I’ve had another record month by a lot coming in at $1895.21 for October. I’m surprised with this because, while I’ve been been doing loads of work, most of my have been going towards a new site that’s not online. I haven’t really done anything to improve my active sites but earnings have still increased which is pretty surprising to me.

Here’s my earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $290.61 - Sooooo close to the $10 a day mark I desperately want to reach but I just missed it. I still had my best month by a massive $2 so that’s good. I think my new site is well set up for Adsense and I’m hoping it will bump my earnings up by $50 at least.
• Affiliate Sales - $1144.50 - My main affiliate program performed really well once again and I’m starting to rely on it as steady income whereas before I was fearful that it would crash and burn at some point. Some of my other programs came through with a few sales here and there this month too which is encouraging. Nothing major but it’s nice to see that they actually work. Hostelworld continues to suck.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads - $93.10 - Linkworth is a pile of poop. Text Link Ads were steady again. I’ve maxed my links on Travoholic.com and have three sold on my working holidays site which I expect to improve once I launch the new site.  I’ve just had my living in London site approved too and expect a few more sales. I’m not happy with the prices TLA have offered but for now I’ll take it.
• Private Link Sales - $367 - I have a couple links for $10 each that are on a subscription with Paypal so they come in each month with no effort. Plus I had a renewal of a six month link for $27. But the biggies were links for $120 and another for $200 that came totally out of the blue, as usual. Each month I wonder if I’ll land any big sales like these and each month something seems to pop up from nowhere.

I couldn’t really be more pleased with this month! I was expecting a drop in income since I was away for 10 days and am spending all of my time working on a new site. I think my earnings are a bit inflated due to over half of my earnings coming in currencies that are strong at the moment against the pitiful US dollar. I think it’s important to try to diversify currencies as well as income streams. So with that in mind, one of my goals for November is to snag some private link sales with British companies.

I plan to spend most of my time in November focusing on my London site. I want to move it to a better template (that is already built), add as much content as I can muster, snap lots of photos and get in contact with some potential advertisers. I’ve only got six weeks left here and I know once I’m gone my focus will shift so I really want to make it as good a resource as I can and then I’ll forget about it for a while.

I’m getting closer to that $2000 mark and with a final push I think I can get there by December. It’s strange to think that my goal for December about 6 months ago was only $500. Onwards and upwards!

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So I earned nearly $1300 in September, more than I could have ever imagined and it all feels a bit, I dunno, like I should be happier than I am. If you were to tell me a year ago that I would be earning over $1000 doing this first I would have said “Shut UP! No way!” and then I would have been giddy with excitement.

But now that I’m at this point, I just want to keep pushing for more. It seems like the more I earn, the more I want to earn which is a bit of a worry because I’ve never really been the money hungry type. While I’m still working a regular a job I consider the money earned from the web as extra cash. Now that I’m packing it in, my thoughts are less about what I’ll do with the money and more about how much I’ll need to survive and suddenly $1300 doesn’t seem like as much as it used to.

I wonder what my reaction will be if I ever start making the really big bucks. Earning $2000 is within reach and more than enough to live in the places I’ll be going but I wonder if I’ll still be left unsatisfied because I won’t be able to stash enough away into my savings. Figures like $5000 a month seem out of reach and that would be nearly twice as much as I’ve ever earned in the rat race but I wonder if, once (if) I ever reach that point I’ll still come away wanting more more more.

I think this feeling might be less about greed and more about wanting security. Being my own boss is great but if the business fails, that’s it, there’s nobody to give me a severance package. Plus I think it might have something to do with the unsteadiness of the internet world. If Google decides they don’t like my sites anymore then things will come crashing down pretty quickly. Or the internet could just all implode one day, who knows! Then there’s always the drive to succeed and do well in business. I’m pretty competitive and hearing how much others are earning drives me to try and get to that point as well.

