Affiliates Tested

Apologies for the lack of reports, but I've been busy on holiday and being ill. Anyway, here's the figures since I last wrote:

Adsense: $3.40
Scratchback: $0.00.
Widgetbucks: $0.00.
Amazon Affiliates: $0
Squidoo: $0.00.


$15.63 for 14 weeks work.

To be fair, the first couple of weeks were a complete waste due to the fact I wasn't really updating, and the people I'd asked in my absence made a hash of it. So those weeks might have well be written off, and it's taken a bit of effort to get my monthly traffic total back on track with some decent posting over the last week.
Still, so far, it's only Google Adsense and Amazon Affiliates that have contributed to my total so far - time to experiment some more!

Hugely popular blogger Jeff Jarvis, who writes mainly about publishing, has revealed he made $4500 in 2007 from Adsense on his blog.

While he could do much more to monetise his output, that's obviously not his prime concern - however, it does show really well that if you want to make your living purely from blogging, running Google Adsense on it's own, really isn't the answer.

A graph from Compete gives a rough idea of the traffic needed for that kind of money from Adsense:

I had an unexpected offline break on vacation...rest assured I'm catching up now with a better schedule of posting and more detailed info on affiliate schemes and advertising...

Well, not a bad week. Some earnings from Amazon affiliate links, and even some cash from putting adverts in my RSS feeds.

Adsense: $1.66
Scratchback: $0.00.
Widgetbucks: $0.00.
Amazon Affiliates: $1.32
Squidoo: $0.00.
Total $2.96 for the week.

$12.12 for 10 weeks work.

So I'm aiming for a dollar a day from each site. And I'm getting just over a dollar a week from 5 sites.

Well, not a record week - and a bit of a lack of posting on my behalf if I'm being honest. But at least some payment is still trickling in. Whether or not it pays for my hosting for some of my sites will be another question!

Adsense: $2.50
Scratchback: $0.00.
Widgetbucks: $0.00.
Amazon Affiliates: $0.00.
Squidoo: $0.00.



$9.14 for 9 weeks work.

If I was aiming to monetise successfully, a viable target from my research seemed to be around $1 per day, per site. Not a huge amount, but if a site could raise that with a minimum of upkeep, and that could be scaled across numerous sites, I could make the start of a reasonable second income, say $10 per day, $70 per week, $280 per month and $3360 per year. Enough to pay for all hosting, and make a really small profit - enough to then start adding more.

Instead, I'm currently managing $1 per week across five sites (Three on blogspot, and two self-hosted).

That's a looooooooooooooooooong way off.

Well, here are the figures:

Adsense: $3.87.
Scratchback: $0.00.
Widgetbucks: $0.00.
Amazon Affiliates: $0.00.
Squidoo: $0.00.

$6.64 for 8 weeks work

My best Adsense week since starting this tracking, and it mainly appears to have come from one blog, which I tweaked recently to have bigger Google Adsense adverts in a more prominent position for eyeballs.

I actually implemented it before last week's report - when I earned a record $0.00. And that's despite the fact traffic has been similar for both weeks, so either it took a week to really start to kick in, or I've just been lucky - the next couple of weeks should tell!

Well, things really have fallen apart this week. Whether it's the credit crunch and economic recession, or some other disaster, I don't know, but I've earnt nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

Adsense: $0.00.
Scratchback: $0.00.
Widgetbucks: $0.00.
Amazon Affiliates: $0.00.
Squidoo: $0.00.

The irony being that I've actually moved a couple of ad placements for what should have been an increase in responses!

So the total is: $2.77 for 7 weeks work

It's not often you can get such a big boost when you sign up for an affiliate advertising scheme, so here's a link to earn $25 if you sign up to Widgetbucks as a new publisher.

So if you were considering trying it out, do it during October, and you'll get a $25 bonus when you reach $50 total! Click here to sign up and have a chance of getting a free $25 bonus.

I can't tell you how Widgetbucks compares with Adsense etc in terms of performance yet, as it's still early days. But their widgets are certainly attention grabbing - or at least I hope so (look to the right!)

Not a straight test of affiliate advertising etc, but it's obvious that the effects of the economic downturn and credit crunch don't just affect big business and mainstream media.

