Friday, January 1, 2016

2015 Year in Review - Why Not? Everyone else is Doing it!

I wanted to be the first one to rip off Frequent Miler's post, but unfortunately The Free-quent Flyer beat me to the punch.

2015 was a very interesting year for Oren's Money Saver.  At some point, the blog transitioned from a classic Manufactured Spending blog to a blog highly (exclusively?) dedicated to selling on Amazon.  How did that happen?  Hmm.

For the most part that is Vinh's fault for starting the 20K challenge!

I've changed my MS habits due to reselling.  I don't need to earn the points in other ways since I can earn more than I need with just regular spending for reselling.  Sign up bonuses are a piece of cake now.  I can't remember the last time I bought a Visa Gift Card to liquidate - Yikes!  Things have changed so much!  I get nostalgic for the old times but then I look at my profits and I forget about that.


I would venture to guess that most people never heard of this blog before April and many more not for a few months after that.  April is when Doctor of Credit started quoting this blog regularly.  (If you don't follow DoC - you better start now if you like MSing!)

That got a lot more eyes here, then I started sharing reselling ideas.  That was great! Readership skyrocketed!  Revenue came along too, which still wasn't much but I was beginning to think that maybe I have something here.


Then things got a little too popular.  Not popular like Frequent Miler or DoC, but too popular for everyone to be reselling the same thing.  I cut down on the deals I posted.  Still didn't help for the ones I did post.

In mid November I decided to significantly cut down on the deals I posted (I ended up pretty much not posting any more deals after that)

Here is a picture of page views all time which correlates to this timeline (I included December there to show you where December ended relative to the high in November):



The first thing that's crazy is that I've been blogging since 2011.  That's a long time, especially since no one read it before Aprile.  (If someone publishes blog posts and no one reads can you call yourself a Blogger?) The big drop after December is because page views end after 8pm for me so it is considered a new month, that's not real but there is a definite drop off since I'm not doling out free money like I used to.


As you can imagine, revenue from the blog decreased as well.  That's ok and expected.  It came along with reselling revenue and profits going to all time highs!  A sad tradeoff for me since I enjoy the reader interaction, but a necessary one.  Publicizing deals that no one profits from because of too many sellers is to no one's advantage.








So here are the 10 most popular posts from the year - for the most part, these are posts that were picked up by DoC since that adds many hundreds of views.  As you can see my views are nowhere near the numbers of FM and FQF. That's cool, I'm still proud of what we've accomplished here.



10)  Which Gift Card Resellers Allow American Express Gift Cards? eGift Card Delivery Speed? Scanable Barcode for in Store Use? I Need Your Help Please!- 1,554 views

An attempt to figure out some information on different exchanges

9)  I Think Discover is Just Guessing - Brilliant but Bad Customer Service - 1,582 views

After Discover started second guessing everyone's transactions and saying they were made with gift cards, I called them out saying they had no idea.  I still think I'm right.




One of the first Turnover Tuesdays posts that had an actionable deal - one of my first actionable reselling deals!




This was awesome.  $100 off anything on eBay.  Only last a few hours but it got picked up in a hurry!
6) Petco and American Express - $7.00 per AmEx Card - Approach with Caution - 1,714 views
A nice gift card reselling post.  Only made it since it got picked up by DoC.  Nothing super special.


5) Allen Edmonds Gift Cards and AMEX Offers for You - $10 per AMEX Card - Pajama Money - 1,780 view

Another nice gift card reselling post.  Once again, picked up by DoC. This one a little better than the last.

4) Turnover Tuesdays - My First Attempt at Reselling - Fail! - 1,844 views

The first post in my weekly fun series on reselling tips and education.  not surprising this has the most since it gets requoted every week and everyone starts at the beginning but not everyone reads all of them.

3) Turnover Tuesdays - Killing it at Walgreen's! - 1,869 views

I don't know that this Turnover Tuesdays was so much better than the rest but once again picked up by DoC and M2M so it did much better.

2) Turnover Tuesdays - Patience vs. A Quick HIt - Some Poor Posts and Where this Blog is Headed?  - 2,254 views

This was as interesting post for sure.  This is where I explained why I couldn't post as many deals anymore.

1) 5% cashback on All Your Amazon Purchases through Giving Assistant Shopping Portal 2,624 views

5% cashback on Amazon purchases. Everyone loves that.  Not surprised that this was #1.  Unfortunately this one is dead.



I hope you enjoyed these posts from 2015!

Happy New Year!