To those new to the blog, the stats here are for internet marketing alone and will never include figures for SEO consultancy or for coaching for anything similar. The main point here is to make it clear that anyone can make at least a half decent income from internet marketing. Its early days for me really, considering the fact that 10 months ago I was earning about a quarter of what I do today from internet marketing. Therefore, the potential to be earning so much more in the coming months is very good indeed. We’ll see…
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A bit of a mixed bag was the month of August, and I could really go overboard and complain about this and that, but what’s the point? As internet marketers, we all go through very similar ups and downs time and time again. And certainly for me, the month of August has been very much one of ups and downs!
My main “issue” has been eBay. The month started off really well and then went kinda dry mid month. That’s very normal. But the thing is it never really picked up at the end, which is totally unusual. Let’s get down to the stats and my tales of woe 
I’ll use the same format as last month, and I shall use the same US dollar to UK pound exchange rate as previously (my AdSense and eBay is worked in pounds sterling), to give the stats some parity. That is £1 = $1.58 US. Its actually gone done a little but not enough have much over-all affect.
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Travel site: yuck! The site is now ranking in top ten for both “Kuching” and “Kuching Hotels” according to Scroogle Scraper, even though I’ve not been working the backlinks for the site for the past 6 weeks. So that is great! But, site visitors are not much higher than previously, which is one of those oddities that crops up time and time again. I mean, “Kuching” according to Google stats receives some 49k exact searches a month. And “Kuching hotels” receives a really healthy 74k monthly exacts. Hmmmm… I’m not seeing much of that – a mere and teeny fraction of it, to be honest!
Anyhow, I am finding that quite a few folks are clicking through on my affiliate links – the Hotels Combined one, and not the Agoda side banner. But they are simply browsing and not booking rooms. To be expected of course. Its a very seasonal thing, is travel. Income for August here is $5.66 compared to last months almost $25. Ouch!
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Amazon: oh dear me! Terrible! Click through seems average but buy rate to click thru is a measely 0.81%. That, ladies and gents is shockingly poor! I don’t now have many sites hooked up with Amazon – not many. Just as well, right? Amazon income for August $10.94. Oh dear me! That’s the worst month for a long while. I don’t think my Amazon stats are gonna pick up till November. A long wait!
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My 40 Day Challenge eBook: hmmm… Sales and income down on last month! Not looking good for this month over-all, is it? Thanks to those who purchased the eBook! Income comes from a total of 5 sales, which equates to $70.00. Down $41.00 on last month. I’m hurting!
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Clickbank: finally a rise on last month – 3 sales providing for a total of $80.00 US, dead on the nose! Not much, but then I am not yet pushing CB products so I can’t be expecting much. I probably will get around to working some CB products after Christmas. Having read Michelle’s account on how she sets up her CB products, its given me the bit of inspiration I need. Its a superb account she’s written up actually, so if you have any interest in affiliating for CB products and you are not familiar with Michelle’s recent posts, then I’ve put the link in to her site at the bottom of this post.
However, there is one thing above all else that makes me cringe about promoting CB products – and no, its not about the sniping (sniping mainly happens with internet marketing type products). Its due to the fact that Clickbank insist on sending a check/cheque to those of us who do not possess a US bank account. And that means that we end up paying a hefty conversion fee – in my case, US dollar to UK pound, and then to Malaysian Ringitt. This in itself is a big off-put for me. I much prefer the way that Google AdSense and eBay do things – either straight to Paypal, or straight to your bank account (which is even better, so thanks for that, Google AdSense!).
I’ve worked with Clickbank before – almost 3 years ago now. In fact, one of my first sites was affiliating for a CB product and that was a Squidoo lens. I made no sales 
However, I then went on to work a couple of CB products purely through writing articles and posting them on ezinearticles. Erm, that method works! It can be kinda hard work, but if you get the timing right and you work really popular topics (and you like writing!), you can make pretty good money by doing this. After all, the average CB sale nets us around about $25 US or something. It does not take too many sales before you are seeing a healthy income.
