Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

It’s that time again, earnings earnings earnings reports.

October was an OK month, again not horrible, but no amazing increase in earnings was seen from previous months. Last month I earned $89.64 from internet endeavours. This month:

Adsense = $24.74

Namedrive = $64.24

Affiliates = $0

Total = $88.98

Elsewhere:

One Dollar a Day saw $838.65

The Internet Cashflow Guy saw $369.85

Building my Empire had $100.36

Well that’s it for earnings reports, if you want to share yours with everyone, please feel free to post a comment with your earnings or or a link to your earnings post.

technorati tags:Blog, Earnings, Adsense, Affiliates, Money, Entrepreneur

September showed a fall in earnings in both affiliates and Namedrive parked sites. I am a little dissapointed in my namedrive earnings and was wondering if anyone else saw this happening to their earnings of namedrive parked sites? My CPC has gone way down in the past few weeks.

As for total earnings here is the breakdown.

Text-Link-Ads = $10.91
Google Adsense = $23.89
NameDrive = $51.99
Direct Ad Sales = $2.85

Total $89.64

August Earnings were $151.09 and July Earnings were $122.05.

Elsewhere around the web.

Steve Pavlina earned $12,000 last month, (many of you might recall he is the push I needed to get into the interenet publishing world.)

$1 dollar a day’s earnings slip in september as well to$908.55

Burt’s September Update has him just under $3,000.

The Internet Cashflow Guy announces increase in September earnings, $361.31

Building my Empire sees $119.22 in September.

Anyone else with earnings feel free to comment with them or email them to me and I can post them here!

UPDATES:
Tyler Cruz - a new (to me) internet entrepreneur that is making $239 a day.

In the 9 months since I began caring about getting my pages listed in search engines I haven’t had much success doing just that. I would consider myself an SEO genius, heck, I have a Michelle Wie News Blog that I write at a few times a week and that’s not even on the top 10 page results for google. I’m on page 12 or 13 or something.

This blogs referrals from Google fluctuates more than Google’s stock itself. I recently began to really think about how I can get my sites listed higher in Google search results and haven’t come up with a brilliant way to do so.

Sure I can do what every so-called “SEO expert” says to do which is develop more content and get quality links that mention the particular keyword in them. Frankly I think it’s a load of crap. I have about 20 links from just Michelle Wie sites that link to my page and I mention Michelle Wie’s name about 2-4 times and article, not too much, not too little.

Anyway, as I was searching my usual blogs to see what was new in the sphere I travel in I happened upon a neat little article over at osworld.biz related to pure AdSense sites getting lower and lower listings in Google thus resulting in less traffic and lower revenue. You can read about it at his AdSense derailed article.

It made me wonder if Google has been playing with their search results algorithm to combat all the sites that are made from freely available articles and are published strictly for the AdSense revenue. I’m not sure if it would make sense from a business model to reduce these pages traffic, especially if they’re producing high click-through rates, I mean it is Google that’s making the money off placing those sites higher.

Either way I’ll have to do more research but I thought it was interesting and helpful (since these AdSense site guys and gals are pretty secretive about how and what they do) for him to publish his latest AdSense earnings and trends, linked with results from Google Search.

Let me know if any of you know of a change to The Algorithm. I hope to just keep building a good base of useful content and good links and hopefully in a year this network will have some quality traffic.

I feel like I’ve made it to the doorstep of the club.

I’m not going to lie, I started this whole blogging endeavour with the hope to make as money. Possibly even as much money as some of the heavy hitting bloggers like Steve Pavlina or Darren Rowse. I had all the ambition in the world, what I thought was a good idea, (who doesn’t want to become good at everything), and the technical know-how to tackle the internet.

9 months later and boy was I wrong!

Turns out writing in a way that is connected, focused, and draws people back day in and day out, like a newspaper or magazine does, is tough work. I see it can be done, but as the title of this blog (which may soon change, I’m feeling frisky), I want to do everything and doing everything requires me to change directions a lot and keeping focused is tough.

I did however manage to begin making money regularly, about $10-$20 from AdSense, and $10-$20 from various other affiliates and advertising companies. And this month I just looked into my bank account to see that Google had deposited my first ever payout, ranging from the last 9 months, a total of…

$101.22!!!!!!!!

It’s been a long time coming but I can see the potential, I have some interesting ideas for new blogs and new directions of blogs, and maybe soon enough I’ll be able to say I’ve joined the club of bloggers who could live off their blogging salaries.

My internet endeavours are growing. I have 11 blogs, one half hearted AIS site and I am also increasing my parked domains portfolio.

Blogs
Adsense and Chitika: $24.20
Text-link-Ads: $8.33
Affiliates: $19.95

Domains
Namedrive: $61.89
UrbanData: $7.68

Total $122.05

That’s right I blasted way past the $1 a day mark and headed into $4 a day!!! Part of the reason I made more money everyday was because I invested in domain names. Some worked out and some didn’t but I have been learning what to look for when I purchase domains. Mainly if I purchase already proven domains I look to be able an recoup my investment in less than a year. Sounds impossible but with the ever changing internet there’s a big risk in purchasing domain names that could go out in a few weeks.

The blogs are improving I am well over 100 unique visitors on every single blog this past month (this blog gets around a thousand) with three of the blogs over 200.

Thanks to all those who have been helping and encouraging me in my quest. Let’s hope this next month is just as productive.

Aloha

June was a good month. I added a few more ways to make money from my blogs and blog network as well as increased my domain name portfolio and began using namedrive to earn income from those names. I also began running chitika ads again which has helped the bottom line. Still a lot of work for such a little payoff but at least we’re seeing growth.

