One takeaway from these first six months of blogging is that doing a periodic ‘Update’ piece is way easier than touching up a dozen or so different posts to bring them up to date.

I am now on my second seasonal update. The Spring Update was a great way to recap my first 3 months of this site.

I also get to use random photos that I like, but just do not mesh with any existing post to date.

1. Portfolio: My RAI, Reyonold’s Tobacco was bought out by British American Tobacco, BTI. I made about $1,500 profit and dumped that back in. I swapped out the last of my MAT, Mattel, for ORCL, Oracle. Lastly, FSC, Fifth Street Finance, looks like its merger is in the bag, so I cashed out and beefed up several blue chip positions.(Portfolio)
2. I purchased 2 more ounces of Platinum (Isle of Man this time) because right now Platinum is trading below Gold, this is not the usual historical case and seemed like a good time to build up.(Precious Metals)

3. I got my first feature on Rockstar Finance! My Army of Loyal Henchmen got the most hits ever so far for any of my posts.

4. I am also slated to do my first guest post. It should be coming out on RetirementManifesto in early August!
5. Speaking of Retirement Manifesto, Fritz’s idea for a Drawdown Chain went exceedingly well. There are now 18 links and I was lucky enough to be Number 3. Check out that article and those links here, Retirement Master Plan.
6. I have been at this blogging thing for about 6 months now and here are my numbers;

• 22,321 page views since launching Feb 1,2017
• 66 published posts (average 11/month)
• 273 comments (I need 79 views to average 1 comment left)
• I have collected 603 followers on Twitter
• 300 on Pinterest
• 415 on Facebook
• 54 followers by email/Wordpress

I have always appreciated when youngish bloggers posted an update on their growth/traffic. It gave me a realistic metric to weigh my own progress against and decide where I should focus.

I have also noticed the difference between traffic quantity and traffic quality. Certain funnels, like NPR’s Your Money and Your Life will get you tons of hits, but only for 1.5 pages and then they leave.

I would trade a 1,000 one hit wonders for a single person interested enough to read 10 posts at one sitting.

• 08/08/2017 Side note; I just did that guest post at RetirementManifesto, the visitors from that link viewed an average of 5.68 pages each!

Here is where the majority of my views have originated from;

• RockStar Finance 1,396
• Facebook 1,068
• Twitter  @othala_fehu 582
• Forum at Rockstar Finance 548
• Reddit 423
• PhysicianOnFire 373
• Directory at RockStar Finance 290
• Retirement Manifesto 169
• Search Engines 155
• Retireby40.org 100

And Here are the pages they have gravitated to most.

1. My Army of Loyal Henchmen
2. Retirement Master Plan
3. Portfolio
4. Net Worth
5. About
6. June Net Worth 2017
7. Student Loan Hellmouth
8. Blogroll
9. The Art of Market Timing
10. The Cottage

I guess that makes sense that my most popular articles are also my newest articles.

We’re Moving in the right direction.

It wasn’t all nose to the grindstone, I also managed to take the family on a vacation for two weeks. We went on an excursion ‘Up North’ as we like to say in Michigan. Included was a side trip to The Upper Peninsula and Saul St. Marie and Canada.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure;

I wrote this post on Lughnasadh. Lughnasadh is a Gaelic festival marking the beginning of the harvest season. Historically, it was held on 1 August, or about halfway between the summer solstice and autumn equinox.

Happy Lughnasadh!