Million Dollar PortfolioReal Strategies for Making Money Online

Summer is officially over and fall is underway. We’ve already crossed the autumnal solstice and where I live, it means indian summer, or at least it used to. Indian summer is when we get that warm summer weather (sometimes downright hot) but since the days are shorter the mornings are cooler and the evenings are cooler. I like this time of year also because it means ad revenue has the potential to go up.

Summers are typically slower for most blogs because a lot more people are vacationing, enjoying the warmer weather and generally have better things to do than sit in front of the computer clicking surfing the web and clicking ads. Of course, as an internet marketer you need to work extra hard to produce more income during the slow months.

Economic Factors

Considering the current economic crisis we are facing (which is globally systemic, not just US centric) it stands to reason that advertising revenue would dry up, right? Wrong.

In times of economic crisis, the public tends to seek refuge in entertainment to take their mind off financial woes.  This means watching more TV, Sports, Movies etc. which also means they are going to be exposed to more advertising. Thus, advertisers roll out their major campaigns during the fall and winter months. This also means you can potentially reap the benefits if you can get your CPC campaigns in front of the right people at the right time.

Why Blogging?

I started using the internet and building web sites in 1992 when I ran an online magazine or e-zine called “Orbit”. The e-zine contained artwork, comics, movie reviews and poetry. The problem was my audience. At such an early stage, nobody was even familiar with the internet or the web unless they were part of the scientific or university community. After about 3 months, I shut the e-zine down due to lack of traffic.

Fast forward to 2007. I’d been running my web development company Wilcox Studios for several years and it got me through tough times between full time jobs. I then discovered Google Adsense and thus opened the world of blogging and site monetization for me.

Traffic

Ask any professional blogger and they will tell you traffic is extremely important. Without traffic, you are just writing into the ether.

However, traffic alone doesn’t make a blog successful. Once you get a decent amount of traffic you better have something for all those eyeballs to look at. Content is as always, king. What you have to say is always going to be the reason someone comes to and ultimately, stays on your blog. This is measured in terms of Bounce Rate. That is to say, how long does the average reader stay before leaving to another site.

The second component of traffic is return readership. You can measure this in terms of RSS subscribership. RSS readers subscribe to your blog through various means and click on and read only those articles they are interested in. So the more you write, the more likely it is people are going to stick around and read your blog.

That all being said, here are the traffic results for September. I’m providing both Google Analytics stats as well as Webalizer stats because there is a huge discrepancy between the two as you will see. Statistics also include my financial blog, The Proficient Investor.

According to Google Analytics, this blog had 345 pageviews from 243 visits and a bounce rate of 79.42% which means 20.58% the 243 visits stuck around for more than just the home page. Average time on the site is 58 seconds, 1.42 pages/visit and just over 80% are new visitors.

Now, according to Webalizer, this blog had 16157 views from 6996 visits. Webalizer doesn’t give you the bounce rate but as you can see, it’s quite a difference.

What you should take away from this is that you want to know how popular your site is but also how to maximize the traffic that you do have and convert it into paying traffic.

The Proficient Investor on the other hand shows 498 views from 581 visits and a bounce rate of 90.76% (according to Google Analytics). Webalizer reports 19681 pageviews from 5696 visits.

My guess is Google only tallies a single pageview or visit from the same visitor (unique ip) even if that visitor came to different pages in the same day through RSS or other links.

Overall, bounce rate is up slightly for both blogs but as you will see, revenue increased.

Revenue Report

The following is combined income for both blogs. I document earnings here for your benefit. I can talk all day about SEO techniques, writing quality content and how traffic is going to make or break your online business but I also want to show that anyone can make money online and i’m not just talking about blogging. Income can and should come from multiple sources.

Text-Link-Ads: $70.19 (all 10 ads on The Proficient Investor are sold and my price has gone up)
Amazon.com Seller: $27.63
CafePress: $29.50
Adsense: $4.29(anyone still making money from google adsense?)
NeverBlueAds: $0.00 (working with my affiliate manager to really change this)
LinkShare: $0.00 ( I won’t be using LinkShare on this blog anymore)
Clickbank: $0.00 (Still haven’t done well with CPC campaigns and CB)
MarketLeverage: $0.00
Pepperjam Network: $10.00
Kontera ContentLink: $1.25
Sponsored Reviews: $26.00

Total:  $168.86

Closing Thoughts

As you can see, some of my sources were less than last month like Clickbank, PepperJam, Amazon.com Seller but Text-Link-Ads increased and I am very pleased with this because for one it means TLA can charge more for my spots as they are all booked now. Text Link Ads is also very cool because you can get companies advertising on your blog month after month which means residual income for you without having to do any active marketing. Sign Up today and for every referral you get $25.

