Affiliates Tested

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

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!

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.

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?

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.