Million Dollar PortfolioReal Strategies for Making Money Online

November was a great month. I always love being with family and friends for Thanksgiving and this year was extra special because my brother-in-law got married a week before the big holiday so we had two great parties in as many weeks. Today is Cyber Monday which I always prefer to Black Friday (the busiest shopping day of the year). I even heard there was a trampling at Wal-Mart somewhere this year which is really so sad.

That being said, you should be working on ramping up your affiliate campaigns through PepperJam Network and NeverBlueAds to take advantage of any online shopping people are going to do. Keep in mind also, more people spend time indoors and (potentially) more time on their computers which means you can convert more traffic than usual during the fall and winter.

To make money online, you need to first drive traffic to your site and then convert that traffic to monetize it. That means eyeballs are not enough, you need to get them to click and buy.

And now without further Ado…

Traffic Statistics

I always like to start out these reports by explaining my traffic. As usual, Google Analytics doesn’t provide the whole picture so I use Webalizer for my stats. These statistics come directly from my web server. Since Webalizer has direct access to the server itself it tells me much more about the traffic on my site including 401 errors, 301 redirects and much much more.

So for the month of October I had 19,711 page views from 7,114 visits. Most of the traffic was attributed to Network visits with 26% being US based and 3% of my traffic came from the Russian Federation last month.

The Proficient Investor, my other blog also has some good statistics. For October, PI had 56,074 page views from 9,895 visits. As you can see PI, which is a financial/investment blog had more page views than MDP which I attribute primarily to the current fiscal crisis facing this country and the number of Twitter followers who read the blog has climed to 122.

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. Revenue should actually be higher from TLA but they pro-rate sales to the time when the ad was first bought. So even though my current price is $18, if you bought a recurring ad when the price was lower, you get that lower price month to month.

Text-Link-Ads: $77.27 (from 7 ads on PI, 1ads on MDP and 2 post level ads)
CafePress: $50.00
Adsense:  $2.54 (anyone still making money from google adsense?)
NeverBlueAds: $9.75
PepperJam Network: $20.00
Quixtar Sales: $6.90 (if you are interested in learning more, please contact me using the contact link in the navigation menu)

Total:  $166.46

This beats October’s income, and Text Link Ads continues to be the leader in earnings. TLA is the easiest thing I have ever done to earn money online. Sign up for their program, slap in a wordpress plugin and then all you need to do is get traffic to your blog. The wizards at TLA take care of the rest.

What you should take away from this is that if my blog continues to produce similar results month after month, it’s definitely worth the time I do spend on it. At this rate, assuming an average of $150 a month, that puts $1800 in my pocket for the year.

Keep creating original content, driving traffic to your site and then maximizing the return of that traffic and you’ll have success. Sign up for every single one of the affiliates mentioned here as well so you can find appropriate products to advertise on your site.

Also, if you are looking for really great gifts that let the recipient choose for themself, there’s no better place than to shop at Ribbon:The Gift Of Choice. Shipping is included in the price of the gift book you buy and they range from $20 to $500.00 including 3 or 4 night vacation packages.

There’s no real magic behind making money online but you don’t want the only purpose of your site to be making money…it doesn’t work like that. Find your niche, write what you are passionate about and the rest will fall in place.

» Post Ad Purchase:  Banner Ad

Popularity: 10% [?]

John Chow and XR.com have a contest going right now where you can win $6,000.00. Here’s the deal. XR.com gave $5,000 to John Chow after Chow made a blog post about the XR.com service. XR was so happy with the publicity they gave Chow a check for $5,000.00.

John immediately turned around and donated that money to charity. Richard Lau decided that he would help one of John Chow’s readers win cash for the charity of their choice and $1,000.00 for themselves.

The rules are simple.

First, sign up for an account at XR.com (it’s free and a great service for Tiny Url creation).

Next, make a blog post about the contest linking to John’s blog post and a link to XR.com like I have here. The words Tiny Url are preferred because that’s exactly the service XR.com offers. Make sure to include where you will donate the money and what you plan to do with your portion of the prize.

The winner will be drawn on December 27th at Dot Com Pho (the weekly lunch John holds with his dot com crew in Vancouver).

If I win, I’ll be donating the $5,000.00 to my local Habitat for Humanity. They build homes for the poor and underprivelaged all over the world. It’s one of my favorite charities along with The United Way which I already donate to on a monthly basis.

As for the $1,000.00 I’ll be putting that into buying a new bed. Ours is just about seen the end of days and we badly need a bed with a headboard.

Popularity: 13% [?]

I just became aware of a new service that will pay you cash for your timeshare. Those of you that own timeshares know who you are and maybe you are kicking yourself for buying it because now you realize you just can’t get out there to enjoy the vacations you thought you were going to be taking.

Maybe you just aren’t interested in keeping the place anymore but haven’t had any luck selling it. Maybe you don’t know what a timeshare really is and are interested in getting more information about them.