I’m not sure how much I’ll need to be earning to feel secure. I think it has less to do with monthly earnings and more to do with how much I have in the bank though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still utterly amazed, grateful and excited to be earning this much but if you would have told me this a year ago I would be dancing in the streets. As yet, there has been no street dancing. Talk to me when I’m raking in $5000 a month though and if I’m not dancing jigs in streets all around the world then someone track me down and give me a massive kick in the arse!

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September has topped August by just over $100 as my best month to date. My earnings came in at $1385.28 but not because of anything new I’ve tried. I think I’ve sort of neglected things a bit this month, actually.

Here’s my earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $288.90 - This was my best month ever and for awhile there I thought I was going to make it to the $10 a day mark. I’m working on a site at the moment and once that’s done I expect to be earning well over $300 a month.
• Affiliate Sales - $667.32 - This was lower than I was hoping for but I’m still counting on one main affiliate program and until I can find others then I think I’ll be floating around this amount. What have I done about finding more programs? Not a thing! I’ve got to fix that.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads - $77.06 - Linkworth only accounted for $8.40 but it’s nice to see them come back from the dead, even if it’s only one link. TLA have been steady but still no word about getting Stuck in London accepted into the program. I think it’s because it’s only a PR2.
• Private Link Sales - $332 - I had 5 out of 6 links renew for a total of $92. Getting renewals is pretty easy. My PR has since fallen from 5 to 4 but I’ve only ever had one person ask for a reduced price because of it. Getting a renewal is as easy as sending a friendly reminder email. A bit of work and I have to keep track of them but all up it’s no big deal. I was approached out of the blue from a company wanting to buy two links for $90/year on Travoholic.com’s main page. I got them up to $120/year per link so that was an easy $240 out of the blue.
• Writing - $20 - I was lazy this month and only wrote one article for my pals over at Brave New Traveler. The extra money is nice but it’s not how I expect to make my living online by any means. I’m all about residual income and making money in my sleep so writing will be something I do on the side because I enjoy it.

So all up, not only am I pleased with this month but I’m pretty amazed too. I’ve been working hard, but almost exclusively on a site that still isn’t finished. So it feels like all of my efforts are getting sucked into some black hole and until this site is launched I won’t get rewarded. So I definitely wasn’t expecting to have my best month!

A big part of this month’s success was those links I sold for $240. If they hadn’t come along it would have been just an average earnings report. It seems like I always have at least one or two nice surprises like this each month. Things just seem to pop out of nowhere right into my lap. I’ve got another sale supposedly lined up for $180 next month so if that goes through then I’ll be off to a good start.

My goals for October are to maintain this level of earnings and to get this friggin’ new site up because I’m sick of looking at it. I’ll be up in Scotland for 10 days for a wedding and some family time and I’m really curious to see if I’ll be able to sneak in any work… or if I’ll want to. It’s the first road trip for the new (used) laptop too so hopefully it doesn’t explode or anything.

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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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So now that I’ve given a bit of history on my earnings with Adsense, Text Link Ads/Linkworth, affiliate sales and direct link sales it’s time to see how much moolah I’m raking in each month. This post is pretty much a carbon copy of a guest post I did over at Working Nomad because I’m lazy. I’ve been posting there for about a year and there are a bunch of old monthly earnings updates so if you want to see how I’ve progressed you can read the awe inspiring posts here.

For July my total earnings came in at just under $930 which is a record month. Considering I was still floating around the $100/month in earnings about 7 months ago I’m pretty chuffed with myself. Things seem to be pretty consistent month to month which is very important since I’ll be heading off travelling soonish and don’t want my earnings to suddenly drop back down too drastically.

Here’s a handy dandy pie chart:

I was surprised to see how much affiliates earned me but seeing this graph it’s obvious how much of an impact they can have. I really need to explore this area more because at the moment I’m relying on one main program with most others only delivering a few dollars per month if I’m lucky.

