In an effort to be as transparant as possible, I’ll be publishing a report on the first of each month outlining my income for the previous month. I’ll show all of my income sources, passive and otherwise. If there are any expenses associated with that income, I’ll share that as well. Things like hosting, PPC costs, outsourcing costs, etc.

I Hope For This to Serve 2 Purposes:

First – Like I’ve said before, I want to be as transparent as possible. On the internet, it’s really easy to create a fake persona. It wouldn’t be hard for me put a bunch of fake information up to make myself look good. I have no doubt that a lot of bloggers do that.

In my relaunch post, I said that this blog would really serve as a journal for my business. A place where I can organize my thoughts. If I’m not honest and transparent, then it defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to accomplish.

I also want anyone reading this to know if I really practice what I preach. If I say that a certain strategy is great or that some product is awesome, then I need to be able to show the results to back that up.

Second – These reports will help to keep me focused. My ultimate goal is to be able to be able to live off the income my online ventures generate. It is so easy to get distracted in this business. There’s been many days where I’ve set down to work and walked away 2 hours later and all I’ve done is check e-mail, read some blogs, visit some forums and check my stats.

Without focus, I cannot make progress.

Here’s How I Want These Income Reports to Work

Each month I will give a brief update on the projects that I am working on and their effect on my income. I will share any websites I’m working on or ideas I have for new project. If my income goes up each month, then it stands to reason that what I am working on is productive. However, if I my income is stagnant month over month, then hopefully I will be able to identify where I am wasting my time.

So without further ado…

Income for June 2011:

Adsense

• This month: $303.82
• Last month: $306.48
• Change: -$2.66

Neverblue

• This month: $132.90
• Last month: $204.40
• Change: -$71.50

Clickbank

• This month: $66.67
• Last month: $43.16
• Change: $23.51

Amazon

• This month: $9.30
• Last month: $3.16
• Change: $6.14

Total

• This month: $512.69
• Last month: $557.20
• Change: -$44.51

Overall, income was down a bit for the month. This really isn’t a surprise. Like I mentioned in my last post, my main earner is in the dumps right now. 75% of the earnings above are from that site. It was penalized on June 27th. Unless that site comes back within the first week of July, I very much expect earnings to be down for a while.

In the mean time, I will be going back to a few older websites that have been on the back burner. I have also started a new project that I’m pretty excited about.

About my New Project

Even before my main earner went to the dumps, I knew I needed to diversify. One of the projects that’s been on my list for a while is a niche site focused on a particular Clickbank product that I’ve had my eye on for some time.
This week I registered the new domain, got the basic site put up and posted the main pre-sell page.

Over the next few days I need to finish my keyword research and get some solid content up around those keywords. The main keyword that the entire site targets will most likely see the best conversions. However, it’s very low traffic. I expect fewer than 1,000 visitors per month from it. There are enough related keywords in the niche that I’m not concerned about finding other low competition keywords that I can target.

After that I’ll start the marketing campaign. I plan to get involved in some of the forums in this niche and put together some videos of me using the using the product. After that, I will set up some satellite sites to support the main site.

Other Things On My To-Do List

Once I get this site going, I’ll most likely give some of my attention to a camping site that I started about a year ago. It was kind of a cross between a passion site and a niche site. I was in boy scouts for 10 years (Eagle Scout, holla!). I’ve done a lot of camping, hiking, climbing and all of that outdoors stuff. It’s a niche that I’m interested in and I think I would have a pretty easy time talking about it.

I think that’s key to whatever niche you’re in. It needs to be something that you’re interested in. Earning income online doesn’t happen with the push of a button. It’s a lot of work (despite what anyone will tell you when they’re selling their latest MMO products)!

If you aren’t interested in the niche you’re working on, you probably won’t last long. It’s so easy to get burnt out in this business. The only way I’ve ever been able to work in a niche I wasn’t interested in was with outsourcing. The problem with outsourcing is that it’s very easy to burn through a lot of money and not make much progress.

Don’t get me wrong. Outsourcing is a fantastic tool and you can use it to scale your business quickly, but it can be a huge money suck if you don’t know what you’re doing.

This niche also has a passionate following. That opens a lot of opportunities for natural marketing. I think it has a lot of potential.

That wraps up the report for this month. It may be slow for the next few months as I ramp new sites up, but I’m feeling positive about the new opportunities.