If this sounds like you then you should check out Timeshare Resale Marketplace.

Timeshare Resale Marketplace specializes in buying, renting and selling timeshares. A timeshare is basically a condominium that is owned by several people who all get a couple weeks a year to live in the place should they choose to do so.

It is common practice to rent out timeshares in which case the owning party for that time period would recieve compensation. In September of this year, we spent a week in New York (actually Brooklyn) and we rented out a 3 bedroom apartment which was so much nicer than staying in a hotel and so much easier. This is what a timeshare offers you if you are considering renting for a vacation instead of a costly hotel. Timeshares are deeply discounted compared to hotel rates.

Since it can be difficult to find buyers and renters, you might want to have someone handle this process for you and that is exactly what Timeshare Resale Marketplace does.

To find out more information, go to Timeshare Resale Marketplace and fill out a simple form.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I’ve talked extensively on this blog about the importance of affiliate marketing if you want to make money online. Affiliate marketing has the biggest money making possibilites next to private ad sales on the net. People like John Chow and Tyler Cruz make most of their money through affiliate programs. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 18% [?]

There’s a new affiliate game in town.

PepperJam Network recently unveiled their “Store Builder” which allows any affiliate to build a store based on partner products that are part of the PepperJam Network. The code is even Wordpress optimized so you don’t have to worry about anything coming out funky.

Building a store means you can promote any of the products sold by PepperJam Network partners right from your own website. If you’ve been looking for a way to showcase products that match your blog topics, this is just the thing.

You can build your store in 4 easy steps.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 12% [?]

On November 4th, 2008 you have the chance to make your voice heard. I’m not going to pander to one side or another here but get out and vote, it’s the coolest thing you can do. Your vote counts, so get out and do it!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Halloween is over, the weather is getting colder now and the next big holiday is Thanksgiving. Fall and Winter are pretty mild around here but already we have seen some good heavy rain. With the holidays coming up it represents a prime shopping time and I think even in an economy that is doing as poorly as ours, people are still going to be buying gifts for other people. In fact, historically, credit spending goes up during these months.

That being said, you should be working on ramping up your affiliate campaigns through PepperJam Network and NeverBlueAds to take advantage of any online shopping people are going to do. Keep in mind also, more people spend time indoors and (potentially) more time on their computers which means you can convert more traffic than usual during the fall and winter.

To make money online, you need to first drive traffic to your site and then convert that traffic to monetize it. That means eyeballs are not enough, you need to get  them to click and buy.

And now without further Ado…

Traffic Statistics

I always like to start out these reports by explaining my traffic. As usual, Google Analytics doesn’t provide the whole picture so I’m just not going to use it anymore. These statistics come directly from my web server using software called Webalizer. Since Webalizer has direct access to the server itself it tells me much more about the traffic on my site including 401 errors, 301 redirects and much much more.

So for the month of October I had 15,784 page views from 7,037 visits. The interesting thing is the majority of visits are split between US and “Network” whatever the latter means, I do not know. I always like to see where my traffic is coming from as it gives you an idea of your global reach and readability. Nearly 2% of my traffic came from the Russian Federation last month.

The Proficient Investor, my other blog also has some good statistics. For October, PI had 22,203 page views from 6,615 visits. As you can see PI, which is a financial/investment blog had more page views than MDP which I attribute primarily to the current fiscal crisis facing this country.

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. Revenue should actually be higher from TLA but they pro-rate sales to the time when the ad was first bought. So even though my current price is $18, if you bought a recurring ad when the price was lower, you get that lower price month to month.

Text-Link-Ads: $84.83 (from 9 ads on PI, 2 ads on MDP and 3 post level ads)
Amazon.com Seller: $14.70 (used DVD sales)
CafePress: $52.96
Adsense: $.02 (anyone still making money from google adsense?)
Kontera ContentLink: $1.29

Total:  $153.80

Not my best month ever, but Text Link Ads continues to be the leader in earnings. TLA is the easiest thing I have ever done to earn money online. Sign up for their program, slap in a wordpress plugin and then all you need to do is get traffic to your blog. The wizards at TLA take care of the rest.

As for the total revenue being less than last month, I’m not really worried about it. October was a tough month for me personally as my “day job” got in the way of my blogging! I also wasn’t able to work on any CPC/PPC campaigns due to time constraints.

What you should take away from this however is that if my blog continues to produce similar results month after month, it’s definitely worth the time I do spend on it. At this rate, assuming an average of $150 a month, that puts $1800 in my pocket for the year.

Keep creating original content, driving traffic to your site and then maximizing the return of that traffic and you’ll have success. There’s no real magic behind making money online but you don’t want the only purpose of your site to be making money…it doesn’t work like that. Find your niche, write what you are passionate about and the rest will fall in place.

Popularity: 11% [?]