April has come to a close and that means it’s time for another income report. You can click the “continue reading” link below to skip right to the goods, but for those that are new to my blog I like to include this disclaimer: These income reports aren’t meant to brag at all (many people make considerably more money than me) instead I’m trying to use this as a means to help motivate myself to reach my goal of $150k in 2010 while at the same time keeping me publicly accountable. With that said, let’s get onto the earnings:

Income Graph:

Income Analysis:

Amazon Associates:

My biggest earner of the month was of course the Amazon Associates program with $4,843.76 which took up 84% piece of the pie. I’m back up $800 from the last month due to increased traffic across my network of websites and a few new linking strategies I’ve implemented. As I mentioned before, I’m in the process of putting together more info to share on how I earn money with Amazon’s Associates program so be sure to subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss out. If you are looking for a resource to use to help improve your earnings with Amazon’s associates program you should check out my article on Top 7 tips I used to make $41,438.42 in 2009 with Amazon Associates. I also suggest that if you’re struggling to earn money with Amazon Associates be sure to avoid these common pitfalls. My goal continues to be $5,000+ per month earnings with Amazon.

Google Adsense:

Google Adsense was about $50 higher than in March which admittedly isn’t a large amount but it is a 20% increase. To earn this additional amount I simply looked at the last month earnings report on the 10 different ad types I used in various sizes and colors and eliminated the lowest performing units that had been cycling in my ad slots via the OIOpublisher plugin. As I’ve said before, I really want to get another source of income earning more than $1,000 per month and it will either be Google Adsense or Private Advertisers that make it there first.

Private Advertisers:

I’m still trying to push this number higher and sadly haven’t had a lot of success with third parties to help sell advertising (i.e. BuySellAds.com and Technorati Media). As I’ve stated before, I believe my best chance at succeeding in my goal of earning over $150,000 in 2010 will require me to start making four figures a month from private advertisers. When I have my first $1,000+ month in a category other than Amazon’s affiliate program I’ll have a mini celebration.

Vibrant Media, Click Bank, eBay Partner Network and other Misc Earnings

I used Vibrant Media ads for most of the month and still managed to earn a respectable $154.91. My experiments with using ClickBank products has paid off and I earned even more with them in April. eBay Partner Network only gave $55 and I only use them on a couple websites in a single skyscraper ad slot. I also got a few other random affiliate commissions paid to my Paypal account but there wasn’t enough to warrant discussing it here.

Wrap up:

Now that I’ve eliminated the lowest performing Adsense units I’m going to test out some new more aggressive inline ad placements. I’ve been hesitant of this strategy in the past because I monetize most of the websites in my network with Amazon’s affiliate program and I don’t want users to click away and buy something via an Adsense link when I can earn much more for selling a product via Amazon. But the only way to earn more money (besides getting more traffic) is to constantly experiment with monetization strategies. To ensure the new placements via Adsense do not canabilize my Amazon earnings I’ll be monitoring both the number of clicks to Amazon links as well as the amount I’m earning on a daily basis. Finally, I still need to sell more private advertising space. I’m going to drop the prices I set via 3rd party networks to see if I can entice some more sales on the blogs I’m running 3rd party ad code on. I also use OIOpublisher to serve ads on other blogs and I highly recommend you buy that WordPress plugin.

I have several more interesting case studies to share in May so be sure to subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss out.