Million Dollar PortfolioReal Strategies for Making Money Online

Normally in this place you would find an earnings report but I’m starting to feel like this is unnecessary. Though in the past I have recieved some comments on these posts, it doesn’t seem like most people are interested in hearing about it.

The main point of posts like these earnings reports is to illustrate that literally anyone can make money online and it doesn’t have to be limited to placing advertisements that are gaudy and distractive.

In fact, to that end I eliminated much of those kinds of ads on The Proficient Investor because after upgrading to a new format and new blog design, the ads were just getting in the way. I may eliminate the 125×125 ads you see on this blog in the sidebar as well because they just don’t seem to be performing like I would like to see.

I read an article a few weeks ago about how this magazine columnist attempted to prove that you can make money online. He proceeded to register a domain and began prolificly writing about everything he could think of. He wrote several articles a day and added some Google Adsense blocks in “high visibility” areas. After a month he had made only a couple dollars from the Adsense ads and tried out another ad platform only to be disappointed with the results and subsequently decided it wasn’t likely anyone could make money blogging and that only the rare exception (noting bloggers John Chow and Darren Rowse) could really make it.

I won’t give you the link to this article because it was crap.

First of all, let me tell you why this guy failed and why you shouldn’t follow his example in any fashion.

The most successful forms of media always stem from one thing. Passion. Writers who are successful become so because they are truly passionate about their craft. Every film, book, television show, newspaper, magazine, web site or blog that became successful happened because the person or people behind it truly care and are passionate about it. They eat, sleep, live and breathe their creation.

If your only goal for doing something is to make money, then I guarantee you are going to fail. 9 out of 10 businesses that start up fail in the first year. You know why? They fail because the owner gets bored or because they chose something they aren’t really into but picked because it seemed like a good idea. Or maybe, there just isn’t a market for that particular product or service.

With blogging it is only slightly different. You don’t have the same overhead as a traditional brick and mortar business but you also don’t have the same kind of public exposure so marketing yourself can be a little tougher. Kevin Rose has a great post on his blog about how to market yourself and I try to do every one of the 10 steps he talks about. It comes down to your ability to sell yourself whenever and wherever possible.

Making money from blogging shouldn’t be your primary concern. You first need to generate quality content based on something you actually know about and then drive traffic to that content. When that is working, you can implement some kind of money making strategy if you so choose but your primary purpose is to write. I do this because i love it. I love sharing ideas and writing about what I know. I also do a podcast about topics I am passionate about. Maybe that will turn into something that makes money and maybe it won’t but it isn’t going to stop me from doing it.

So, I hope this post has been helpful to you even though It’s not really about the money I made in February which was to be honest, less than $200 but Text-link-ads revenue was up as my ad spots filled up on The Proficient Investor and I sold a few new ad spots on this blog. If you haven’t done so already, you really should sign up. It’s free and all you need is quality content and a lot of traffic and TLA will sell itself.

PepperJam Network paid out $30 last month in referral fees which was very nice. I run PepperJam ads in the sidebar of this blog as well as some ppc campaigns. I’d like to see more revenue from PPJ but it’s hard finding the right products to promote and I won’t promote something I wouldn’t actually use myself.

I won’t even talk about Google Adsense. It’s been a terrible performer for over a year and I barely put any effort into it anymore. I’ve found that the quality of ads placed on my blogs just aren’t very good but at least they don’t cost me anything in the process.

I’d like to hear about your blog success. Comment on this or any other related post and join in the conversation. I read every single comment and respond when appropriate.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

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.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Well, 2008 has come and gone. I can hardly believe another year has gone by already. We saw some rough times in 2008 both personally and professionally. I lost a good friend last year to Cancer and another friend who battled a short illness in late 2007 but the world, as they say, keeps turning.

These events did give me pause to get my house in order in terms of insurance coverage and the sort so that should something happen to me, my family is taken care of.

All that being said, 2008 was a good year for this blog. I gained 50 new RSS subscribers and 176 Twitter followers!

For those of you that are new, I run two 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. Blogging isn’t the only way to go about earning a living online, nor should it be. Just as you don’t want to use only one advertising system as a revenue source, you don’t want to confine yourself to just blogging.

And now, the nitty gritty.

December was a challenging month. Advertising revenue overall dropped as a result of several factors including our tanking economy. Online advertising in general in all markets is down. Digg.com (one of the largest social networks on the web) still isn’t profitable and they have all kinds of sponsors. I’ve read even some of the best affiliate marketers have trouble in December so I’m not surprised by some of the results. However, as you will see, it pays to diversify your income.