I earned over $200 for the first time in Adsense income coming in at just under $250. I also had my first $20 day with them so that’s something to work towards now that I know it can be done.

I sold a few more links with Text Link Ads but my three Linkworth advertisers cancelled so any new income from TLA was cancelled out by losing Linkworth. I’ve lowered my Linkworth price to see if I can get some new advertisers. So far no luck.

A major reason for my success in July was my living in London site which I gave a huge overhaul to. I added loads of content and I think it’s filled a gap in a market that I know really well and can write about easily. It’s already getting soom good traffic even though I have yet to go on a link building crusade.

I’m really pleased with myself, I have to say! My goal for August is to overhaul another old site and attempt to break the $1000 barrier. So far I’m a bit behind with the overhaul but I’m still somehow on track to earn a grand. It’ll be a close call though. I like to keep things interesting for your reading pleasure.

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Once I get all my websites built and am watching the zillions of dollars rolling in from Adsense, affiliate programs and link sales you might think I’d be tempted to chill out and spend all of my time being a lady of luxery. But you’d be wrong. I’ll only spend 90% of my time being a lady of luxery, another 5% maintaining my sites and the remaining 5% looking for other ways to earn money online that aren’t related to my websites.

I really love creative type things like drawing and writing so I’ll be searching out opportunities for paid gigs writing travel articles and designing logos. I might also get a chance to live it up in hotels in Asia and write some reviews for Expedia. All of these things will bring in a bit of extra income here and there and are things that I’ll enjoy doing so they won’t feel like work. I’m not as good a writer as I’d like to be and still need to work out how to use Adobe Illustrator so taking on little jobs will be a challenge and will force me to keep learning.

If you’ve got any talents, they could be in demand. It could be anything from writing and creating logos to coding or designing Wordpress templates. If you’ve got a skill to offer then check out Elance and have a look around for jobs that might suit you. Of you could always look into selling things on eBay, or look for gigs as a translator. There are loads of opportunities out there, you just need to find them.

Or if travel writing is more your thing and you want to compete with my amazingly awesome writing skills then check out this list of travel magazines that want to publish your writing.

This month is the first that I’ve explored this area and so far I’ve written a few articles for Brave New Traveller at $20 a pop. I’ve also designed a cartoon logo type thing (shown to the right) for $50. The articles can take awhile to write so $20 isn’t much but with each article I get links back to a couple of my sites which makes it worthwhile. The logo only took a couple hours so my time was well rewarded and I enjoyed it.

Knowing that once I quit my job in December all of my income will be coming from my websites is exciting, but a bit scary too. By adding a few more income streams in there it reduces the risk a little bit and keeps me out of trouble.

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Now that the pesky first post is out of the way, lets talk numbers - as in money. I plan to post monthly earnings reports with a break down of where that income is coming from. I might even chuck in some fancy bar graphs and, if I’m feeling really crazy, a pie chart or two. So it makes sense to give you a rundown of where I am now as far as income goes.

I wrote this post in August 2006 over at Working Nomad giving a frustrated summary of where I was a year ago. Back then Adsense was my only major source of income and it had been hovering just under $100/month for ages.

One year later, I’m hovering around $1000/month and still frustrated because I can’t seem to get over that mark. What’s changed in a year? Well my Google income has risen to $250/month but the most important thing has been exploring other sources of income.

Here’s where my income comes from:

• Google Adsense
• Affiliate Programs (hostel bookings, travel insurance etc.)
• Text Link Ads
• Link Worth
• Direct Link Sales
• Cafe Press (t-shirt sales)
• Logo Design
• Travel Writing

Rather than have a frighteningly long post, I’ll stop now. I’ll spend some time talking about each of those income streams in detail over the next few days including how well (or not) they’ve performed for me.

If you’re experienced in the world of web income then you won’t be learning anything new here, but if you’ve just started out, maybe with a personal travel blog, then some of this might come in handy.

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