Some broad facts and figures:

- on my old site, google adsense adverts were generating earnings of around $5 a month simply based on the single link sitting neglected on my old home page

- over the past ten days alone, google adsense earnings from the new site have reached over $30, which should mean monthly earnings of around $90 once things settle down. Incredible! Earnings are already eighteen times more than they were from the old site, before I even do any further tuning of it

- the only thing I’ve done differently is making the google advert links a little more prominent and targeting them for different site sections

- earnings from the other affiliate links via Commission Junction (ie. the banner adverts) are currently £53, again simply in ten days. And yesterday I received my very first cheque from them.

- site visits are roughly the same as they were for the old site. In the first ten days, the site received 5,757 visits and 27,936 page views, averaging 4.85 pages per visit.

So it seems as though visitors are doing what I was hoping they would do on the new site – visit, take a look around at some of the ideas I’ve suggested for free things to do and see in London and then follow an advert to leave.

The purpose of the new site is somewhat different to what I wanted to do with the old one.

Whereas the main purpose of the old site was to enable me to try out new web technologies as I learnt about them whilst also feeding my other hobby – my interest in London’s history – the focus of the new site is less so.

Though I will still use it to test out new technologies and tools that I read about, this time around I also want to use it to try out things as I learn more about seo, affiliate advertising and analytics.

And if the site brings in a bit of extra cash along the way as a result of my tweaking, bargain!