Since I started this internet business thing, December has always been a bad month so, after an average November, I was expecting more of the same. But early in the month I did a huge advertising deal and December ended up being one of my best months ever coming in at $4616. This was despite being offline for the first ten days of the month and everyone I seem to do business with going on holiday from December 22nd or so until the New Year.
Earnings Breakdown:
- Adsense – $300 - I’m sick of you, Adsense! Time to focus on other things and accept that Adsense is stuck around the $300 to $400 range until I come up with some genius idea to bump it up.
- Affiliate sales – $604 - Travel insurance, as usual, but I’m also waiting t hear how much I earned with my London starter kit affiliate. I guess I’ll have to add that onto next month.
- Advertising – $3677 - I feel like my eggs are starting to be all in one basket again which makes me nervous and had been the reason for my persistent pursuit of higher Adsense earnings. Of course, ad sales continue to happen and I made my biggest deal yet this month, but I still live in fear of that month without any new emails or renewals.
- Ebook Sales – $35 - I’m going to look at doing an update and rolling out an affiliate program in the new year. That’s the only thing that’ll get this baby going again, I think.
Spending Breakdown:
I spent $796 this month, mostly on link building. I might have to tone down the amount I’m spending on this as I’d like to keep it closer to $500 a month including the monthly membership fees. All of the link building sites I use make outsourcing very easy which makes it easy to spend money without thinking too much about it. Linkvana is expensive at $147 per month and I’ve heard rumblings that it might not be the best option, especially not for the price. I’ll keep it going for another few months but I might reassess the situation at some point.
- Hosting – $124 - This was mostly for IP address changes. I’ve had a lot of advertisers recently have to limit the number of ads they’ll buy because too many of my sites were on the same IP. So I got new IP addresses for a few of the key ones.
- Link Building Services – $206 - These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using.
- Article Outsourcing – $461 - All of this money went towards articles for link building.
- Ebook – $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.
So my December earnings were a great way to end what’s been a really successful year. I never would have expected to have had a plus $5000 month and two months above $4000 in 2010… I was more aiming for around $2500 so I’m pleasantly surprised. I’m hoping the trend continues into the New Year… I can’t see advertisers suddenly deciding that the internet is not the place to put their money, so things should keep chugging along. I hope!
Congrats on a great year Kirsty!
Can you share the services you use for link building? It’s something I’d like to test out in 2011.
I hope you will be happy now in the beginning of new year and this new achievement. Wish good luck for 2011 as well.
Interesting that you are link building even though you are creating content that is worthy of natural links, does it not worry you that it could all end in tears?
Out of interest, what sites are you using & do you think its working?
I really admire how you are fuelling a life a of travel from online $$$ – I must do this
@dave Thanks! It’s been a fun year. I’m using Linkvana ($147 a month and I’ve heard many people question whether it’s worth it), Build My Rank (I think about $60 a month) and Niche Tracker (pay per post, no monthly fee). I probably should have tested them out one at a time to see which works best but, as a whole, the links are doing wonderful things. I’ve seen big jumps since I’ve started using them. I’ll probably scrap Linkvana in a few months as it’s expensive and test the other two to see if things continue to work well.
@uzi Thanks! Same to you.
Well done Kirsty ,, Superb earning you got, Sorry , But I am feeling So jealous …When and how Can I reach such figure … I won’t tell my Report sheet publicly , I am feeling shame
Congrats on another awesome month!
I think your fears of having all your eggs in one basket re advertising is nothing to worry about.. it is very different to having one single adsense check a month. The chances of having multiple advertisers all doing the same thing at the same moment in time are near non existent.
Any chance on adding a few stats to the monthly reports?
I wouldn’t too much about trying to improve adsense earnings. You’re better off focusing more on selling more ads, as well as developing new sites. Do what you can to improve the value for your advertisers.
By the way, congrats on another great month. This should act as motivation for me to build up to those kind of numbers again. It is quite satisfying to see that kind of money coming in from your own business.
