Million Dollar Portfolio

Today is the last day of July and tomorrow I will be announcing the winners of my contest to win a Flip Ultra Black Camcorder. Since it is going to take me some time to tally up all the entries (Thanks to all who entered! If you haven’t entered yet, you still have today!) I thought I would post my July earnings.

It’s time once again to let you all know how much I made in July. In January of this year I started writing about how much money I make online. Part of the reason is to show that anyone can make money online, whether it’s through blogging, affiliate programs, advertising or other creative avenues.

We’re in the middle of summer in the Northern Hemisphere (California to be exact) and normally, revenue tends to dip because more people spend time outside than in winter months therefore advertising dollars become more scarce due to the lack of eyeballs.

Traffic, as always is key to any successful blog or web site. No eyeballs means no clicks means no revenue.

Traffic Statistics

Last month I had record numbers of visitors to this blog and The Proficient Investor (my investment blog). Figuring out if your traffic is good can be determined by visits and unique visitors. Page views can also play into it but I only compare visits and visitors because a refresh on a page can count as multiple page views. You can also look at bounce rate which Google Analytics will provide, but since I was late getting analytics working on my new theme I am using WebStats instead. If your bounce rate is high it can mean a couple things:

1. You don’t write quality content
2. Your traffic source is unreliable and not bringing quality traffic

Quality traffic can be defined as relevant traffic from people interested in what you have to say. In general, if you write it, someone is interested but not if you are promoting it poorly. Entrecard, while a great promotion tool for getting your site to the unknown masses doesn’t bring the kind of quality traffic you may need. Users tend to drop cards and move on. However, I still use it because there are so many people on the network, the exposure is worth it.

That being said, traffic for this blog increased significantly in July to 9589 visits from 3381 unique visitors, a 19% increase over June. The Proficient Investor had 5998 visits from 1377 unique visitors. The increase in traffic on this blog is, I think, a direct result of the contest I held this month.

Total Blog Income For July 2008

Total income from all sources increased over June as RSS subscribes grew(here’s why) and text link ads continue to prove profitable. I can’t stress enough the importance of Text Link Ads. They have been extremely helpful and they do all the work finding advertisers for me. As soon as my 10th link sells, I’m going to have to ask them to raise my advertising price.

Text-Link-Ads: $52.61
Amazon.com Seller: $80.91
CafePress: $30.00
Adsense: $0.22 (anyone still making money from google adsense?)
NeverBlueAds: $0.00
LinkShare: $0.00
MarketLeverage: $0.00
Pepperjam: $0.00

Total Revenue was $163.74

Not signed up with Text-Link-Ads yet? TLA continues to be my most consistent performer. Along with providing ad space you will also get an affiliate link to post on your own blog. Anyone who signs up under your link will earn you $25 cash each and every time. Sign up now and start earning money!

I’ve already told you the benefits of multiple streams of income and it doesn’t necessarily mean blogging.There are many ways to make money online and I have illustrated a few of them above. Signing up as an affiliate with anyone of those programs is the first step. The second step is understanding how affiliate marketing works and how to promote it effectively. I’m still working on that second part as you can see.

For everything I have heard from others regarding the amount of money they make through affiliates, most of it is usually with PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns, which means using AdWords and Google to bring in traffic and clicks. This also requires a closely watched budget because AdWords expenditure can get out of hand very quickly.

Why include zero income sources? I think it’s important to be transparent when stating incomes. I believe it shows integrity and by letting you know where I make my money, it helps you understand this isn’t an easy game. Making thousands of dollars a month is do-able and I surely hope to get there but it takes time. If you haven’t already, sign up with each and every one of those affiliates mentioned above. That way you can test each of them and give each enough time before you decide it isn’t worth the effort.

In Summation

Your efforts marketing and blogging will be rewarded in time. I didn’t start out to make money with this blog originally and it has gone through several name changes and may eventually change again depending on how I feel about branding and notoriety. Only after becoming comfortable with the technologies behind how my blog(s) work did I feel I could begin to monetize it. I’ve tried and failed many programs and I like what I have going now.

Last month I was fortunate to win a copy of OIOPublisher which allows you to sell ads on your own, eliminating the middle man. Does that mean I’m getting rid of selling other ads like Text Link Ads? Not at all. I still like the fact that someone else out there is promoting my sites and selling ad space for me, which means less work on my end. That being said, you can become an affiliate of my site and earn commission on every sale.

Do you want to make money online but don’t know where to start? Read this to get an idea of what has made me successful this year.

Million Dollar Portfolio Affiliate Program

Can you sell ad space? Can you convince others that advertising on this site is worth it? I pay 10% on every sale you make. Click here to sign up and start selling space on my site. You can make some good money doing this. Just check my advertise page to find out the rates and calculate your potential profit. For example, a 125×125 banner ad on this blog costs an advertiser $100 a month. If you make 10% on the sale, that means $10 a month goes to you each and every month that advertiser continues to advertise.

I look forward to working with my new affiliates and look for a new Affiliate Challenge (providing I can get one of these networks to sponsor it) this month. I’ll post details of the new contest as soon as I can secure a worthy prize. What do you want to win? Comment below and give me some suggestions.

Find out what I am doing right now by following me on Twitter! If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Don’t forget to enter my August Affiliate Challenge to win a Flip Mino Ultra Black Camcorder.