I posted my May earnings. Not terrible, not great.
My adsense was down a bit which isn’t surprising as that only represents my main niche site and that site has fallen off Page 1. My eHow earnings were back up after a large dip last month which is good. I also added Amazon sales to this month’s earnings and had a very nice surprise when I sold 3 items from a site I am just starting to promote (site 2 from this post).
I’ve been at this for 19 months now and I’m not sure how to feel about my progress. I certainly expected to be doing better by now but I also have not been working consistently. And I’ve made ALOT of mistakes.
That said, I’m still not feeling very confident in what I am doing. Even when I have made what look like good decisions on sites and/or keywords, those haven’t panned out. And despite what some people say, I think there is alot of luck involved in internet marketing. And the best way to get lucky is volume, much like the lottery. The more tickets you buy, the better your odds. Likewise, the “real” people I see making money have put out alot of sites/content and can then run with the stuff that works and jettison the rest.
So Lord willing, in September, I hope to start getting more content out there. Not like 100 sites because that is not the direction I want to go, but clearly I need to cast a wider net.
On the flip side, when I include earnings from my old personal site (not included in earnings posted here), I made close to $400 last month which was all basically passive income. Yes, I would like to make more. But if I can do nothing all month and make a few hundred dollars then I really can’t complain.
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Carrie,
Don’t get discouraged. I have only been doing this for 2 months and I have changed my plan several times.
I plan on creating a lot of sites so I can find the good ones, and hopefully make those into authority sites. I figured this could take up to 5 years!
Carrie – Even though you might not be at where you want to be right now, you’ve built a solid portfolio of sites that will serve you well in the future. If it helps at all – I was stuck at the $300 or so level for several months. I had been building, building and building sites, but not putting the needed effort into backlinking them, and it felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. What I decided to do was choose two promising sites – one with a high CPC that was ranking #9 or 10, and another affiliate site that was ranking #5 – and for a month I pretty much put all my work effort into building backlinks to just those two sites. Fortunately neither was sandbox, and although they jumped around quite a bit, in 4-6 weeks I claimed the #1 slot for both and saw a nice increase in my earnings. I know you do a lot of backlink building already, so I’m not suggesting that this is necessarily what you need to do, but my point is that I needed to change up my strategy to see some changes. It sounds like you have already decided to do this a bit in terms of creating content, and I hope you see results soon from your efforts!
Thanks Kelly.
Michelle – the only problem is I don’t think my portfolio is that solid. I will definitely need to expand somewhat. But focusing on one or two sites like you mention is exactly what I want to do. I think my main niche site could do much better but I need to dedicate a month or two solely to it.
I still get very nervous about what I’m doing and think the sites aren’t good enough so that’s why at the moment I decided to focus on coming out with a lot of new, good quality sites. Then hopefully I’ll backlink them and see some real improvement. Hopefully you’ll see the same too once you start getting more content out there.
Yeah – can’t complain when you get paid w/o trying – hang in there, if you made $400 without having to dig a ditch, mop a floor, muck out a stall or some other “Dirty Jobs” sorta work – it’s all good.
When my wife and I moved here, I was going to open up a brick – n – mortar of my own, one I was good at (remodeling) — market tanked!
So…it wasn’t long before I found myself doing internet mktg/freelancing…and despite the highs/lows: it’s some of the most rewarding work I’ve done.
It’s easy to get frustrated because you’re not where you want to be, but you’re no slouch, either: you’ve got the know-how, now it’s a matter of building on what you did right.
You don’t get paid for doing it wrong. So: congrats on that!
Oh, and before I forget: I refunded SEOLV — will have to post on that later, just didn’t like the reports I’d heard/read about — excited to try out Article Ranks thru ur link! Will be this month, so you can pencil that in for your June totals.
These are still very good earnings and much better than mine! Stick at it and I am sure it will come good! Plus you had a good increase in earnings over last month so it is really good news all round!
Thanks Bristolboy!