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Other affiliate sales such as Paydotcom? Doing okay here with $97.75 for the month. Again, I don’t push much in the way of other affiliate products so I can’t say much about this – good or not so good. Thanks to everyone for their purchases of CB, PayDotCom and any other products via my aff links – much appreciated!
Ah heck, I forgot to put in these stats in my update, so here it is now – better late than never! Unique Article Wizard have provided $107.20 in commissions this month. Nice! And thanks to everyone who joined up via my affiliate link!
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AdSense: down on last month at £78.03 ($123.29 US). I’ve reduced my AdSense presence in that I’ve located some sites that were doing nothing with AdSense and dumped either the AdSense or the whole site. And I’ve even taken a couple of sites that were in fact getting clicks and taken AdSense off them. Why? Cos the click value is stupid low and almost worthless.
The current click through rate is hardly wonderful, but one day it was up at around 16% over-all, which is much better than when I had those other lame sites hanging around doing nothing. AdSense income for August? £78.03 UK sterling. Down on last month by £15.65, which is about $25 US.
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eBay: has eBay saved my embarrassment for this month? I did claim that I wanted to be seeing about 3.5k US dollars in average monthly income in 8 months time. That would be around about April of next year. So far, this month is not going at all in the right direction, is it. I’ve been really grafting on my eBay sites. I’ve not bought any more domains – had to renew quite a lot, which was kind of expensive, as many of them are with Go Daddy and they charge almost $12 a .com domain. So its been an expensive month mainly due to domain name renewal. I’ve dumped quite a few that were up for renewal this month, but I’ve retained some of the better performers, even though quite a number of those really only perform in November and December.
Its a bit painful seeing lots of your own webpages sitting top 5 in Google and making pennies every month, even though the search stats are pretty hot. Some of those keyword phrases that I’m ranking for get upwards of 30k exact searches a month according to Google stats. This is totally wrong however. My sites are ranking well for an array of these sort of keyword phrases and none of them see that sort of volume – no where near!
Anyhow, I have renewed a number of those, merely due to Christmas income. Its really odd when your income for 2 months from some sites is more than that of the rest of the year, but it happens quite a lot.
(As a side note here, I was sitting watching a movie last night and thinking about some of my previous jobs in the United Kingdom. I used to work in a Garden Center in England for a year or so, and the best time of the year for income was the Easter Weekend. It was an insane time! In fact, so much so that the particular garden center I used to work for has been robbed twice in the past 6 years at Easter Weekend. Simply because the cash takings are massive! So, is it therefore possible to grab a part of this market in the online world? I for one will be trying hard to do so, how about you?).
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To get back to the point – as I mentioned, I’ve been working pretty hard on my eBay sites, at the expense of everything else. Now get these stats:
The site visitor count to my eBay sites was the highest ever last month – July (I think, anyhow) and that was 11,364. The site visitors this month… wait for it. Remember, I have not added any new sites to my arsenal since many months back. Total visitor count to my eBay sites for August was 18,257! A massive rise of 62% in a month!
Now the scale of that rise has even surprised me. So the work I’ve been doing has been really paying off here. Or has it? At the end of the day, you can have 100k visitors to your sites in a month, but if you are not seeing much income, what’s the point?
Take Amazon as an example of what I’ve been seeing with regards to the amount folks are spending in August and apply it to eBay. Yup, as mentioned, the beginning of August was really hot. My visitor count was not so high on eBay sites, but the spend was really high. But that slumped and never regained the energy for the past 3 weeks. So its very disappointing actually, because I have to rely on eBay to do the goods.
If you know what EPC is then here are the stats in comparison. EPC is eBay’s way of calculating an affiliate’s income. Earnings per click. EPC for last month was 7. EPC for this month is only 5. That says it all, pretty much. Its very low – a 2 point drop is a lot to absorb.
So just how much did my sites make from eBay income for August?
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£967.07, which equates to $1527.97 US.
