Sorry about the lateness of the earnings update for anyone who is following along with great interest and anticipation. I’m sure you are dying to get this next update. I’m sure you’re waiting more eagerly for this that you are for Google’s PR update. I’m sure I live in a fantasy world.

The reason it’s late is because of the crappy pie chart. I wanted to add a pie chart (even though it doesn’t really show anything and kind of looks like poop) but I can’t do it at work where I do most of my blogging so I had to find time to do it at home which never seems to happen. So anyways, here’s my review, glorious pie chart and all:

August 2007 was my best month yet coming in at $1270. Made it past the thousand dollar mark for the first time by quite a good margin so I’m really happy! Adsense cleared $260, I earned $20 for writing a travel article, $50 for designing a logo, and nearly $140 in link sales.

Linkworth cancelled all my links the bastards. TLA came through though and 9 out of 10 links have been sold on Travoholic.com. I’ve still only managed to sell one on my Working Holidays site but I’ll be re-launching this soon (in theory!) so expect traffic and hopefully link sales to pick up.

The rest of the cashola came from affiliate programs with one in particular doing most of the earning which makes me a bit worried. I really want to get a few other affiliate programs firing before I go travelling just in case my money maker decides to pack it in or something.

So far this month earnings are looking ok, but nothing like August. I’m going to focus on getting my Working Holiday site up. That’s really my only goal I guess. I’d also like to come up with a better format for earnings updates and goal setting! I need something that holds me more accountable so I can use it as motivation. I feel a bit scattered this month and need to get focused again.

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Blogs are a great way for non techie people to get their ideas online fast, but they’re not the only show in town. If you’re serious about making money online then I would recommend launching a few websites as well. I don’t have any super secret expert knowledge in the area but based on my experiences I think there are some definite advantages to having some websites to compliment your blog.

• Diversification - If you intend on making a living online then you’d be foolish to put all your eggs in one basket. They sort of already are in one basket because you are totally dependant on the existence of the internet but spreading your income across many different sites and blogs is a good way to try to reduce your risk as much as possible in case one site/blog goes tits up. You could just create loads of blogs of course but that would be difficult to maintain.
• Content closer to the top level - I don’t know if my title makes any sense so let me explain. The content pages of a blog are usually filed like this: website.com/year/month/day/CONTENT putting the actual content three directories from the ‘top’. Based on past experience with my own sites, the closer content is to the ‘top’, the better it is for PR and search engine ranking. I could totally be talking out of my arse here and I have nothing to back this up, but that’s my theory on it. With websites you can easily set content up however you want, keeping it closer to the ‘top’ if you choose to. You can probably accomplish this with blogs as well but I bet it’s a scary and complicated process.
• Interlinking between sites - Blogs give out link love seemingly willy-nilly. Website owners are a lot more stingy. Getting links from a blog to a quality website is a lot easier than getting a great website to link to your blog and I wonder if this could make a difference in the link’s perceived value. Again, talking out of my arse but I feel links from websites are more valuable. If you’re the webmaster of some quality websites then you have control over how to distribute them and can link your sites together making them all stronger.
• Not as time consuming to maintain - You can be up and running with several interactive, well designed blogs in an afternoon but they’ll need to be updated regularly which will be a nightmare if you have loads of them. Building a few quality websites will take a large investment of time early on, but once everything is set up you’ll be able to kick back on the beach adding updates only when you feel like it.
• Lack of community - Creating a community is why many people blog but there are advantages to having a website that has no community whatsoever. No community means there’s noone to keep happy. If you want to you can neglect your site without feeling like you’re turning your back on anyone.

I’ve been converted to the way of the blog but I’m still not convinced they’re the way to go if you’re serious about making money online. But then again I’ve never been too fond of change… I still use Notepad to build my sites for god’s sake! Am I just being a dinosaur or do you think that a web empire can be built on blogs alone?

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I miss those happy, care-free days when the internet was more or less free from advertising. Up until a few years ago, most non-corporate websites (outside of the porn world) were lovingly constructed by people passionate about their topics; links were exchanged based on the quality of the content, not on Google’s mysterious Page Rank; and besides the occasional Amazon affiliate link, most of these sites had no advertising. Webmasters toiled for hours, motivated more by helping people than making money.

These days, sites seem to have Adsense splattered all over the place, text links are sold to the highest bidder, and affiliate programs lurk seamlessly within the content. There’s money to be made on the internet and us webmasters want our piece but I still miss those early days.