AdSense - 13.45
Chitika - 2.00 (unaudited)
Text-Link-Adds - 2.44
NameDrive - 4.05

Total - 21.94

Due to some good affiliate action my earnings this month have already surpassed June totals so I am excited to see what the next 26 days are going to bring!

Some others like me reporting their earnings for the month of June are

Burt’s osworld - AIS earner reporting as always
Dollar a Day - increases earnings
jc commerce has a banner week, over $100 a day!

Feel free to post you earnings in the comments section to let us know how you’re fairing, or post a link to your page that describes your earnings if I missed you.

May marked the 4th consecutive month with increased AdSense earnings. In April I saw $9.61 and made a large (in my world) jump to $14.90. The month of may started out great with earnings of $1 a day for the first week and a half and then nothing for about 2 weeks. The last half of the month pulled me over the $10 mark no doubt thanks to starting my blog network.

All that is good news, except I’m still not earning anything, in fact, due to my love of buying domain names as well as the hosting fees, I’m still out quite a few dollars. No fear though. I see good things for the month of June. I am working on recruiting writers for my network and building a readership at each of those blogs. This I hope will boost my advertising exposure and increase revenue so I can maybe turn a profit.

As I usually do here are some numbers and links to some other bloggers. If you have earnings to report feel free to add you amount, and a link to a post (if you have one) that describes your earnings.

$1 a Day - $836.87
Internet Cashflow Guy - $119.08
Building My Empire - $78.51
Burts Entreprenuerial Blog -increase of $600

In an effort to increase the revenue and test out some new streams of income I have decided to add Text-Link-Ads to my site. My traffic numbers have been steadily rising and I have read some pretty good reviews as of late for Text-Link-Ads that peaked my interest in the service.

Currently my text-link-ads are located just below the ADD FEED TO section of my sidebar and they are located on every page. It’s a pretty good spot that I hope will attract a few buyers a month.

For those of you who don’t know, Text-Link-Ads is a service which brokers the sale of links on your site. They give you 50% of the income generated from your site directly tell you a range of what links on your site will go for. They have a large database of advertisers they promote your site to which is something a lot of individuals don’t have access to.

They also allow the common folks, like you and I, to buy links from sites by browsing their listings. The site information is provided along with ranking information and the price for the link.

Best of all, the only thing that shows up on your web page is the link title. There isn’t some gaudy border or extra names promoting text-link-ads, just the link. Check ‘em out if you’re looking for an added stream of income for your sites.

I received my first affiliate income from an ING Direct Referral this month which boosted earnings. My earnings overall for the month of April are broken down as follows.

Advertising - $9.61
Affiliates - $10

My earnings through advertising are up $2.53 from $7.08 last month and as I mentioned I received and additional $10 from my affiliates. That makes a total increase in online revenue $12.53. I am very pleased with the results even though some may say I spend a lot of time for such little return. I say to them that I am learning a lot about site development, maintenance, advertising, marketing, and improving my writing skills along the way. Sounds like a fair trade-off to make a little money on the side. Most people spend thousands a year in school to receive that type of education.

Others earnings reports that I find interesting are:

$1297.08 in earnings over at $1 a Day
$74.12 in earnings over at The Internet Cashflow Guy
$122 in earnings over at Building my Empire
$172 in earnings over at 45n5

As I was sitting out on the waves today during my lunch break I began to think about some recent “affiliate” income that I was able to generate. It got me to thinking how great the offer is and how it essentially creates $35 for the economy.

Some of you may remember one of my first posts titled Wanna Make $25. It could have been better titled “Here’s $25 for Free” or earn “Earn 10% On an Investment in One Day.” But either way it got the point across. Inspired by Steve Pavlina’s post (surprise surprise) about offering his ING referrals through his website I thought I would do the same. Besides I was learning about affiliate income being generated through other websites and this was a sure fire way to have people make me $10.

For those of you who don’t know the deal goes like this. INGDirect.com is an online banking firm with very few physical banks anywhere. Essentially 1 per major city. Having less people and leases allows them to give back more to their customers in the way of interest. Currently their interest rate on a basic savings account is 3.9%. Better than a lot of CDs that I have seen from local banks. When you sign-up with them you are allowed to get people to sign-up through you and make some money. When the referral you acquire joins INGDirect by funding their account with at least $250, you’ll get $10 credited to your account but better yet your referral will get $25. They don’t even have to put any more money in the account and they still get to keep the $25.

Yup, the only affiliate program I know of where your customer gets payed, guaranteed.

The best part is, you tie your checking account to the savings account and transfer money between the two just like you would if you had a savings account at your own bank. It’s that easy to fun the account. You can withdraw money whenever and you can fund the account whenever. Just like your bank it takes a day or two to clear between accounts and that’s it. No fees, nothing.

Well, as I mentioned I posted that about 5 months ago when this blog first went live. Since then I have gotten 0, the doughnut, to sign-up. I had one person email me about it but no one sign-up. Then, out of the blue, on Monday I got an email from someone interested in getting an ING account but not wanting to fund their account without the opportunity to get the free money.

All I had to do was get her email address and her first and last name and send her an email from my ING account with that information and there you have it. Done! $25 for her, $10 for me, $35 of free money created.

By the way if you would like to get and ING Direct account and make $25 for free send me and email at evossman@gmail.com and include your return email address, First, and Last name, and I’ll get you a referral link as soon as possible.

FREE MONEY