My eBay income sounds good, but its really disappointing. At one time, about 2 weeks ago, I was thinking it could well surpass the £1300 ($2,055). Alas, that was not to be. But, the sites are sitting good for seeing some really healthy sales income in the months to come, so all is far from lost.
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I could go into detail as to what sort of work I’ve been doing to see such a massive rise in traffic. Hmmm… I’ll leave that for another post. But put it this way – do you know the Pareto rule? Michelle mentioned it in her comment on this blog just the other day. Its where 20% of your websites bring in around 80% of your income. Yes, this rings true with my own sites too. But I’m trying to change that, and get some other sites doing better.
I’ve been suffering some sandboxing (or at least some tremendous Google dancing) with some of my better-performing eBay sites too (this only began happening over the previous 2 weeks), so that did not help at all. Sandboxing or dancing, even though the amount of backlinks to any one site has not been so much – 20 to 30 over a week. Google seem to be very sensitive indeed these days!
And further, the transition from summer into autumn has been difficult too. A number of my sites that have been doing well over the past few months are now not performing. Its a bit of a tough time in that respect. What to do about it though? I’m sure quite a few of you are experiencing this transition too.
Take the Shelby cars site I mentioned previously. Its now seeing about 14k uniques a month to that site, which is pretty cool. I’m gonna push that to get that way up. Or should I? The spend per click through is absolutely atrocious! In the spring and summer months it was a bit better, but now its simply awful. EPC is sitting at 1 for August, and that will not improve for months to come. I get the impression that fast American ‘muscle’ cars are more of a spring and summer time luxury, rather than an autumnal and winter necessity.
But I have to admit to enjoying working with those sort of sites. I’ve picked up on an older site that I was actually going to let the domain expire this week. Its based on the Aston Martin sports car – yes, the one James Bond drives most often. Now, again, this site could be a total under-performer, even if I can get it ranking for some hot keyword phrases. But I do enjoy working with the site. A boy still loves his toys, and we can all have our dreams
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So, is the final income up on last month, even with such a low “score” for many aspects of my affiliate income?
Yes! Total income for August was $2022.81 US, which is around the £1280 – £1300 UK pounds mark (depending on fluctuating exchange rates). Total for July was $1,778.60. So that’s a rise of $244.21. In many ways a bit disappointing (although very nicely on target to reach my 8 month goal of 3.5k US dollars monthly!), but the fact is that the transition from summer to autumn, in addition to some of my sites sandboxing or dancing dramatically, in addition to the poor performance of so many of my other “nest eggs”, besides eBay… well, its looking strong, it really is.
I’ve got quite a lot to be “pumped” about right now, even though my bank account is far from being highly pumped, which is what all this comes down to at the end of the day! Nevertheless, if you could see me now, you would see me with a nice smile on my tanned face
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It remains to be seen what September will bring us with regards to customer spend. I’m very unsure what to expect! And I’ve also gotta be aware of potential for burn out too. It kinda creeps up on you in a really sneeky fashion. It did with me only last month, even though I’ve still managed to push hard with my websites over-all.
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Michelle’s ClickBank project can be located at her blog here… http://passiveincomeonlineblog.com/
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the mention, Joseph – I hope people find the CB journal experiment useful.
I’m quite impressed by your income stats, and also by the nice diversity you have going in terms of different programs. BTW – I think there is an option to get your CB payments through direct deposit to a UK account, so you should certainly check on that (if you still have one). I also think you can now get paid with a prepaid Master Card too (Payoneer), which might cut out some of the fees if you are interested in getting payment that way.
I was wondering if you have ever tried selling (flipping) your sites instead of simply dumping the domains? You might be able to make a small profit on them that way to cover some of the time and other expenses you put into them.
As this will be my first “real” fall and holiday season doing internet marketing (or at least having some idea of what I was doing), I’m really looking forward to seeing how the next few months shape up. I’m guessing your eBay sales will pick up nicely soon. I’m certainly hoping for the best for you! Do take care not to burn out though!
Michelle recently posted..August Earnings Report
That’s not bad Joseph! I know you wanted more but it’s still something!
