July 2008 Earnings Report
It’s August 1st, so time for the July 2008 earnings report. First, let’s summarize the guesses:
- Teeni: $28.19
- Michelle Gartner: $32.81
- Michael Kwan: $299,994.75
- Pete: $1,000,000.00
- Lyndon: $100.31
- JD: $57.89
- Bobby Revell: $23.17
- Lindsay: $33.00
- Chayna: $22.25
For the purposes of this report, I am counting only gross earnings. Also, I am counting money earned in July, not necessarily paid in July. As any of you running affiliate programs or ads already know, with many things you don’t actually get paid until you reach a certain payment threshold. So, you might earn eighteen cents per month, but you’ll never see a penny of it until you’ve accumulated $10, $25, $100 or whatever the minimum payout might be.
I am also not counting Pete’s and Speedcat’s offers of a million dollars each, I’ve not seen any type of confirmation of that–and Pete’s confirmation number was a little fishy–so I’m not counting that. If the money materializes, I’ll report it next month.
As mentioned last month, June 2008’s blog earnings were $16.71, which beat 2007’s total earnings of $5.25.
For the month of July 2008, blog earnings were $95.76, which is a nice improvement over $16.71. And, if I stop blogging today, I’ve still increased 2008’s total earnings by more than twenty times the 2007 earnings!
(The reason for yesterday’s $1 link sale was to push earnings over the $90 mark. The rubber stamp offer was to try to push it past $100. Unfortunately, there were no takers on the stamp offer. Thanks to Pete and Michelle who will be the stars of a viral story coming soon!)
I think the increase can be attributed to several factors.
First, I made some changes to this blog after Michael Kwan’s review. At the time I purchased the review, he was running a half-off sale, so my review was just $35. My $35 investment with a review from Michael Kwan has already more than doubled in just under 30 days!
Of course, you could cheat like Pete and pick up tips from other people’s reviews! That won’t cost you a penny!
Second, traffic in July was nearly twice that of June. This month, I was fortunate enough to have several posts Stumbled, most notably “Putting Together an eCommerce Site” and “Why Don’t You Want Me to Comment on Your Blog?“, plus last weekend, Michelle went on a StumbleSpree. One weekend, I also spent the time reading over 200 new blogs and leaving comments on many of them. Also, I’ve picked up a few new (or returning) readers. You’ll notice that some of the names in the Top Commentators are new.
I was also a Top Commentator on JohnChow.com, up until he pulled the plugin for “database issues.” Maybe he was feeling intimidated, LOL! I was in the list on Michael Kwan’s blog and several other blogs in July too.
I also think that participating in Michael Kwan’s “make fun of John Chow” Photoshop contest also brought in some traffic. (Though when it first started, my stats were showing I was sending him more traffic than I was receiving back!)
I did also purchase some traffic, but I only pointed that to this blog for a day or two before redirecting it elsewhere. It was completely ineffective for this blog.
Third, I also did my first paid review, on Thoughts.com. Mind you, I don’t know how reliable this will be for blog income; most of the review offers I get are not really a good fit for this blog. I could have made an additional $20 this month if I had opted to review an online gambling site. I think the smarter choice for the long term is to accept only relevant reviews and not just accept every review that comes along because of the dollar signs.
Bear in mind that I haven’t yet implemented all of Michael Kwan’s suggestions either. If you’re serious about making money with your blogging efforts, you might want to consider ordering a review from Michael Kwan to get tips specific to your blog. Michael Kwan also writes many of the reviews that appear on JohnChow.com, so you’re getting advice from someone familiar with what the Big Name Bloggers are doing!
Oh, but who deserves the awe and respect of their blogging peers for guessing closest to the amount? Well, Lyndon was closest, but JD was the closest guesser without going over.
Dang. I should have asked Michael Kwan if I get a referral fee before posting this!
No, but I appreciate the plug!
Whoa. I guessed really low. I think I was trying not to put too much pressure on you. Yeah, that’s it.
I can’t wait to read the viral story.
I already have some ideas…
WOW you did good!
Paid traffic huh? I heard that was a no no to Google- it’s sounds alluring but I don’t it works out too much, unless you are in one of those get rich quick niches.
Well, it was supposed to be quality traffic, coming from expired domain names that are(were) related to the category you ask for traffic for. I think what Google doesn’t like is those schemes where people get paid to view webpages and click away. This traffic was not supposed to be that type.
I did it for two or three days to this blog. I had increased clicks on those days, but Google didn’t count any of them. So, I’m thinking they probably somehow know that traffic is bad or something and don’t count it. I wasn’t going to take any chances, so I moved the balance of the traffic to a site that doesn’t have any AdSense ads on it.
I wasn’t looking for that anyway; I was hoping to gain more readers out of it. But, I don’t think I did! And, on the other two sites I’ve tried it on, I’m not getting any conversions at all. No mailing list sign-ups and no purchases of the affiliate product I’m advertising.
I have a couple weeks left on it. I’ll let it keep going, but not to any pages with AdSense! I am just not taking any chances. Now, if I make an affiliate sale, I will have made broke even or maybe made a little profit. Then, I might consider re-upping to keep traffic to that site. But, as it stands now, I will be cancelling it.
Not bad, I was off by about $5 bucks. I knew those years of watching The Price is Right would come in handy someday. Too bad I was over though
Yep, you can’t go over! You’ll just have to keep watching!
[...] to be announced next week). He may not be making mogul money with his blog just yet, but his July 2008 earnings are a vast improvement over previous [...]
Good job DCR. You should break $125 this month easy.
Thanks! I hope so!
That was my earnings from adsense only, but I have been smartpriced. I got 231 ad clicks last month and earned hardly anything (though my traffic was at an all time high with 57% coming from search engines). I am trying to switch to yahoo publisher ads but they have yet to accept me. I maybe able to overcome being smartpriced, but it will take some time.
I wonder if getting Stumbled too often can result in smartpricing? I’ve found that on days I have a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon, the number of clicks does not go up proportionately. Doesn’t go up at all in fact. If that lowers your CTR, perhaps that lowers your pricing too. I don’t know if that’s the case, but it would make some sense that large traffic without a corresponding increase in CTR might be looked upon as dodgy, in that you are either getting poor traffic or using methods that don’t bring you targetted traffic, which could in turn result in smartpricing. So, I wonder if that can play any role?
I get a lot of stumbleupon traffic and it has had an effect. Making money from blogging really doesn’t interest me anyway. I make enough to pay for my hosting and the rest goes to charity. For me, blogging for money kills my spirit - I’m much happier writing only because I like to. I think the lower earnings are because of that ad on my home page. I made much more when the only ads you could see were on single pages only. I may switch up a little