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 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 December I had 21,627 page views from 6,293 visits. Most of the traffic is from RSS readers, which is actually a really good thing. What it means is people are picking up the feed and reading it regularly. You’ll also notice my visits are down but the page views are up compared to November 2008. This is also good because it means fewer readers are bouncing or leaving the site after only the first page. You always want to go for the “long tail”.

The Proficient Investor, my other blog also has some good statistics. For December, PI had 51,536 page views from 10,603 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 176. 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 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: $43.97
CafePress: $119.96
Adsense:  $2.16 (anyone still making money from google adsense?)

Total:  $166.09

This is nearly the same amount as November’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.

The increase in CafePress sales is higher because of the holiday season but not nearly as high as last year which was nearly triple this year’s amount. This is certainly a result of the very serious financial crisis facing this country. You may also notice a lack of affiliate sales. I had really no time to spend on any CPA campaigns from any source so there’s nothing to report in that regard.

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, 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.

Popularity: 9% [?]

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.

Popularity: 10% [?]

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% [?]

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.

Popularity: 22% [?]

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.

Popularity: 28% [?]

This year I have been reporting the income this blog makes to show you that anyone can make money online if they do what they are passionate about and persevere. Summer is here and last month I mentioned that advertising tends to slow down because of nicer weather, vacations and people just not spending as much time reading and blogging as they normally do.

My own activities had slowed during June because of a death in my family which not only left little time to blog because of having to take care of the bereavement process and all that is involved, but also because I just had no desire to talk about anything, as you can imagine.  That being said, June didn’t slow down in terms of advertising revenue, in fact it was better than May.

I’ve mentioned before that traffic is a huge component to how much money you can make. This includes RSS readership. The more RSS readers you have, the more likely it is ads are going to be seen and potentially clicked on and/or will have produced a sale for the advertiser.

Traffic Statistics

Entrecard continues to be part of my traffic, but it’s probably not generating as much revenue as I would like. The reason for this was because of some culprit sites using Entrecard as a credit building system. Entrecard caught on and has banned all of the sites they could find that were exploiting this system. Entrecard users (droppers) tend to only visit a site to generate a click for a credit and some have it down such that they can drop 300 cards a day. Not only does this defeat the purpose of the system, but some even built pages or sites with only the widget on them so they would load fast…but I digress.

Traffic is still the most important thing when trying to make a blog successful.  Unfortunately, I forgot to add the google analytics code to my index page when I changed my theme in June. Therefore I won’t be reporting google analytics traffic statistics. I have to instead refer to Webalizer from my hosting provider.

For the month of June, The Proficient Investor had 7747 total visits from 1713 unique visitors with an average of 258 visits per day. This blog had 7049 total visits from 2517 unique visitors with an average of 243 visits per day.

RSS subscribers increased from 1 to 5 for The Proficient Investor and Million Dollar Portfolio has stayed the same.

There are 2 things to take away from this information.

1. Generating traffic is the most important thing you can do for your blog.
2. Creating original, quality content is the second most important thing because you want your readers to stick around.

Total Blog Income For June 2008

Total income from all sources increased over May as RSS subscribes grew and previous advertisers signed back on with Text-Link-Ads.

Total Revenue was $55.62 from Text-Link-Ads.

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 that link will earn you $25 cash each and every time. Sign up now and start earning money!

I also earned $2.46 from Google Adsense bringing my total ad revenue to $58.08 for the month of June.

Summing It All Up

So what does all this tell you? First of all, traffic is still really important but so is the quality of what you write. Last month saw a drop in the number of articles, but not the quality of the articles I did end up writing.
The bottom line here though, is I am still making money online. My hosting fees are paid for and I get a little money in my pocket. You’ll notice some changes on the blog already.

I’ve installed OIOPublisher which allows you to sell ads on your own, eliminating the middle man. Does that mean I’m getting rid of Text Link Ads? Not at all. I still like the fact that someone else out there is pimping 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!

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.

New 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 $50 a month. If you make 10% on the sale, that means $5 a month goes to you each and every month that advertiser continues to advertise.

July will be an interesting month because i have this new ad system in place and traditionally, advertising slows down in the summer months. I’ll update you all in August and let you know how it goes.

Popularity: 28% [?]