Oscar – freestyle mind recently posted..Motivation When Youre First Starting Out – Freestyle Mind TV Episode 4
At the beginning of the month Oscar, I would have been happy with this increase on the month before. After all, it is very nicely on target and if it keeps repeating month on month then I’ll reach my goal for 8 months etc. Its just the fact that with the traffic via eBay being so high, it kinda takes the shininess off the “triumph”. One of those things that afflicts us IM’ers however. Or any business, for that matter.
Hi Michelle, the amount of CB sales type products I purchased early on, only to find that I couldn’t quite get them to work. Then I read up on your account over the past 4 weeks and its as close to perfect as I think you could get. But your account is free to read, whereas some of the others are 70 or 80 bucks a shot; maybe even more! There is no doubt most folks will learn at the very least a few things about how to go about profiteering from Clickbank if they read your account. I have!
I’ll have to read up on CB and see what they are now offering regards to reception of income from affiliate sales. Thanks for letting me know about that. Amazon are still a right pain in the a.. as far as this is concerned, even though us “foreigners” can join up with the likes of Amazon co uk etc. But I don’t think Amazon UK pay at the same commission rates as do Amazon US, which really seems to be very unfair. They may have changed this since I last looked however.
If I was pretty good at reworking those old websites and then getting all the stats together and writing up a sales speel then I would most certainly consider flipping them rather than dumping them. But to take the time to do that may not be time well spent, particularly after website sales commissions. Its probably worth looking into with a few of the sites I’m dumping, but the reason I’m dumping them is that they are not so hot with regards to income. Some of them could be worked to become more profitable, but quite a number only really see Christmas sales, and even then they are not as good as the ones I’m holding onto. I’m not too keen on holding domains purely for 6 weeks of sales each year, although having said that Michelle, when November does come around I may well have some regrets about discarding as many as I have
I hear you when you say that this will be your first fall and holiday season doing IM. Last year was my first one where I had any true idea of what I was supposed to be up to. And even with my semi – lame sites that I did have up by mid October, I was pretty much blown away by the change in stats with regards to Amazon in particular. Most of my sites were hooked up with Amazon back then and the click thru to buy rate went from something like 1.5% for August through September and October to about 8 – 10% for November and December. Its a very exciting time!
Yes, I’ll have to watch for the burn out thing. I always struggled trying to find a balance in life, and internet marketing is apparently no exception. But if income continues to grow month on month then there is no stopping me, come what may!
Great results, man! How many eBay sites did that take, out of curiosity?
All told, good numbers, Joseph!
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Make Money Online And Don’t Spend A Dime Part 2
To be honest James, I don’t really know. But if you take the Pareto rule then I would say about 8 to 12 sites are key earners and the others either need more work or for various reasons are simply not going to “stash the cash” regardless what I do with them. I read Michelle’s most recent post about voicing overheads as well as income. Well, put it this way, my outsourcing costs for August was below $30 so this seems to me to be a pretty good return on investment – I do most of my own writing. The cost of domain renewal was by far my largest bill for the month, and I think will be for September too.
Hope you are well fixed for some serious earners too, James!
Regards
Jo
Hi again James, I just counted the number of sites I’ve got and here are the stats:
AdSense: 5 (many of those I changed over to eBay, and dumped the rest).
Amazon: I think 6 (again, changed a few of these over to eBay because I found the click-thru to purchase rate to be higher on eBay, for whatever reason).
eBay: 55 in all, of which about 35 do anything and 8 to 12 of them are really worthy at the moment.
I’ve dumped about 25 domains in the past 4 months and have about another 15 to dump over the next few months. Not planning on buying up any more, and therefore my outsourcing costs will be kept low. At one time I had about 150 active domains.
I only have 2 monthly services at the moment which cost $114 over-all per month, but this varies somewhat depending on what needs doing and the techniques I want to be using (I dip in and out of Unique Article Wizard once every 3 or 4 months, depending). Although I’m not using Link Juicer at the moment, I will be in the near future, so that’s $47 a month for a single account. But I’ll probably drop one of the other services I’m using at the moment, so monthly fees are not constantly creeping up.