I am using a link building company in India. They send me weekly reports and occasionally analyze key words and Google and Yahoo SERP rankings so I can see how the various key words are doing. I’m on the first page for some key words, and slowly moving up for others. It’s a long term process, as I’m quickly learning.
Good job on the earnings! You’ve got momentum on your side now. As long as you keep it up, I would expect you’ll have a lot more good Decembers to look forward to!!
Adsense can be annoying but don’t worry about it too much. it seems your affiliate sales are doing well. You are doing much better in both areas than I. Hope you had a wonderful Holiday and a Happy New Year!
i’ve had sites get to #1 on google with just using linkvana. I’ll never let them go!
@phuket Ya, good point about the advertisers. If I What sort of stats are you after?
@laptop Ya, advertising is the way to go, it seems, so I should focus on continuing to build sites that are appealing to them.
@10MinuteTravel I hadn’t even thought of outsourcing the process to India. I think the three services I’m using make it so easy to outsource through them that I’ll stick with that. But it’s an interesting idea.
@global Thanks!
@matt Thanks for the advice! I’ll keep that in mind for sure. I guess if I continue to be able to afford all of them, it doesn’t make sense to cancel any… especially since I’ve seen some amazing results as well.
I thinking as a base Total unique visitors across all sites.
If you were to go the all the way you could include
Avg time on Site,
# of Page per Visitor,
bounce rate
All averaged out across all sites.
I think the simple fact of you doing this once a month will also help you see things and give you even more to write about as to what you are doing.
I know when I see one site with 6 page views per visitor I start to as myself how can I make this happen on this other site?
check out fiverr.com for link building. Will be cheaper + writing articles for linkvana is a pain. On fiverr you just need to test out a few users to find the best ones. email me if you want some recommends and thoughts.
Adsense sometimes gets on my nerves too, Kirsty! LOL! But congrats on a productive month. It’s pretty amazing that your December earnings were the highest as also have usually seen the lowest earnings around December too.
What a great way to end the year, your earnings seem to have taken a big jump in 2010 and long may it continue. All the best for 2011.
Congrats on such a great month Kirsty! Can’t wait to see what 2011 brings for you, I am sure we will see some impressive numbers!
-Jean
Great earning buddy. You are in right direction. I hope coming year will gonna blast for you. Definitely you will double your earning with your new set goals. I would say just keep the momentum going..
Thanks for posting so openly and honestly about your online work! As somebody who’s working to building my first online biz with plans for more to follow, your info is incredibly helpful. I’ll have to jump into the link building test with you as you move forward with that! Thanks for your generosity. Any additional insight on how to work best with those link building companies you’ve mentioned here and in the next post?
Congratulations on a great month! Have you thought about making a ebook for advertising income?
This is really interesting to see how you invest to make money, particularly in link-building services, because i’d always have thought they were dubious. Oh naive little me…
By advertising, do you mean display ads or link ads? I’m curious…
The chances of having multiple advertisers all doing the same thing at the same moment in time are near non existent.
I hope coming year will gonna blast for you. Definitely you will double your earning with your new set goals. I would say just keep the momentum going..
Those are some incredibely impressive earnings Kirsty. Congratulations. $300 to $400 on adsense is still very good as well.
- Robert
Thank you for your honesty in these posts. I find adsense from youtube to be really great, but I get about 500,000 views a month, so you need that scale to start seeing $$. It seems everyone is writing an ebook about this and that, and if your experience is anything to go by, it is not really a way to make $$ online.
Affiliates sales which is $600+ is a good money. You will get that money automatically from next month.
Try to increase your adsense money, and make it upto $1000 per month. That will cover your all expensive costs.
I wish you success in your earnings.
@Gary
Can you please email me your recommendations for fivverr.com?
I notice you spend quite a bit on link building. Could you suggest a good service? There are a lot of shady ones out there and I figured you might be able to shed some light on a reputable one. Thanks.
there is big diff in your dec and present adsense earnings . seems like you did a lot of hard work …