Affiliates Tested

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?