Often I get all kinds of e-mails with people asking me, “How can I make money easy?” Time and time again I refer them to one of the most popular ways to make money easy online – Google Adsense. Let me give you a breakdown on how this works.

The most basic way (and probably the easiest way) to make money with this program is to start a free blog on Blogger.com. You start by writing about what ever you’re interested in. Once you have something posted to your new blog, then you put up AdSense on your site and you get paid every time someone clicks on an ad.

You can make money easy this way. However, just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t take work. It’s easy in that is isn’t complicated. However, it isn’t easy as in you can just sit back, do nothing and collect a check from Google.

So, are you willing to do some actual work? If so, read on to get my basic game plan on How to Make Money Easy With Google AdSense.

I’m going to lay out a really simple way to make money easy without having to buy a domain, hosting and all that jazz.

1. Head over to Blogger.com and sign up for a free blog

Once you have your free blog set-up, follow the directions to make your first post. (It’s pretty self explanitory)

You can write about whatever you want. In fact, it’s best to write about something that you’re interested in. That makes the whole process so much easier.  (Side note here – this isn’t exactly the most profitable way to blog. However, when you’re starting out it’s a way that you can make money easy while doing what you like to do. At some point down the road I’ll fill you in on some tricks to pick out topics that can make you a ton of money.)

Once you have your first post up, head over to AdSense and create a new account.

Follow the directions to create your first AdSense ad.

Head back over to your Blogger blog. Go to the layout tab.

You should see something like this:

In the blog posts section, click on edit. Find the option that says: “Show Ads Between Posts.” Tick the box and follow the directions.

Go back to your blogger blog and, viola! You now have a blog that is all set to make money easy.

Welcome to the June 23, 2008 edition of blogging tips carnival. A whopping 83 articles were submitted for this edition! With this many articles I ran out of time to review them all. This will be a self-policing edition. If there’s an article here that shouldn’t be, let me know.

To make things easier, I’ve split ‘em up into 4 categories for you – Driving Traffic, Writing Content, Making Money and Everything Else. Check a few out, spread the link love and discover some new blogs!

Driving Traffic

1. Riggie Freyer presents How to Increase Your Targeted Website Traffic For Free posted at Internet Business for Beginners | Internet Home Based Business.

2. BlogMeTheMoney presents 10 Blog Traffic Tips posted at Blog Me The Money.

3. Jose DeJesus MD presents How to Send Emails that get Delivered and Read posted at Physician Entrepreneur.

4. George Tzenos presents Use Your Website Traffic Statistics To Improve Your Results posted at Traffic2MyPage Blog.

5. Jocelyn @ A Pondering Heart presents Why Are You So Popular? posted at A Pondering Heart.

6. Amanda Moore presents Reader Question: Are Blog Carnivals Worth Your Time? posted at AMVA – Amanda Moore Virtual Assistant, saying, “Blog Carnivals can be a great way to drive traffic, but traffic is just a small part in a larger picture. Make sure you know all the benefits of participating in Carnivals.”

7. George Tzenos presents Article Marketing – get targetted traffic to your site posted at Traffic2MyPage Blog, saying, “how to use article marketing to generate traffic and how to write them”

8. Mathew Needleman presents Advice for New Bloggers posted at Open Court Resources.com Blog.

9. Michel Fortin presents Apply The Law of Contrast to Build Desire posted at The Michel Fortin Blog.

10. Kevin Brink presents Blogging Tips for Beginners posted at The Red Stapler Chronicles, saying, “Learn from my mistakes!!”

11. Carl Ringwall presents Split Test Your AdWords posted at Data SystemsPlus.

12. Danogo presents Get Visitor Traffic for Your Music Site or Blog Using Music Directories posted at DanoSongs.com – Dan-O’s Music Blog, saying, “Learn how to get your blog ranked higher in the search engines and get more visitor traffic”

13. Traffic2mypage presents Youtubing your Web Traffic posted at Traffic2MyPage Blog, saying, “How to redirect traffic to your page by using youtube. This blog will teach you how to create a point of difference”

14. Traffic2mypage presents Youtube Web Traffic System – Video Review posted at Traffic2MyPage Blog, saying, “bring more web traffic to your site using youtube marketing. Gives compelling reasons why to use youtube and also highlights two key steps for getting more people to view your video and then visit your site”

15. Kurt Schmitt presents The 7 Bad Habits of Highly Defective Article Marketers posted at Free Website Traffic Tips, saying, “The 7 biggest article marketing mistakes. Avoid these and you’ll greatly improve your ability to drive traffic to your website.”

