May Earnings Report

May has come and gone.  Fortunately, I saw and upswing in traffic and earnings across my various blogs, sites and projects.  Before I get into specifics, here’s how the number shook out:

Amazon Associates (US) – $1294.99

Amazon Associates (UK, CA, DE, FR & JP) – $40.45

Chitika – $16.68

Google AdSense – $795.50

Misc Other PPC & Affiliates – $587.42

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Grand Total for May 2008 -  $2735.04

Although my $2735 is a far cry from John Chow’s May income of $32,529, I’m still pretty happy with the results.  May saw quite a jump from April’s earnings (at $2105.46) and even bested February’s earnings, which was my previous best month at $2400.  As usual, expenses were minimal because all of my sites are hosted either at 1 and 1 or Blue Host.  I picked up 5  new domains for a total of about $35.

Niche Project 1

Project 1 saw a boost in traffic and earnings.  It was around $40 last month and brought in $186.06 in May.  One thing that I experimented with this month was article writing for free article sites.  I had never given this a try before.  I followed the suggestions of Courtney Tuttle and his Keyword Sniping article, including re-writing posts as articles.  I actually did it backwards – instead of taking posts and making them into articles, I wrote the article first and then re-wrote it to publish on my site.  I’ll keep building these articles and hopefully continue the growth of my revenue stream from Project 1.

Niche Project 2

I didn’t get much more content finished for Project 2, however, it is a long term project that is not quite ready for mainstream audiences yet anyway.  Again, this is a future technology site and  I’m hoping that my foresight on this technology will payoff and I can build an authoritative site that Google likes before it hits and be able to profit from that authority and a good generic .com domain as it rolls in over the next 2-3 years.

Primary Blog

My primary blog continued to see a boost in page views and revenue.  Again, 1,000,000 page views per month is the goal for year end.  It received over 300,000 this month.

The changes to AdSense that I talked about last month worked and I saw an increase in click-throughs and revenue as a result.

The key points are:

1. put ads in the content, not just near it;
2. make the link colors match your links/h1 type; and
3. keep the ads above the fold.

These changes made for a surge of over $200 this month. As usual, this blog made up for most of my earning for the month.  Hopefully, I can diversify my income sources a little more over the next few months.

New Blog 1

Traffic is trickling in on the new coop blog that I’m building.  Monetization is not really an concern right now.  Putting some PPC up in the fall is really the goal.   A few hundred bucks in Q4 2008 would be ideal.  We’ve got several posts up now and it’s probably time to start working on some link building and keyword sniping.  I would really like to see some natural search traffic coming in over the next couple months.

New Blog 2

In addition to the New Blog 1, which I told you about last month, New Blog 2 (another coop project) started gaining a little traffic this month.  Like New Blog 1, I started this one at the prompting of a relative who wanted to get into blogging.  He is a little less dedicated thus far than is my partner in New Blog 1.  However, we are gaining traffic nonetheless and, given the niche that we are in, this could produce some serious revenue if I can keep him on task.  See this post for a reflection of my advice to him. Monetization goals are about the same as New Blog 1.

Final Notes

I would love to see June’s revenue come in over $3000.  However, I’ve got a week long vacation coming up this month and the wife would be rather unhappy if I spent the week at the computer.  Content development will probably slide a little bit this month, which could hurt page views and, of course, revenue.  I certainly expect to stay above $2000, but if I’m going to hit my 5-figure month by the end of 2008, I’ll have to really starting cranking it out after I return from vacation.