So in an effort to save my soul and get back to the good ol’ days Nerdy Nomad will be staying ad free. Here’s why:

• No point with low traffic - As a new site I don’t get many visitors which means there’s not much point monetising. Revenue is a numbers game: no traffic = no revenue = no point having ads.
• Readers don’t like them - Sites plastered with irrelevant ads that stick out like a sore thumb are annoying. I’ve got no problem will well blended, relevant advertising but coming across websites that look like they only exist to sell me something is a big turn off and I can’t get to the back button soon enough.
• Able to provide more objective content - If I’ve just sold ad space to a company that provides backpacker tours, I’ll probably be less likely to openly give my opinion that tours suck. Losing objectivity could lose a lot of readers. You can monetise your site and still be objective but it might not always appear that way.
• Aesthetics - Ads look like crap, especially Adsense. Banner ads usually don’t look too hot, either. Pop-ups and the ones that play music are the devil. It is possible to blend ads nicely into a design but a site will always look better ad-free.
• More space to play with - Fewer ads means more room for content, improved navigation or even space to spread things out for larger fonts, more white space and easier reading.
• Get that warm fuzzy feeling - All this amazing content and helpful advice and not an ad in sight. I am such a great person. Quick, someone pat me on the back!

I can’t be too anti-advertising because that’s how I make a living but for the time being this site will act as my escape from the bright blinking lights of banner ads.

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If you’re a blogger or web publisher you’ve no doubt had it drilled into your head over and over again that content is king and if you have any hope of making a living online then you’d better be sure to write some insightful and, more importantly, unique content for your sites. In my experiences this is mostly true but if your aim is to earn money from Adsense then things might not be so cut and dry.

Take this page about backpacking Canada that is a part of my budget travel site as an example. It was never my intention to whack up a useless page such as this filled only with ads, a brief blurb about Canada, menu items that can’t be clicked on and a ’site coming soon’ statement. I can’t believe I’m actually even drawing attention to it because I hate pages like this. It’s my secret shame!

I had intended to build a full Canadian section of the site, really I did, but just haven’t had the time. One of these days I will, but in the meantime the page has been an interesting little case study. It gets a little bit of traffic from Google and has a massive Adsense click through rate. While it hasn’t made me rich or anything, it’s earning a lot more than it deserves to.

I never intended to build this page solely to raise my Adsense earnings, things just sort of turned out that way. On one hand I’m quite pleased with the little bit of surprise income it generates, but on the other hand it doesn’t add any value to anyone but me and I feel sort of like a spammer.

It seems as though sites have popped up all over the web that give just enough information to rank in the search engines but not nearly enough to be useful. They’re plastered in Adsense and I wonder sometimes whether Google’s mighty ad program might be clogging the internet with spammy websites such as my own uber crap Canadian backpacking page.

What say ye?

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WARNING - If you have no self control and are easily distracted do not read the following post.

Self discipline has never been one of my strong points and I’m not sure that bodes well considering that in starting in December the internet will be my only source of income. In an effort to try and see how much time I waste I’ve compiled a list of the usual suspects. I’ve really got to do something about my wandering mind because I don’t think checking stats, posting to Facebook and commenting on blogs pays very well.

The culprits:

• Google Adsense - Back when I was earning $0.40 per day I checked Adsense a million times a day. Now that I’m making more, it’s up to about a zillion.
• Google Analytics - I don’t understand most of the stats this thing spews forth but I like looking at the pretty graphs.
• Email - I am hooked on checking my email and having a whole load of different accounts really doesn’t do me any favours.
• Affiliate Sales Stats - I’ve got about 6 different affiliate programs going at the moment with only one really earning me any money. I still log into all of them a few times a day with my fingers crossed that I’ve made some massive sales. I like to live in hope.
• Blogs - I only really like blogs about blogging or travel but that still leaves plenty of choice and I’ve been discovering lots of little gems over the past few weeks to provide me with plenty of distractions.
• Forums - Before my discovery of blogs I would do the rounds on a handful of travel and webmaster forums learning a few things here and there but mostly just avoiding doing any work.
• Facebook - Crackbook. Need I say more?
• MyBlogLog - Clicking on little pictures is fun.
• 103 Bees - This cool little gadget lets me know, in minute details, what search terms people are using to find my websites. Why I need to know this or what I can do with this information I do not know.
• Technorati - I haven’t quite figured this one out yet but it looks primed to become another top tool in my quest to waste time.
• Feedburner - This is a new one and had been serving as a distraction 473 times per day but now I feel really dumb because I think it’s only updated daily proving that I truly am a master time waster.

I need to come up with some kind of plan to keep myself away from these little goodies because at the moment I think I’m wasting some serious amounts of time. Are there 12 step programs to ween me off of these highly addictive distractions?

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I’ll be heading off to Asia one way sometime in mid January with a laptop (that I have yet to buy… there’s one for the list), a backpack full of the usual backpacker stuff, a bit of money and no intention to return to the rat race anytime soon.

I look forward to working on the road but I’d rather keep it to about 2 hours a day of content updates rather than spending a lot longer building sites from scratch, debugging current sites and sorting out all the things I’ve avoided for too long. I don’t mind doing these things on a rainy day in London but when I’m at some beachy location with the sun shining and the beer flowing the chances of my getting more than a few hours a day of work done are pretty minimal. Actually I can guarantee it’s not going to happen.