Some of these aren’t that impressive but the important thing here is consistency. First of all, if you aren’t signed up with PepperJam yet, sign up now. You get a $10 bonus just for signing up and if you blog about their Blogger Incentive Program you can earn another $10 each time you do for a total of $50 a month. So if you sign up right now, you get a $10 bonus then blog about this and you get another $10. That’s $20 in your account just for signing up and blogging about it!

PepperJam is the fastest growing affiliate network out there and the primary reason is because their interface is excellent. On the home page are all my stats right there and finding new products to promote is easy. I’ve had more responses (clicks) to affiliate products through PepperJam than any other affiliate I promote. I’ll continue to promote PepperJam because I think they are awesome.

You should also notice I’m not relying on just one affiliate program because I truly believe you need to diversify your income streams in case one isn’t performing as well as another. I also believe you need to give any new affiliate at least a month to test metrics against your earnings and spending. After about a month, you can decide if that program is worth your efforts or not.

» Post Ad Purchase:  Banner Ad

Popularity: 22% [?]

Investors everywhere are freaking out. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (a group of stocks that represent the so-called cream of the crop on Wall Street) dropped 777 points on Monday, September 29th. The single largest drop in the history of the US Stock Market after it was announced that a proposed bill to inject $700 billion of taxpayer money into the economy didn’t pass.

It’s insanity on Wall Street but fear not, I have a way for you to make money today that doesn’t involve risky investments or guesswork. It doesn’t involve stuffing your cash into a bank savings account hoping the bank doesn’t fail. I’m talking about the Blogger Incentive Program from PepperJam Network.

PepperJam Network is an affiliate marketing network that has hundreds of companies you can promote on your site or through PPC campaigns and you get paid for each sale or lead resulting from your efforts.

What is the Blogger Incentive Program?

In an effort to grow their network as quickly as possible, they have a new incentive program to put cash in your pocket for promoting their network. Here’s the deal:

1. you get $10 just for signing up
2. Blog about the Blogger Incentive Program and you earn another $10 for making a post about thier program like I am here.
3. Each referral you make to PepperJam Network will also net you $7.

That’s $27 you can make just for signing up, making one blog post and registering one new referral. The Blogger Incentive Program is designed to help you grow your network quickly and you can make up to 5 posts about the program per month.
That’s $50 a month just for making blog posts about PepperJam Network.

Why Not Just Sign Up Without Your Link?

To get the $10 sign up bonus, you have to use my link above. Plus, you get to help me out which in turn might lead to helping you out in the future with another giveaway. You know how I love giving stuff away.

The idea is that by offering you these incentives you will be more likely to focus on promoting the companies in this network and continue writing about this network more than others. In this difficult economy, exposure is everything and can make or break a business.

PepperJam is certainly one of the best affiliate programs I have worked with. They have a great interface, partners are plentiful and easy to find and when you log in, your reports are right there in front of you so you can see how you are doing in near real time.

Join PepperJam Network today and start making money like you’ve never seen before!

Popularity: 13% [?]

Social Networking site, MySpace has launched an ad network designed to help Musicians and Businesses promote their products. Users can create an advertising account, create ads and pay only when an ad is clicked on. A minimum of $25 is required to run an ad and it will be displayed based on the context of the ad. Each click is a flat $.25 cents per click.

Unlike Facebook ads, MySpace ads will only direct to a user’s profile. For musicians and businesses this can bring revenue from interested parties who might not have known about your business otherwise. The drawback of course is unless you have something to sell on your profile, sending paid traffic to your profile doesn’t make sense.

This also means you can’t really use the service to promote affiliate products like those from PepperJam Network, NeverBlueAds or Market Leverage.

So if you want to make money using the above affiliate programs, you’ll need to explore Google Adwords or Miva or even Facebook (you can read about my Facebook experience here).

To get started, I suggest signing up with PepperJam Network. You’ll get $10 just for signing up and with their Blogger Incentive Program you can earn another $10 just for blogging about thier program. Each referral you make to PepperJam Network will also net you $7. That’s $27 you can make just for signing up, making one blog post and registering one new referral. The Blogger Incentive Program is designed to help you grow your network quickly and you can make up to 5 posts about the program per month. That’s $50 a month just for making blog posts about PepperJam Network.

To get the $10 bonus, you must use my link. Join PepperJam Network today and start earning mad money!

Once you join you have access to hundreds of affiliate partners to promote. Find partners that fit with your blog to provide advertising space to them, or you can start doing CPC campaigns using Google, Facebook or anyplace else you can think of. Your creativity is the only thing stopping you from making money with affiliates.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Starving for some cash?

The infamous John Chow, Joe Tech and Market Leverage want to give you some cash.  John went back into the cashinator at the Market Leverage booth at Blog World Expo to see if he could nab a few more bucks. One lucky reader is going to win this cash.