Not only do advertising budgets get cut first when businesses need to cut costs (Even though a lot of people advise spending your way through hard times to make the most of the opportunities), but a lot of the products that tend to be advertised online and on blogs are those that are the first to be cut from individual's spending.

After all, if you're worried about your job, feeding your family and paying the mortgage, are you going to invest in some new software, upgrade your iPod, or buy a new blog template for example?

So it's going to be tough for any blogger who is looking to create a primary or secondary income - at the same time, there is still a huge amount of opportunity:-

Besides creating money saving blogs and tips, there's also another benefit to the fact it's harder to monetise blogs - less competition.

The harder it gets, and the more people realise the amount of work it can take to make a decent revenue from blogging, the less people will be keen on spending the time - especially if they're already struggling. After all, most people could make far more by simply getting a second job delivering pizzas etc.

Which means those people who keep pushing, and keep going are likley to reap more of the rewards that are left. And as you can see from my previous earning reports, I'm definitely doing this more for fun than to make myself rich - but if less competiton increases my earnings, I'm not going to complain!

Well, not the greatest of weeks, despite traffic still being ok.

Adsense: $0.01
Squidoo: $0.00
Scratchback: $0.00.
Widgetbucks: $0.00
Amazon: $0.00.


So $0.01 for a week's worth of reasonable traffic, and no clicks. Since the 24th August, 2008, I've made a whopping $2.77 for 6 weeks work! And that's despite moving some of my Adsense ads around for a better response.

Back to the drawing board!

Project Wonderful is way for bloggers and website publishers to place adverts on each others blogs and websites. It allows anyone to display advertising slots, and allows other users to bid on placement. Alternatively you can just bid to display your advert on other sites.

Like most other schemes I've used in the past, it wasn't enormously successful at creating revenue from small traffic sites. Over time it built up a matter a 1 or 2 cents a day, which wasn't going to make me particularly rich, or fund an advertising campaign to drive a lot of traffic.

However, I suspect I'm going to retry it on one or more of my blogs to see if things have changed with the growing number of blogs and advertisers out there - Technorati are reporting about 113 million blogs in the world these days.

(Technorati also say the average earnings for bloggers with 100,000 unique users per month if around $75,000. I'm a little way off that at the moment!)

I've heard a bit about Widgetbucks, but never got round to signing up. Until now, that is!

I'm hoping it'll make a bit more difference than my current advertising options. And I'm also exploring a few more alternatives. One of the ones which has really caught by eye by popping up all over the place is Pepperjam. The only confusing thing is that it refers to company names and VAT numbers. Which is a bit off-putting when you're an individual blogging, but seeing as I've seen it advertised all over small audience blogs, they must let them in...

Both give a start up bonus which would be enough to give my revenue a kick start on it's own from my blogging - but I'm hoping they'll do a far better job of getting some revenue out of my high traffic blogs than is currently happening...

Well, an upturn in revenues which won't make me rich, but at least shows a bit of an increase on the Adsense front! No takers for Scratchback, a few clicks to Amazon without any conversions, and Squidoo continues to do nothing:

Adsense: $1.67
Squidoo: $0.00
Scratchback: $0.00
Amazon: $0.00

So since the 24th August, 2008, I've made a whopping $2.76 for 5 weeks work!

Despite getting more traffic then ever across my sites, it's a rather disappointing week this week. Sometimes increasing traffic doesn't always lead to an increase in revenue - if only it was that simple.

And on with the figures:
Adsense: $0.37.
Amazon: £0.00.
Scratchback: $0.00.
Squidoo: $0.00.

So the reward for a busy week's work? $0.37.

I also have my Twitter account on Twitads, but no bidders yet.

I've played around with Squidoo, for a while, the personal page creation site, which comes from marketing guru Seth Godin.

I've read several things about why it's good to create some pages (or 'lenses' in Squidoo speak), including the fact they can help SEO for your page. And I've been running 7 or so lenses for a while.

Setting up a lens is quick and easy, and includes widgets for Ebay, Amazon, Cafepress etc. When you create each page, you also get the option to keep any funds for yourself, or donate them to charity.

Now there are some very popular pages, a popular community and lots of information on Squidoo - and although I haven't seen any self-referential links driving huge benefits to my sites, I can see how it could help.

But for making money?

It's not a way to make money. The people making the most money from the affiliate options, as far as I'm aware, are all donating their funds to charity, and stating that fact on their lens - which seems to increase the funds being raised due to the charitable nature of most people. Even then, they're not receiving huge amounts.

