January is behind us now and a lot has happened. We have a new president, it’s nearly tax season and it turns out that California is delaying all refunds until the state can figure out their budget problems. This last point frustrates me because as a taxpayer my money is borrowed throughout the year by the government and now they say they don’t have it to give back? It’s shameful and wrong and yet there’s nothing I can do about it. Good thing I have some extra income from my blogging. January was fairly productive and my twitter followers increased to 202.
For those of you that are new, I run three blogs that account for my online income and it should be known that I also report other forms of income not related to blogging but related to making money online. You should always diversify your income sources since you never really know how things are going to go from month to month.
January was productive. I started a new blog that aggregates news from several sources and have monetized it. This should produce some extra income over the coming year. Advertising revenue increased overall as advertisers renewed ongoing ads and I gained some new advertisers. Online advertising in general in all markets is down but things around here stay steady.
Blogging is my hobby and only one of my many passions in life. I report these earnings to help you, whether new or experienced in the world of blogging, I think there are lessons to be learned everywhere from everyone.
That being said, you should be working on your affiliate campaigns through PepperJam Network and NeverBlueAds to take advantage of any dry spells in advertising revenue. 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.
Traffic is the lifeblood of a blog and without it, you aren’t going to be able to make much money. Advertisers need eyeballs and that means you need lots of viewers. Then the trick is converting those viewers into clickers and buyers of the products you advertise.
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 using Awstats for my statistics. These statistics come directly from my web server. Since Awstats 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 January traffic looks like it’s decreased but in reality, views and visits from bots have been filtered. I had 8,870 page views from 2990 visits. Most of the traffic is from my feed, which is actually a really good thing. What it means is people are picking up the feed and reading it regularly.
The Proficient Investor, my other blog also has some good statistics. For December, PI had 8,287 page views from 2,022 visits. Twitter has been a great source of traffic and information and I highly recommend you join and follow me.
Revenue Report
The following is combined income for all 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: $53.81
CafePress: $17.00
Adsense: $.37
Total: $71.18
This is much less than December 2008, 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.
Cafepress sales dropped but I have been selling more of my Tour de France design which is very cool since Lance Armstrong is making his comeback this year.
Keep creating original content, drive lots of traffic to your site and then maximize 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 themselves, 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. If you want to be able to resell these same books, use the contact form and I’d be happy to explain how Quixtar works and how you can make money running a Quixtar business.
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: 11% [?]