All you have to to is head over to this post, and comment on the post. If you want, you can blog about it and get an extra entry. John will draw a name from all who have entered and one person will win the cash. I assume this will be via PayPal because sending cash in the mail is actually illegal. At least in the US it is. If I win, I’ll be giving it away on this blog so you will still have a chance to win the very same $67 being given away.

Good Luck!

Popularity: 19% [?]

It’s not a huge deal but this blog is now within the top 100 thousand blogs listed on Technorati. I feel pretty good about that. The authority score has also gone up to 69.

Alexa ranking for this blog is under the 300k mark and Google PR is down from a 3 to a 2 for some reason.

Although I am not focusing on these rankings as a way of doing business because I don’t find them to be all that big a deal unless you are trying to sell advertising based on these models. Companies like ReviewMe use Technorati and Alexa as a benchmark to determine how much you should be paid for reviews.

What is more important in the long run is traffic generation and quality backlinks. Link farming aside, getting quality backlinks can be done a number of ways. I like to comment a lot on other blogs because most people will read through all the comments of good posts looking for similar like-minded people such as yourself. These people tend to investigate others whose comments they like.

You can create quality backlinks also by having your post dugg or stumbled which can bring a server crashing amount of traffic and potentially thousands of RSS subscribers.

However, instead of concentrating on getting backlinks and rankings and such, just focus on writing quality content that others will enjoy reading and the traffic, rankings, backlinks and other benefits will follow naturally.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Newbie blogger Avon Blake.com is giving away an iPhone. This is probably the easiest contest to win an iPhone I have ever seen. All that is required to win is to blog about the contest and link back to Avon Blake. That’s it, simple.

Check out Avon Blake’s new blog and enter for a chance to win a new 3G iPhone (I presume).

In other news, I had a great conversation with my account representative at NeverBlueAds and I am really excited about a possible partnership contest for next month. This will be the biggest contest yet on this blog but I still don’t know what the prize will be. Stay tuned by subscribing to my RSS feed.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Just quick survey to you readers.

At some point in time you decided to join my RSS feed. Whether that was because of a contest or because you like the content on this blog or maybe both is irrelevant. You’ve stuck around thus far which means you do indeed like the site or every once in a while you find something worth reading. I appreciate that.

What I want to find out though is what you think of this blog’s theme. In the year and a half this blog has been operating, it has seen several theme changes. I have been using free themes so far because I just haven’t been able to find a designer I think can really stamp a look/feel onto this blog that I think would be completely unique.

That being said, do you like this theme? Is it too cluttered? Does it work properly on your browser? What would make it more useful for you?

There is a trend starting to move to “magazine like” layouts, which I have done in the past with another blog and had mixed results with. Most recently, John Chow has changed his layout to be like this. Darren Rowse of Problogger did this a while ago and I find both sites to be more confusing now. I like John and think he has a lot of really good things to say and has the experience we all aspire to have as bloggers. The new layout though doesn’t do much for me. I read his blog primarily through my RSS feeds so I rarely see the front page but when I do, the same thing always gets to me. Where am I supposed to look first? What is it he wants me to pay attention to the most?

By the monochrome nature of most of the page, I’m guessing it’s the ads that pop out that he wants me to be clicking on. The recent posts section fades to the background as my eyes move around the page and i rarely if ever view the footer on the home page.

I’m not hating on the design, it’s nice and it can work for some things, it’s just not for me.

It is my understanding that the content of my blog is what people stick around for, not the design so I want my design to facilitate that function. So, please, leave a comment here and let me know what you like and dislike about the site, what you would like to see, how you think I can improve on it.

Popularity: 11% [?]

October is my favorite time of year for a couple reasons. One, it’s the real beginning of Fall where I live. The air becomes more crisp and colder (for a coastal town it gets pretty cold). Oktoberfest is celebrated and I love that Oktoberfest beer with those bitter hops and extra spices. It also means Halloween which is always a big deal at my house.

If that weren’t enough, I am going to be talking with my affiliate manager at NeverBlueAds this Friday to see if we can’t come up with a great new contest for the month of October and give away something cool.

I don’t have any details on it but I will let you know as soon as we figure something out. So far, September is going well. The trip to New York was amazing and really gave me some perspective on the world around me. Visiting the financial center of the country was nothing short of astounding.

One goal I would like to accomplish in October is to double my RSS subscriber base. RSS is the best tool for keeping up to date with what is happening on sites that you frequent. It also serves as a bellweather to how others may percieve your site in terms of success. John Chow suggests not showing your RSS numbers until after you reach 100 but I disagree. I have nearly the same amount of twitter followers as I do RSS subscribers and I want to grow both.

For the next contest, part of the entry rules will be a mandatory RSS subscriber sign up. It’s really in your benefit to be a subscriber because you never know when I might give away something really cool or have some nugget of information that could lead to you making a ton of money.

Popularity: 13% [?]