental signals I’m very cautious. I think that most investments right now are very risky. Therefore I invested only a little money.

No more than hour after I opened position, the stocks soared. Today, it was a replay day and in two days I made almost 12%. Great, but….

Why did I invest so little?

It is very common that after successful picking a stock an investor is asking this question. This feeling that you could invest more and now enjoy much bigger earnings appears and it is difficult to free your mind from it. A simple way to help yourself is to answer the following question:

Why did I invest so little?

• I’m a cautious investor.
• I don’t take unnecessary risk.
• I don’t put all my eggs in one basket.
• Stocks don’t always follow technical and fundamental analysis.
• This time I made a good pick, but it could be also the wrong one.
• I obey my investing rules.

You have to control your emotions. It is very important ability especially for successful investors.
All in all, I made a good investment. I didn’t take unnecessary risk and I followed my investing rules and I earned a nice amount of money.

photo credit: Buster McLeod

All my previous roundup posts have following numbers starting from 1 with the first edition. Last edition was 7th. But honestly saying, I see no serious advantage of numbering these posts, so since today, roundups are without numbers.

Below are links that I recently found interesting. Enjoy.

How to earn money from blogging? Great question. This is a very general article and doesn’t cover details but… it is always interesting what is written about blogging beyond the blogosphere.

If you are interested in meditation and you short How To, this is post for you. Help yourself to overcome depression and enjoy many more benefits of this skill.

Neil wrote about 10 ways to save time. As time is very limited resource, this post is simply a must read.

Effortless way to achieve any goal is presented on Dumb Little Man. I never thought it can be so simple.

J.D. wrote a great post concerning multitasking and its influence on his productivity.

Finally, Trent describes fourteen techniques for improving your work life balance. Read it to become an office ninja.

If you want your post or article listed in my next roundup, send a link to me via contact page.

We are constantly learning about personal finances, we are introducing plenty of frugal habits into our lives and we are taking a lot of various actions in order to save money. However, reading daily many great blogs concerning these subjects I find tons of frugal ideas that don’t look interesting for me.

Ok, I don’t mean that they don’t work at all. They don’t work for me because they consume more of my resources (usually time) than they bring back as a result (usually saved money).

Both time and money are very important resources and we very often exchange one of them for the other. Many of these exchanges are not profitable for us. Why?

1. It is difficult to estimate value of our time.
2. Many factors influence value of time, making it different for each of us.
3. We are not always conscious; how often we trade our time for money at a loss.

Therefore it is important to know how much we value our time.

There is bunch of possible approaches, neither one is perfect. But we are not looking for ideal formula. We need a good estimation that will help us to take right decisions.

I always use two methods.

• I take my monthly income from regular job and I divide it by number of hours I worked during that period of time. This way I get how much is my one hour work.
• I take my total monthly income (includes salary and all passive incomes) and I divide it by number of hours in month. This gives me an average amount of money I earn each hour.

Of course you can modify my formulas. You may find a different way to estimate your current value of time. Please, remember that this is only a quite abstract indicator. You want to use it only as a support to some money related decisions. Don’t treat this as a determinant of your personal value, your assets or anything similar.

When knowing the value of your hour can help?

There are many examples in common daily situations, but most of them concern buying. Sometimes you look for cheaper price of what you want to buy. You check many catalogues, visit shops, talk with shop assistants, and browse internet. Finally you spend more time and other resources (like your energy or gas in your car), than you save money on buying at better price. Cheaper price doesn’t always mean cheaper.

Other situations where this approach can help you find the best solution are: choosing mean of transport when going to the certain place or eating at restaurant vs. cooking at home. I’m pretty sure there are other possibilities to apply this method.

Two important things I have to add while closing to the end. Not everybody is able to freely trade hour into money at any given time and without limits. That is why it is nothing wrong to dedicate time in order to save money on lower rate than usual.

Second thing you should keep in mind is that option looking optimal may be less valuable as far as other aspects are concerned. For example, baking own bread consumes more time and effort, than buying it at grocery, but it can be simply interesting and fun. So, it is not always the way to go, to consider only time and money.

photo credit: vastfield