That means I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m working full time at the moment and attempting to maintain a social life so things will be busy but I’ve really got to get cracking if I’m going to have the level of freedom I want once I hit the road.

So in an effort to motivate myself and sort my thoughts out I’ve come up with a list of all the things I’d like to get done before I leave for Asia in the mid January 2008:

• Add more content and photos to my London site - I’ll be moving away soon so it’s silly not to take advantage of living here while I can. I’ll probably lose interest in the site once I move away in mid December so adding to it as much as possible is a priority.
• Overhaul my Working Holiday site - I’m working on overhauling this site because it’s not performing nearly as well as I think it can. I’ve got big things in mind that will take a lot of research and I’m putting a lot of care into the design so this one’s a biggie.
• Move my final site to Dreamhost - I’m currently shelling out around $100/year to host one of my niche sites with Powweb which is pointless since I can whack it onto Dreamhost for free. The problem is that I have a forum and need to sort out moving the database over. Might sound simple to some but I’m a bit tech challenged. I need to work this out at some point to save myself $100. Once I do this all of my sites will be with Dreamhost which is cost effective and will make managing my sites a bit easier.
• Revive Travoholic.com - This is my oldest site, Google loves it and it performs well but, lets be honest, it’s crap. I’ve neglected it for way too long because with nearly 1000 pages it’s pretty unruly and undergoing an overhaul is a bit intimidating. There’s a lot of good information hidden in there and I think the site has a lot of potential, I just need to devise some way to tap into it. This is a huge project that I might not get to. I’m think I’m afraid of my website.
• Set up a travel blog - I think the internet needs another travel blog. Ok that’s a lie but I’m going to put mine out there anyways because it will be great. Ok that’s a lie too. I want one just because.
• Join more affiliate programs - While I’ve acknowledged that affiliate programs are the way forward, I have yet to get off of my arse to do anything about it. I need to spend some quality time scouring the internet for programs that are good matches for my sites.

I haven’t put increasing traffic or finding new income streams or stuff like that as goals because those are the sorts of things that I expect to be doing on the road. I guess I’m focusing on behind the scenes things, the infrastructure, and once I’ve got things how I want them I’ll focus my efforts on the other stuff.

I still expect to build the occasional new site after I leave if I come up with a good idea but I don’t want site construction to be the bulk of my work abroad so here’s hoping I can manage to achieve my goals!

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I love it when I come across a fantastic idea online and wanted to share this one with you.

Sean Aiken is a 25 year old college graduate from Canada who has no idea what he wants to do with his life. Most people in this situation would take any job they can get their claws on in the hope of paying off their student loads but Sean made a promise to himself not to settle for a job he wasn’t truly passionate about. With this in mind he started One Week Job project and will spent a year working various different jobs but only for, you guessed it, one week at a time.

I think this whole project is a damn fine idea and a great way to see the country, meet loads of people from all walks of life, and raise money for charity all while trying to work out what to do with his life. I’m just annoyed that I didn’t think of it first! Although I don’t think I could handle starting a new job each week… it must be tough always having to be in a good mood, especially when he seems to be clocking up plenty of 5am starts.

Sean’s message is an important one. Too many people spend their entire lives working in jobs they hate, trapped there by debt and financial obligation. I think you can make things a lot easier for yourself by living a bit more simply and not getting weighed down by possessions because once you get saddled with debt you’re options become more limited.

I’ve got a business degree that I don’t expect I’ll ever use. I’m wondering if Sean is regretting not doing this whole one week job thing before he went to college. Sure, a business degree is handy for some but it’s not going to help much if he decides to pursue a career as a vet. I went to uni because it was just the done thing. I felt pressure from my parents and went despite not having a clue what I wanted to do afterwards. Going to uni for uni’s sake is a waste of time… travel a bit, talk to people in industries you might be interested in, do what Sean’s doing! Ok that might be a bit extreme but you get the idea.

I’m a bit cynical about the whole higher education thing though. I think far too many people head to university thinking that having a degree alone will somehow make them in demand. Everybody and their dog has a degree these days. I think showing some initiative and making your own experience is essential. If you want to work in business - start a business!

If Sean decides to pursue something media related then I think his involvement in this project is far more beneficial than any amount of media studies he could have racked up at college or uni. Getting out there and doing things in whichever industry you’re interested in will make you far more employable in my opinion than slogging it out for four years at uni.

Check out the site at One Week Job. All of his wages are donated to charity so he’s looking for sponsors to help cover some other costs. For $50 you get to help Sean out and also get a permanent one-way inbound link to boot! Sweet deal. Or if you’d like to sponsor on of the show episodes, I know they want to hear from you.

I think I’ve found the perfect ‘job’ with this webmaster thing. I can work from anywhere, be my own boss, I get to write about topics I’m passionate about, I’m always learning new things and I make money in my sleep! What about the rest of you? Could this whole earning money online thing be the perfect gig?

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