Best month ever! I earned $5604 this month which is a huge improvement from May last year when I made about $4000 less. May was also a month where I spent most of my time on the go, including two weeks volunteering in Haiti. I wasn’t working on new content or sites but I still had a lot of emails to answer about advertising.
Earnings Breakdown:
- Adsense — $477 – If I can keep this number close to $500 I’m happy. If I can eventually push it above $1000, I’ll be laughing.
- Affiliate sales — $1000 – I want this to be consistently at $1000 and above. My affiliate sales were spread pretty well across a variety of networks and products so that’s always encouraging.
- Advertising — $4064 – It was a month of a lot of key link renewals and some new sales and that’s what boosted me. My new agreement with some internet buddies to refer advertisers to each other also added a few sales. (Actually, I’ve got an advertiser looking for recommendations now so if you’ve got a high quality travel site or blog of PR3 or over and are happy with the deal, drop me a line).
- Ebook Sales — $63 – Nine sales.
Spending Breakdown:
This month I spent $676 which mostly focused on content for my Africa site and article outsourcing. I’ve been really happy so far with the work done on my Google Maps plugin (I outsourced this last month) and can see myself spending a lot in the future on custom programming like this.
- Content Outsourcing — $265 – I added another couple of Africa country guides and some transportation info.
- Link Building Services — $206 – These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) and Build My Rank.
- Article Outsourcing — $200 – I outsourced some articles to Linkvana.
- Ebook — $5 – Monthly cost to sell my ebook.
I’m back in Kigali and feeling recharged and ready to work which is what I was hoping would happen after a few months of feeling sluggish and uninspired. My first priority is getting my crazy bike ride website up and running. Then I want to update my Kigali life site as it’s been pretty neglected and I think it has a lot of potential. Then, as always, I’m plugging away at building content for my independent travel in Africa site. This is a slow process and I think I just need to sit down and get it done. The problem is that I have to finish the bike site first, so more delays.
I’m obviously pretty motivated by having my best month ever. For a moment I thought I was going to clear six grand for the first time but a deal didn’t end up going through. I’ve found lately that advertisers are bargaining a bit harder than they once did. I’m not sure if this will mean an overall trend leading to lower prices as more and more websites jump on the bandwagon or what. It’s meant having to say no to a few deals that just weren’t paying enough per site, but I’m ok with that.
I have a bad feeling about June due to not having many link renewals lined up but maybe it’ll surprise me!
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