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.

If you’ve followed this blog at all for the past coulple of months, you know that I am in love with Market Leverage. (It’s kind of sick, actually.) In this short time, I have found a few offers that generate enough profit that I could realistically quit my day job and be a full-time affiliate. (Not quite ready to do that yet though.) However, one thing that I haven’t really done anything with is Market Leverage’s referral program.

According to Market Leverage they have “The Industry’s Best Paying Lifetime Referral Program.” They will pay 5% of the commissions earned by each Publisher that you refer. That ads up to some scratch if you can get a nice referral base under you.

Here’s the deal…

I’m holding my own mini-Market Leverage contest. I want to see who can earn the most over the next 30 days. Winner gets $100. Easy Peasy.

Sign up with Market Leverage!

Bonus Entries

In addition to signing up above, if you blog about and link to this contest, I’ll increase your eligible earnings by 25% That means that if you make $2,000, your contest entry will be for $2,500.

Once you have signed up, post below so that your entry will be counted.

Also, feel free to join in with the contest discussion going on over at the DigitalPoint Forums. I’ve Made $15,535.20 in the last 30 days – I’ll Pay You To Do The Same!

Sign up with Market Leverage!

If you run out to Google and you search for ways to get quick traffic to your affiliate offers, you’ll no doubt find the ‘Gurus’ that tell you that PPC is king. They’ll tell you to generate a list of keywords and create several ad groups centered around groups of 50 or so keywords. They’ll give you numbers and show you how to calculate the maximum CPC that you should bid. Then they’ll tell you to split test ads and focus on getting your click through rate up. They’ll also tell you to avoid the content networks and CPM ads like the plague. “Oh, they don’t convert well.” “You’re just throwing your money out the window.” You know what?

It’s all a bunch of baloney!

These marketing gurus either don’t know what they’re talking about (possible) or they aren’t telling the whole story (more likely.) There are 2 sources of affiliate traffic that you can’t live without. These are sources that I’ve seen very few talk about. Want to know what they are? Would you believe that some of the best sources of traffic for your affiliate offers are the very things that marking ‘gurus’ tell you to avoid -  ads run on content networds (e.g. AdSense) and CPM banners. Don’t believe me?

(Click on the image for a better view)

Notice a little jump in there? Look at how my earnings increased on 8/17. That’s right when I started tapping into these sources. Think about this…

Ads On The Content Network

Ads on the content network are dirt cheap. You don’t have to worry about quality score and click through rates. That means that you can literally get clicks for $0.05! The only way you’ll pull that off in search is if you have a super quality score.

Also, you’ll usually get 10x more impressions on the content network. Even if a term doesn’t get a large number of searches, there could be thousands of relevant sites out there that your ad could be displayed on. Even with a low click through rate, you’ll generally get more traffic than you would with search.

CPM Banners

CPM Banners are a different kind of animal. The main concern of PPC ads (making sure you get quality clicks) doesn’t apply here. The whole point is to get as many clicks as you possibly can per 1,000 views. With an effective banner, you can get clicks for $0.01 or even less! Now, your traffic may not be as high of quality, but your getting 10 clicks for the price of one (compared to a cheap PPC campaign)

Using CPM banners I’ve run campaigns that have a 5,000% ROI! How’s that for a return?

If you’re doing any kind of affiliate marketing, you should always consider running CPM banners and content network campaigns. I can almost guarantee that your earnings will increase!

Try Market Leverage I’ve Made Over $3,000 profit this month!