May has recently come to a close so that means it’s time for another income report. You can click the “Continue reading…” link here or 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 as 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:

This month was different as I’ve included every source of income from my online business so that you can see even more detail. This took a lot more time and was more of a pain on my end so I may not do it in the future and instead just stick to income earners over $100 in future income reports.

Amazon Associates:

My biggest earner of the month was again the Amazon Associates program with $5,099.24 which took up 82% piece of the pie. I’m again up $200 over last month’s earnings and in the month before that I was up $800 so things keep moving in the right direction. I increased traffic across my network of websites and tried a few more ideas out with my email lists (will discuss this in a future blog post). Numerous people email me every day asking for more details on how I earn money with Amazon’s Associates program and because of the requests I will be putting together a comprehensive training program on how I earn money with Amazon’s Associates program (subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss out). I will include URL’s of some of my websites that contribute to my earnings and dive into great detail, but for those of you looking for info you can use right now be sure to check out my article on the 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.

Google Adsense:

Google Adsense was about $100 higher than in April which admittedly isn’t a large amount but it is a 25% increase. To earn this additional amount I did more ad unit placement refinement as well as eliminating more lower performing colors and sizes. Testing is very important and I do it easily by cycling my ad units via the OIOpublisher plugin. As I continue to say, 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 again I 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. I’m going to fall back on my sales experience and start calling some of my contacts within each of my niche websites and asking if they would be interested in advertising. I’m sure I could open up ad space on this blog here and make some additional money, but I still like a clean look and the lack of advertising. I only want advertisers whose products and services I believe in which adds a lot of work if I have to screen each advertiser. I believe it’s not worth selling advertising until I could earn over $1,000 a month from this blog (10,000 subscribers would probably be enough to do that). What do you think though? Should I sell advertising on this blog or not?

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

I earned $179.09 from Vibrant Media and am looking at expanding it across my niche of websites. It’s important to monitor the other income sources and insure that in text advertising is not cannibalizing those sources so I’ll be sure to keep my eye on the other numbers. ClickBank is another source I’m looking to try out more in the future as I’ve slowly started to make decent money with them. eBay Partner Network only gave $47.63, but I only use them on a couple websites in a single skyscraper ad slot (sort of like an Adsense alternative). I set up a deal with PriceGrabber recently and am still working on scaling them up because as you can see it was only $12.28 this month, but I should be able to move this up to higher amounts in the future. I got another Host Gator referral which comes from my resources page along with someone that bought the excellent Standout Comments plugin from my best wordpress plugins blog post.

Plans for Next Month:

Last month I mentioned that I was hesitant to use more aggressive ad placements for Google Adsense, but after I implemented them I carefully monitored and watched the clicks and orders to Amazon Associates and surprisingly they didn’t dip. So I’m going to roll out the more aggressive strategy with Google Adsense in an attempt to raise it up to $1,000+ per month as long as it doesn’t hurt my Amazon Associates earnings. To ensure the new placements via Adsense do not cannibalize 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.

Diversification Strategies:

I’m also looking to diversify my business by moving into completely new strategies of making money online. I love trying new things and it’s an even better feeling when it works. For me I think PPC is one of those things I’m going to get more into both by trying out more traditional style affiliate marketing and to try driving traffic to my niche websites. I am also currently screening people from Odesk on an iPhone application I’m looking to get developed. Last, I have a few major website ideas that I’m going to pursue that if done correctly could be seven or eight figure sales a few years from now. So for those ideas I’m still in the process of finding programmers in Seattle that want to partner up (if you are one contact me). As these are developed I’ll cover them on this blog in more detail of course.

Stick Around:

I have several more interesting case studies to share in June so be sure to subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss out. You can conveniently sign up for my newsletter below. You’ll receive a free eBook on my top ways to make money online along with 3 free WordPress themes just for joining: