Affiliates Tested

I do wonder.

This blog is the least-visited of any blog I've ever run... maybe because I'm simply giving honest updates without really trying to drive traffic by spamming or begging for links.

But maybe people still want to cling to the idea that by starting a blog they can make millions just by putting a couple of Adsense blocks on the site, and updating once a month?

The question is whether or not to save some time and effort by focusing on improving my own money-making, rather than worrying about sharing the results to help other people!

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!