October was an awesome month coming in at $2230, and just at the right time! My time in Canada should have been pretty cheap, given that I have been living rent-free. The reality is that I had to renew my Canadian passport and driver’s license, get a bunch of jabs for my Africa travels, pay off my creditcard that was loaded with World Cup tickets, buy another round of travel insurance, buy a flight to Asia, pick up a bunch of supplies for my volunteering stint, drink beer with friends and lots of little things. So, in short, I arrived back home with creditcard debt and still needing to pay for a lot of things. Now that October has been so good, I’m back to saving money again instead of spending it. It feels great!
Earnings Breakdown:
- Google Adsense – $400 - After a dip in earnings in September I’m back up above the $400 mark and I’m hoping to stay here. Once again my good month was more due to them paying out more per click than with me getting more site traffic and clicks. The encouraging thing is that the site that’s doing well this month is different from the one that did so well in August. If I can get paid well for both sites at once I should have a huge month. I’ve also just launched my living in New York website and I expect it to eventually do as well as my London site that earns about $200 on a good month. It’ll take awhile to get to that point but I’m actively working at it.
- Affiliate Sales – $610 - I discovered early this month that I had been earning quite well for about six months with affiliate programs I had on Tradedoubler without knowing it. I was looking forward to another good month with these programs but I only had a single sale with them in October. Go figure. My other two affiliates are still pumping along though and had another decent month. If I can get the Tradedoubler and Clixgalore programs working for me I will be in good shape. I’ve launched four new super niche, affiliate websites with that goal in mind.
- Advertising – $1220 - This is where things really picked up for me. I had a big yearly ad sale for almost $600 which was a huge boost. The thing I’m most excited about though is that I now have $370 worth of monthly Paypal subscription payments coming in which takes a bit of the guesswork out of how much I will earn in advertising each month and takes some of the pressure off. I’m just hoping nobody cancels anytime soon so I can bump this up to $500 per month.
I’m excited about this month’s earnings, mostly because my three main revenue streams all seem to be earning around a steady $400 a month. I want to be able to count on $1500 per month and I want it to come from $500 in Adsense, $500 in affiliate sales and $500 in advertising. I’m not quite there yet but I feel like I’ve put in enough work since I’ve been home to point me in the right direction.
The problem now is that I could be offline for awhile so I won’t be able to do the SEO stuff I need to do for awhile. Either way I’m happy with where my earnings are and I’m really happy with the stuff I got done while I’ve been home and I’m curios to see whether taking a break from the net will cause everything to crash and burn or not.
Wow great number… I can imagine that this is a huge relief just before your next trip.
Fab
Awesome job Kirsty! I must, must do a better job with promoting affiliates.
I’m also working on a big project, and you’re going to be doing nice things for people in Indonesia when I announce it.
I hope to share the details on my record-breaking October in the next few days.
I love that you do earnings reports. Its encouraging and discouraging at the same time. I have seen some of your sites and they are really well put together with design, ad placement and seo. I have a lot of work ahead of me to get where you are
Ooop Ooop! Congrats! Love getting your feed to my phone. I was ordering a coffee today while reading through this, figured I had to visit and let you know how much I love reading these posts. Inspirational for us wannabe’s.
Not sure if this has been asked before, but how many million websites are you currently rocking? I’m currently sitting at 3 and have nowhere near this much money rolling in. Any advice?
Way to go Kristy that is awesome that you were able to achieve 2,000+ In Earnings, I have yet to even hit 4 digits myself… I will get there one day… one day… just gotta keep pushing and I will get there =D
Till then,
Jean
Great job on the Oct earnings! I’m sure your hard work over the last 2 months will be shown on your future earnings : )) The good thing about Adsense earnings, is that it reflect all the work you’ve done previously!
it’s easy to get hooked on “Advertising” but eventually, you run out of room. That kind of of monetization has proved very lucrative for me but its real wise to not put those things on any of your main money sites because google could knock them down.
better to create a separate network for just those type of advertising.
Thanks for the congratulations everyone!
@dave Affiliates are the key to the big bucks. I still don’t feel like I’m doing as well as I should be with them but I’m a bit more comfortable now that I have more than one program working for me. I’m excited about your new project and will make sure I check it out as soon as I find some internet where I’m going.
@bren You don’t need to have nice looking sites at all to do this. Many people throw up shitty sites that they have done a lot of keyword research and SEO for. I’m not so into this method because I don’t feel like it adds value for people but that doesn’t mean it’s not a way to make a lot of money online. I will be writing a post about my thoughts on this when I get a chance.
@corbin Thanks for dropping in! I think I have about 12 sites now but I would have to count them up later when I have more time. I wrote a post about the number and types of all my sites and it’s probably time for another similar post. So stay tuned and I will give you more info.
@used tires Many people say it’s more difficult to get you your first $500 month than it is to go from $500 up to the thousands and beyond. I’m not sure I agree! It’s tough earning that first $1000 but stick with it, try new things and if you feel like you’re stuck, add a couple of new sites into the mix and see what happens.
@pktan I hope so! I’m seeing increases but mostly from my old sites and mostly because of higher payments per click. My new sites have yet to do anything for me, although traffic is increasing bit by bit.
@nomadicmatt You’ve mentioned this before and I agree. I think loading a site up with advertising can be dangerous. I’m working at striking that balance and I’ll need to eliminate the advertisers that aren’t paying as much per month in favour of the higher quality advertisers. I don’t plan on adding more and more links to make thousands a month and just keep going like that forever.
I’ve nothing of substance to add other than: AWESOME! Those earnings are great.
Really appreciate your transparency, gives me a better understanding of online marketing.
I’m still trying to work out how to get better adsense income because my traffic suggests I should be earning more.
Your detailed reports are encouraging, please keep it up.
Congrats on the increase in monthly income. I remember you were struggling to break the $2000 barrier and now you reached that point. From here, I’m sure all the pieces will start falling into place and your websites will start to take off. Keep up the great work.
Nice plans. I wish good luck Earnings.
awesome earning online. i am newbie in making money online, and i am working hard to increase my income, because right now i am making $150 per month using google adsense only.
That’s an awesome amount of online income. And having 20 sites is a lot of work too I suppose.
Have you tried diversifying your income streams out of the online earnings but into things like dividend stocks or fixed income securities like GICs/CDs and bonds? I guess if you purchase a stock/bond yielding 4%-5% and you put in about $1000 you would be making $40-$50/annually without any effort at all. And if you let it compound over time, your income would grow accordingly.
Anyways, good luck in your volunteering!
Blogging Banks
Good work Kirsty, the only way is up (as the song goes).
I actually had a poor month, things always drop from Oct- Jan but I am used to it now after 5 years!
I’ve just read that you earn 1500$ and now I see that you were able to get even almost 2300$. That is something incredible for me. I know that this amount of money won’t give you everlasting vacation but it is just great. And as I can see the biggest amount of money is coming from advertisement. For me this is something like a tip, that traditional ways of advertisement is still present within the web.
hımm its nice blog.I have a rss subscribe..;)