I am happy to share with you all today that this website has crossed two milestones. It is now a 3-month old baby and it has crushed Alexa 500K rank! I know nothing of web marketing and SEO tools (did not even know what the letters stood for until about a year ago) and yet, this website is making a steady march forward.
This would not have been possible without you. Thank you readers and fellow bloggers!
Alexander Skarsgard, the cold but caring vampire in HBO’s True Blood.
Three months ago, I hardly knew anything about creating and running an active website, leave alone know what Alexa means. If you had asked me then, I would have said some parents and fans of True Blood must have loved to name their baby boy Alex, but when they found out they had a baby girl, they named her Alexa.
It’s been a steep learning curve for me, somewhat like learning advanced calculus in my first year engineering school, only without the intimidating professor furiously writing formulas down on the blackboard (yes, we had those) while dressed like a flood victim.
I could’ve continued my corporate slavery and faded into retirement after a fairly satisfactory career, but that is not something I wanted to do, especially after knowing the personal finance crisis that so many people are facing. I wanted to share my journey, learning’s and other views while helping people avoid the pitfalls in their journey to financial independence and achieve a more meaningful life. Besides, I have always believed in the Ten Factors, long before they appeared on this website as its anchor.
Thus, a strangely named website called Ten Factorial Rocks was born, 3 months ago.
Right from my first article, I wanted a clear stamp of originality with the aim to educate or entertain or preferably, entertainingly educate readers. I am fortunate to be part of the incredibly supportive and friendly blogging community. One of my first articles, on the Ten Factors, was featured on Rockstar Finance (Thank you J$!) and after that, there was no turning back. Every encouraging comment on this website and every featured link of my articles on other websites have served to motivate me to write more and write well. Thank you to all my fellow bloggers who have selected my content to be highlighted on their website.
Thank you readers for helping to reach this first milestone in the TFR journey!
I will not stop here. Besides, I realize this is a tiny milestone compared to the major PF bloggers out there who are near or crushing 100K Alexa rank. I want at least a million people to benefit from the content on this website and help them take better financial and life decisions. I want to share my mistakes and that of others that I help in real life so that you can learn from them. Some posts can get analytical or philosophical, but that’s also fuel for the FIRE. I want to make your journey more confident, positive and also assure you that both meaningful life and financial freedom are possible with simple steps (even if you have a family to support). Also, you don’t have to quit your job just because you reached FI (unless you want to).
Above all, I want my readers to have absolute faith that Ten Factorial Rocks always has their best interests at heart – that’s my promise as long as I am around. I am told that only if this website gets to about 100K-125K in Alexa global rank, will a million people regularly benefit from the content. So, please help me get there!
As of this writing, Alexa pegs me at 465,363 global rank and just about 120K US rank. For those interested in how TFR crossed this Alexa Global Rank 500K milestone in 3 months with no marketing and no IT expertise, the table below shows the path. To me, it’s all about original content, genuine content and valuable content. So, I can’t even write a full how-to post about blogging like many websites do because in my experience and even as a reader, content is the only thing that matters to me..and, hopefully, to you too. Everything else is frills, bells and whistles.
| The Journey | Alexa Rank | What I did |
|---|---|---|
| Day 0 | Who knows? Alexa may be the baby sister of the HBO vampire stud Alexander. | Had no clue! Was busy figuring out how to get this website launched. |
| Day 1- 30 | Probably in the 10 million range, don't know. Never bothered with Alexa. | Focused on Content |
| Day 31 | 2.0 million | Launched Alexa tool bar for the first time. Remember thinking this may be sum total of all the sites on personal finance in the world. |
| Day 45 | 1.7 million | Focused on Content |
| Day 50 | 1.2 million | Focused on Content |
| Day 60 | 997K | Focused on Content (was briefly thrilled to see 6 figures) |
| Day 75 | 747K | Focused on Content (Jumbo jet take-off?) |
| Day 90 | 492K | Focused on Content (somebody mailed me saying "hey, you crushed 500K, this is good!") |
| Day ?? | 100K-125K | This is the hardest stretch as I am told. I am sure with your support, we can get here someday. Keep reading, commenting and sharing! I have many articles to write! |
Raman Venkatesh is the founder of Ten Factorial Rocks. Raman is a ‘Gen X’ corporate executive in his mid 40’s. In addition to having a Ph.D. in engineering, he has worked in almost all continents of the world. Ten Factorial Rocks (TFR) was created to chronicle his journey towards retirement while sharing his views on the absurdities and pitfalls along the way. The name was taken from the mathematical function 10! (ten factorial) which is equal to 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 3,628,800.
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