Thanks for the follow up (just got back from the hospital with my 6 y/o…thought he broke his foot…).
That’s interesting about ebay V. Amazon – and a smart use of UAW. I do like that you can turn it “off” for a month and pick back up.
I’ve just dropped one of my services, too! Had to, though. Monthly expenses got out of hand, now I’m wishing I didn’t…but in reality, I’ve been renting out my services for others vs. using them for my own marketing.
I probably should’ve done it sooner, tell the truth, to manage expenses…
Oh – did you notice that The Best Spinner is now offering a Beta test of their new Thesaurus?
It’s much better, but still not 100% click and forget.
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Make Money Online And Don’t Spend A Dime Part 2
Here’s hoping your young one is gonna be fine! Sounds nasty.
Yes, I know UAW does get a lot of flack, but fact is it is handy you can pick it up as and when. Plus, I’ve found with a few of my domains that are over a year old… Well, back in the day when I was real naive about this SEO stuff, I used UAW almost exclusively with some of my domains, only to see them flying around all over the place in Google
Kinda dumb, I know. But, here’s the thing. Some of those domains (one in particular comes to mind here) are now sitting pretty in Google and are close to ranking for some seriously hot keywords besides, even though I have not backlinked for many, many months. Its only UAW links to those and nothing else. I can’t help but feel that those UAW links are a whole lot stronger than what many folks actually give them credit for, albeit they seem to take a fair bit of time to really hit home.
Yes, I saw the email yesterday regards the Best Spinner, James. Haven’t tried it out as yet as I’m so busy fiddling around pretending to do some work, rather than actually grafting hard at this stuff
Oh, and yes, I agree – the monthly fees can mount up rapidly and get ridiculous if you are not careful. I try to keep my own monthlies around the $100 mark, but occasionally they have gone a fair bit hgher than that. Wasn’t so long ago I was spending about $1400 a month outsourcing stuff to the Philippines and to be honest I’ve very little to show for that. A painful lesson learned indeed!
I’m on my way over to your blog to read up on your recent posts. I’ve still not read up on your interview with Michelle yet either, although I did manage to enjoy the interview you did with Daniel Tan. Cool stuff James!
I wish I were doing that good with my income from IM… I just started a new clickbank product site, trying to get that going now, get it moving forward to where I want it then start on more projects, probably amazon, then ebay.. So to me your stats are looking lovely! I would be very happy with that haha! I am sure if I were to that level though id be wishing for more! Good luck with the months ahead I hope you reach your goals!
Its the same old story, and I guess its human nature – always want for more cos its never enough. I know what you mean though Matt – not long ago I would have been over the moon with this sort of income. And to be honest, I am really excited by the way things are going. Its taken a long time and a lot of effort to really get this stuff working as it is now, but finally its coming together.
But the driving factor for me is “more” and that’s why I’ll never stop. Its most probably not about the money, its much more about fulfilling dreams that were drummed into me when I was a small kid, and perhaps about proving to some doubters that this IM stuff can work and can work incredibly well.
Imagine going back to your mates who used to make fun of you working all hours online and making no income. You can now go back and tell them you are making 5 times more than what they make from their office job.
All sorts of reasons keep me pushing onwards Matt.
Joseph recently posted..Income Stats From My Internet Marketing August 2010
Thanks for continuing to update us Jo. Hopefully someday soon, I’ll be able to say.. “thanks Jo… your posts have inspired me and I just made…. $xxx for the month”. Thanks for the link to Michelle´s blog too.
Sherryl Perry recently posted..Tips to Organize & Manage Your Documents and Email
You are most welcome Sherryl! It would make my posting up these stats all the sweeter if you were to come back in the future and say that you are making good income from your internet marketing. The hardest part is at the beginning so its more a case of pushing through and learning a lot and gradually it all begins to fall into place. Best wishes with it!
