It’s been 2 years since I first put “pen to paper” and started this blog.
Since then it’s been a great ride!
I’ve found that writing helps me to hone my thoughts on topics I want to explore further, or simply brain dump much of what floats around in my head 24/7 into a succinct form that I hope is useful for others.
As I got more into the groove in Year 2, I found that some articles would literally pour out of me in less than an hour.
But then I also struggled with making the time to write as much as I did in Year 1, due to the ups and downs of owning an affiliate website.
So while I didn’t write nearly as much as I did in Year 1, I continue to be enthused and passionate about AR!
Year 2 of AR – A Look Back
In a large way, the blog was put into a new default mode.
I simply couldn’t focus as much time writing, because I NEEDED to spend much more time than anticipated on my new shiny “passive investment” website.
Thus it was pretty early into Year 2, that I realized that I needed to “un-retired” so that I could focus on the affiliate website in the short-term.
Even so, I did my best to keep this project fun, engaging, and most of all – something I personally would want to read!
While I didn’t take the time to do as many book reviews as I have in the past, I hope to eventually get back to it.
Here were the results by the numbers from Year 2…
AR – By The Numbers
AR is now up to 137 published pieces of content.
Last year I was at 95, so that brings us to 42 total posts for Year 2.
Roughly half as good as Year 1, but not terrible either.
We are now up to 690 legit comments, and wait for it … 4,579 spam comments! Oh spammers. They never stop!
And another fun number is 3 – I had 3 beers with Adam @ Blind Luck Project after realizing we both lived in the same city! It was great to get together with someone who is also retired early and can really relate to what you are going through.
Top Articles
- 12 Rules to Break on Your Path to Wealth AND Happiness
- The Personal Financial Plan – a must have for anyone serious about their finances
- 38+ Life Lessons That Helped Me to Retire Early
- Happiness Revisited: did early retirement have an impact?
- Family vs Work: The Everlasting Struggle for Balance
Top Resources
- Easy-to-Use Net Worth Spreadsheet 2023 (Template for Google Sheets & Excel)
- Pay Off Mortgage vs Invest Calculator
- Asset Based Mortgages – No Income Mortgage (Updated 2022)
- Rebalancing your Portfolio with an Asset Allocation Spreadsheet
- Gregory Hays – Meditations: A new Translation by Marcus Aurelius
Total Articles by Category:
- CEO Tips – 19
- Early Retirement – 78
- Enjoying Life – 27
- Financial Independence – 47
- FIRE Insights Survey – 9
- FIRE Resources – 32
- Personal Growth – 39
Traffic/Social/Email
- Total Web Traffic: 51.3K users and 100.2K pageviews (up from 31.7K users and 92.4K pageviews)
- Twitter Followers: 6,970 (up from 1,563)
- Email Subscribers: 629 (up from 389)
And while I didn’t do too much outreach, I did manage to get featured a few times…
AR work has been featured on:
- Apex Money
- Camp FIRE Finance
- J. MONEY *
- Personal Finance Blogs
- Physician on FIRE
- Plutus Foundation
- My Own Advisor
- Wall St. Nerd
AR Has Been Interviewed By:
- I don’t believe I did any interviews this past blogging season -> at least not any that have been published yet…
AR Guest Posts on Other Sites:
- Nada here too.
Guest Posts on AR:
We did have some great guests posts from other content creators on AR. Here they were:
- 6 Lessons Learned From My Year of Piano by Amanda
- What Doesn’t Kill You, Makes You Stronger – How To Take Adversity And Turn It On Its Head! by Adam @ Blind Luck Project
- Why a transient life beats peanut butter on pancakes by Olaf, the Mile High Finance Guy
- The 9 Laws of Productivity and How to Harness Them adapted from Chris @ WFH Systems Coach
- 5 Ways to Earn Mental Health Dividends – Even When Times Are Tough by Gary @ Financial Fives
The FIRE Insights Survey
The FIRE Insights Survey survey continued on for its second year in which I survey 300+ personal finance content creators.
I bumped the pacing down to quarterly (which feels right). Here they are:
- The FIRE Insights Survey #9
- The FIRE Insights Survey #8
- The FIRE Insights Survey #7
- The FIRE Insights Survey #6
AR Revenue and Expense
Revenue
While making money is not the primary goal of AR, it has started to earn a bit of affiliate income to cover the costs of operations and also provide a little income.
In total this year, the site made $2,075.87.
Expense
The cost has remained pretty much the same. Hosting increased as I moved to a new AWS instance with a bit more RAM and memory, but otherwise everything else has remained the same.
- Hosting (AWS): $5.95 per month
- Google Workspace (email/docs): $5.50 per month
- Cloudflare (dns, cache): $20 per month
- Zlappo (twitter scheduling): $15 per month (split between both businesses)
- ConvertKit (email newsletter): FREE
- Canva Pro (images/graphics): $6.5 per month (split between both business)
Monthly Expense: ~$52.95 per month
Thank You
A big thank you to all of my readers, email subscribers, and twitter followers!
I hope that you all enjoy what I am doing and continue to come back – but if you don’t then I know that my writing is off the mark. It’ll be on me. Not you.
While AR is a labor of love, I still appreciate any support financial or non-financial that you can give!
Congratulations on 2 years of blogging. You create unique and very good content for the community. I am proud to be a part of your blog. I wish you all the best for the next few years. Keep it up.
Best regards,
Alexander
Congrats on two years! May you have many more.
Sam
Thanks Sam!!!