16. old-wizard presents Top 10 Ways to Promote a Gaming Blog posted at Old-Wizard.com.

Writing Content

1. Cindy King presents How To Use Online Translation Tools posted at Cindy King, saying, “I think free online translation tools are great… for certain tasks. Never use them to write any sales content or sales materials. And think twice about relying on them for any other translations. There probably is no ‘best way’ to use an online translation tool, but I have a method that works for me. I use this when translating into a language that I can not read at all. Need a name for the process? I think of it as the translate back and forth process.”

2. Kathleen Gage presents I know I need to blog, but where do I find the time and fresh ideas? posted at Street Smarts Marketing & Promotions, saying, “The more I delve into the Blogosphere, the more I realize how important blogging is to any solid Internet Marketing plan. Anyone who has been paying attention knows they need to get on the Blogosphere bandwagon sooner than later.
   I work with speakers, authors, coaches and consultants who are always on the lookout for effective ways to reach their market, gain visibility and establish credibility. One would be hard pressed to find something as easy and simple as blogging to achieve these outcomes.
   Blogging can be fun or it can be a tedious process. Most people start off with a bang and then the sparkle will quickly sizzle as they get caught up in other activities.”

3. Alik Levin presents Make Your Message Sticky And You Might Tip posted at Practice This.

4. John Lenaghan presents Do You Find It Hard To Write? posted at Internet Marketing Chaos.

5. Jonathan Deamer presents The 10 secrets of writing reviews that will keep readers coming back posted at Jonathan Deamer.

6. Anna Farmery presents What’s Love Got To Do With Social Media? posted at The Engaging Brand.

7. axel presents Amazing Blogging Skills posted at axel g.

8. Mert Erkal presents iGoogle – Your Blogging Command Center posted at www.searchforblogging.com, saying, “I discovered iGoogle last year when I was playing with my Gmail account. From the first moment I had the feeling that iGoogle could be my blogging command center, a center where I could reach everywhere related to my blogging topic.”

9. Chris Truman presents What will you write about? posted at PowerBlogging, saying, “The only thing you need to know about writing content!”

10. Raivyn presents What Every Blogger Should Know About Quality Content, and How to Create It posted at Idiot’s Guide to Blogging.

Making Money

1. BlogMeTheMoney presents Adsense Alternatives: Part 1 of 4 posted at Blog Me The Money, saying, “Adsense is a great way to monetize a website but it should not be your only way. Some of these programs pay a flat rate which might be a great way for a smaller publisher to make money.”

2. Brian Terry presents From a Sale to An Experience posted at Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean.

3. Ian Richardson presents Growing Your Internet Business One Day At A Time posted at Make Everything EzyAs123, saying, “An article on how to grow your internet business”

4. Lode presents Tutorial: Basic Installation OIO Publisher posted at Scraping Pennies, saying, “OIO Publisher is a self hosted blog monetization plugin for WordPress. It has a lot of features and can be difficult to understand when just starting out. This article is the first in a series of tutorials on how to set it up on your blog.”

5. Patrick Schwerdtfeger presents 7 Steps to High-Conversion Sales Copy posted at Tactical Execution, saying, “Leverage this 7-step motivating sales sequence to dramatically improve your sales copy and increase conversion.”

6. Bryan presents Will You Remember Your Next Big Idea? posted at The Capitalist Guide Blog.

Everything Else

1. Kathleen Gage presents Street Smarts Marketing & Promotions: Get the most out of your blogging efforts! FREE report tells you how posted at Street Smarts Marketing & Promotions, saying, “What used to be viewed by many as a passing fad has now become a necessary aspect of doing business on the Internet. Blogging has become a necessary aspect of any solid online marketing strategy. However, even though millions of people are blogging, the majority don’t know how to optimize their blogging efforts.
   Although some people view blogging as a novelty or a “someday I’ll get around to it” smart entrepreneurs understand they have to get into the game of blogging sooner than later. When done correctly, blogging can have an incredible impact on your market position.”

2. Cindy King presents Write A Better International Website posted at Cindy King, saying, “One of the the things you need to do when communicating with any prospects or clients is to think about what they want and need to hear from you. You need to look at your business offer, communication or message from their point of view.”

3. Riggie Freyer presents Online List Building Tools to Build Your List posted at Internet Business for Beginners | Internet Home Based Business.