Regards
Jo
from how many blogs you are earning??
Just one blog, Niki – this one.
I think my jaw dropped looking at ur figures…. I earn so much less than you and it takes over 5 months to reach USD100 for Adsense. A sorry sum indeed yet ive been blogging for 3 years.
Cyril Dason recently posted..MaggaAd – Online Advertising Done Different
On your eBay sites, I think that’s awesome – what did you use to build them?
What I mean is, since I learn everything from reading, did you use a particular ebook or just put it all together from what you’ve learned by hanging around the right folks?
Ever since I’ve been online, my orientation to things new has always been an ebook.
I’m now moving forward with the second ebook, the Amazonian Profit Plan, but just curious about your eBay skills and where you learned them, and if they’re any different from other types of aff programs in terms of approach.
–J
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Amazonian Profit Plan Vs Profitzon Christmas 2010 THROWDOWN
Hi Cyril, or should I be calling you Dason?
The thing is, you are building your brand and doing an incredibly good job of it too, via the Sarawak Bloggers “vehicle”. Building a brand will take much longer perhaps – than would building internet marketing income, but the results can be mind blowing – regards to income and “internet fame”.
I too wish to build a brand but am merely going about it in a different way than you are. However, I remember a few weeks back I said to you I would like to sponsor a competition on the Sarawak Bloggers, which I will do so as this is indeed a great way to further build a brand. I have to re-think my early ideas about that and I’ll get back to you once I’ve done that.
Regards internet marketing and making a good income from it – you can liken it to having 20 different doors that are all locked, and you have 100 different keys that all look the same. Behind those doors you know for sure is a small pile of gold coins. But problem is, you don’t yet know which keys fit which doors. The puzzle then is to slowly but surely work your way through to figure which key fits where, and that way you will build your income, albeit early on its not going to be so passive as it would be once you’ve invested your gold coins in a high interest paying bank account (or something along those lines, anyhow
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That’s a good question James as I feel this hits on the basis for success or failure, ultimately.
As with everything I do online that is either successful or not these days, its all learned from eBooks and past failures and occasional successess when trying to implement the stuff learned from said eBook. As I’ve mentioned recently upon some other blogs when I’m leaving the very occasional comment, if it were not for the million and one mistakes I’ve made up till now, I would be far less capable of building this income to where it is today and to where it will be in the months to come.
Due to experimenting (very loosely – I’m not a real heavy hitting stats guy by any stretch of the imagination) and constantly thinking around what I am doing at the moment (somewhat “outside the box” if you like) – with help of previous experience – its almost inevitable that this income will grow over the coming months and hopefully years, providing the likes of Google or eBay and what have you do not move the goal posts way too far.
To be honest James, I did not even begin to profit from IM until I read an eBook that Tracey Edwards discussed on her how to make money blog. I know you sometimes talk with Tracey yourself – she’s one of the few back then that I found to actually say it how it is, so I trusted what she was advising and took the plunge with an eBook that possibly is along similar lines of the Amazonian Profit Plan that you mention. I built up a number of sites, which in hindsight were still incredibly naive – a good way to throw time and money out the window. However, the methods “nearly” worked and I did actually begin to see some small profits, although not until November and December did things sky-rocket.
I tried various other methods since then – writing articles for ezinearticles and making sales via Clickbank, oh – and slave labouring by writing articles for other folks too
etc etc. but I seemed to keep coming back to the methods learned in the Amazon profiteering eBook. This stuff worked best for me and fitted my style, so its been a case of building upon that, which in general terms I shall keep on doing as I see the potential growth being only limited by my efforts and my ability to keep “thinking beyond the box”.
I do think that this “thinking outwith the box” is where the real money is at, but that becomes a little easier to do with experience, and experience comes with making tons of mistakes and learning from them. And from reading good eBooks besides, but I tend not to do much reading now, other than on a few really valuable blogs, yours being one of the few IM blogs that I read, albeit I don’t always comment as you may have noticed. I just keep doing what I know works and trying to improve on that a little bit at a time.
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