As for individuals who want to keep the loot for themselves? Personally speaking, it's made me nothing. And as a direct comparison, I created a lens which mirrored the content of one of my latest blogs.

The lens and blog are on a really niche subject, and get a similar response of just a handful of people every day. I didn't promote either particularly after set-up, and the reason was that I didn't want my blog earnings to be radically affected by a traffic boost from external promotion. I wanted to try and keep both at similar levels.

End result after a couple of months?

My Squidoo lens: $0.00
My blog: $0.01 from advertising. £0.24 from affiliate orders.

Neither is going to be hugely profitable on their own. Neither cost me anything to set up except time. But at least I could see my blog making enough in aggregate to make me update it once every so often.

I could be wrong about Squidoo, and if someone has had a great experience in making money with it, I'd love to hear more - but having looked around for the 'giants' who have been recognised for the huge number of lenses they've created, I've yet to find one making even a reasonable amount for the time invested.

Part of the purpose of this blog is to help me keep track of where my efforts are being directed, and hopefully focus them a little better, due to ever increasing financial commitments.
So my first earning report, on 4 blogs, ranging in age from 2 years to this one, and six Squidoo lenses is:

Adsense: $0.60.
Amazon: 2 clicks. No order = $0.
Scratchback: $0.00.
Squidoo: $0.00.

Total earnings: $0.60.

If I had been solely concentrating on blogging and websites to make direct revenue, I'd be rather disappointed that two years and a lot of hours hadn't had a bigger impact. Luckily my main focus is on expanding my knowledge, contacts and opportunities in my career - and that's where blogging has really paid off so far.

Hopefully, though, I can improve on the financial return as well...maybe a whole $1 next week?

Well, if blogging is meant to make you rich, I must be doing something horrendously wrong...

So far, all my advertising across all blogs has made:
$0.01.
All my affiliate dealings have made:
£.024.


So if the only motivation for blogging was money, I'd be in trouble, as around 10+ hours of work have made me approximately £0.25. 25p. A quarter of a pound.

By comparison, if I just did my day job for ten hours, I'd have earned a three-figure sum.

So far, not great. Although I do have a number of weighs I think I can improve by this time next week.

You may notice the new Scratchback widget at the top left of the menu.

I've used it in the past on a popular blog (100-200 readers per day), and despite getting my first tip within minutes, it stalled somewhat, and never really went anywhere.

Possibly that's a comment on the quality and relevance of that particular blog, so I'm giving it another chance here. Having logged in for the first time in a long while, there's also some useful information about pricing, which makes me think my first attempt didn't quite do the system justice.


So what is Scratchback?
Scratchback is intended to be a quick, easy and fun way to get 'tips' for creating good content on your blog. You set a price for tips, and tippers get a return link and recognition in return for giving you a small amount of cash.

Signing up is really quick and easy, and you simply pick whichever design you like from preset templates which should cover most blog designs and colour schemes (You don want it to stand out a bit at least!).

And that's it. Payment is by Paypal, so you'll need to have a valid account - and remember that Paypal fees will be taken out of your tips when you transfer them.

Once it's set up, you can either manually approve tip listings, or let them auto update. And once your spot is full, new tips bump off the oldest one (Assuming it fills up).

As I said, previously I had it set up on a couple of blogs, and I come across it a lot on smaller blogs when I'm randomly surfing - it's rare to see a Jar totally full but this may be down to bloggers always selecting the maximum display number, or getting the pricing wrong...we'll see.

There are a limited number of ways to legitimately earn with affiliate advertising.

Signing up: Some schemes will pay you a small amount for signing up. Usually these amounts are very small, and are only there to tempt you in - they also normally require you to earn a lot more before you're allowed to withdraw any cash.

Referrals to the scheme: Many schemes will pay you some extra money for every person who signs up via your referral link, encouraging you to spread the word. Occasionally they'll also pay you on the earnings of the people you encourage to sign up - anyone heard of a pyramid scheme?

The referrals themselves: When someone clicks on a link or makes a purchase (depending on your scheme and settings) you'll get a small amount. Notice the word small. It's usually a very small percentage which means you'll need huge amounts of traffic. The reason Google makes so much out of Adsense is by having millions of websites using it - not by having any high earners using it.