4. Sarah Paine presents Emotional Intelligence & Internet Business posted at Sarah Paine.

5. Riggie Freyer presents “Do Follow” Links with High Pagerank & KeywordLuv Plug-in Bloglist posted at Internet Business for Beginners | Internet Home Based Business.

6. Raivyn presents Do You Have What it Takes to be a Professional Blogger? posted at Idiot’s Guide to Blogging.

7. Michael. presents WordPress Free Blogging Platform Software Review posted at Review Hookup.

8. Technology Editor presents Create Productive Advertisements posted at Physician Entrepreneur.

9. Adrian Savage presents How to Cope with More of Those Pesky Distractions – Stepcase Lifehack posted at Lifehack.org.

10. Kenton Newby presents First-Class Blogging: 12 Perfect Upgrades to Power Your WordPress Site posted at KentonNewby.com.

11. Mark presents The fine line between personal and business posted at Business is Personal.

12. Jim Kaizen presents A Big List For Improving Article Marketing posted at The Kaizen Business.

13. Steve Oliphant presents Free Backlinks! Woo Hoo! posted at Steve Oliphant’s Musings.

14. James D. Brausch presents Don’t Do Business With Mail Boxes, Etc.! posted at Costa Rica HQ.

15. James Lee presents Subconscious Grocery Store Conspiracy? posted at Online Business Freedom.

16. Robert Phillips presents How to Create an Audio Product Practically for Free posted at CYBERCA$HOLOGY.

17. Diego Norto presents Internet Business 101 posted at Internet Business 101.

18. Michel Fortin presents This Plugin Increases Membership Conversions posted at The Michel Fortin Blog.

19. Diego Norto presents Glyphius 2008 Lens posted at Internet Business.

20. James Lee presents The Awesome Power of Face to Face Networking posted at Online Business Freedom.

21. The Money Moose presents Promote Your Blog By Marketing With Homeless Hobos and Bums! | BLOG BADLY posted at Blog Badly, saying, “A bit of humour.”

22. BlogMeTheMoney presents Blog Me The Money: Translate Your Websites Or Blog For Money posted at Blog Me The Money, saying, “Having a website or blog only readable in one language may make you lose out on more than just visitors. You could be missing out on money as well. It does not have to be that way.”

23. Don Morrison presents For Income Success Develop A Prime Online e-Book Marketing Company Model posted at dondmorrison.com, saying, “Download 300+ new & original eBooks at http://dondmorrison.com”

24. Riggie Freyer presents How to Set Up a Blog with WordPress posted at Internet Business for Beginners | Internet Home Based Business.

25. Kathleen Gage presents Internet Marketing – An often overlooked opportunity posted at Street Smarts Marketing & Promotions, saying, “Internet marketing can yield great opportunities for virtually any type of business. Unfortunately, many companies miss opportunities by making a few common mistakes. Learn how to avoid these mistakes and have strategies to continually build your business.

    Learn how really simple Internet Marketing can be.”

26. Amanda Moore presents Down and Dirty Blog Carnival Submission Technique posted at AMVA – Amanda Moore Virtual Assistant, saying, “Submitting your posts to a blog carnival doesn’t have to take all day. This process will make it quick and painless.”

27. J presents Online Bookmarking Tools|Blog Bookmarking Tools| | Tech News Beats posted at TechNewsBeats, saying, “The online bookmarking space is bursting at the seems and to put all the buttons for all services will make you page cluttered. So here is help, use the single button multiple ability bookmarking tools.”

28. Nesher presents Embed Documents in your Blog with DocsToc posted at Blogging for Good in the Modern World, saying, “Easy and interesting solution for the blog owners to share documents in several popular formats (.doc, .pdf, .xls, .ppt) with the blog readers.”

29. JHSEsq presents Your Online Writing Life: Protect Your Reputation — and Future (Part One) | Colloquium posted at Colloquium, saying, “A five-part series discussing prudent online practices that designed to protect bloggers’ personal lives, reputations — and careers.”

30. Kevin Brink presents Bloggers Bill of Rights posted at The Red Stapler Chronicles.

31. John W. Furst presents Take Action: Save The Internet – We Cannot Afford To Lose It posted at E-Biz Booster Blog, saying, “Your Internet based business might be in great danger. You must support net neutrality… Show that democracy works!”

32. Everything Finance presents Free: Website Magazine posted at Everything Finance.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of blogging tips carnivalusing our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.