Joseph Archibald’s Internet Marketing Income for November 2010

I just had some messages via Twitter from Daniel in the UK. He asks these questions with regards to the post I’ve just made.

1. how many websites do I have to see this level of income?

Answer: don’t really know. I’ve dumped about 20 sites in the past month, so I must be down to about 45 or so. I’ll be dumping probably another 25 or so of those in the coming weeks to months – particularly any domains that infringe on copyright

2. how long did it take to go from earning zero online income to where I am at now?

Answer: hmm tough one to call. I was earning a teeny amount on occasion perhaps about 2 years ago – I started online as a marketer just less than 3 years ago – will be 3 years in February. But I was spending far more than I was earning on a lot of crappy glossy eBooks – most of which were a waste of money. As I mentioned in my income post from last month – in October of last year I earned about $500 or so, so that’s quite a long way to come in a year. As my friend Chris (yup, the young guy who made the sweet sale of the site on Flippa) very rightly pointed out in one of his emails to me recently – “success breeds success”! That is oh so true!!

3. Why don’t I push AdSense more?

Answer: quite often I’ve found my AdSense sites not performing, even though I checked before setting up the site that there were enough advertisers for my chosen keywords (use the free Spyfu for that – its a super online tool!). I’ve pretty much avoided going hard with AdSense because of its unpredictability. That said, I purchased one domain name in November with AdSense specifically in mind – I can see that its going to be fairly easy to rank for a number of keyword phrases in this niche, and the AdSense payout is attractive, so I could not turn down this opportunity.

Congratz on your online sales yesterday Daniel!

Hey Chris, nice to have you comment – no longer a lurker, huh?

Thanks for the words of encouragement! The 15k a month mark does seem quite far off, but in reality and when you ponder it – its actually not. It depends on whether I can make a success of the stuff I have going on in the background at the moment, most of which you are privy to.

Now I’m off out to get a bottle of champagne as a way to celebrate last month’s results. Erm, maybe not – the price of Champagne here in Malaysia is insane due to taxes. I’ll have to think of something else

Cheers Chris!

Hi Danny, I take that back from the last comment, and change it from “want a job?” to… “want a joint venture?”. You sound like the sort of guy who offers a really good skill set for us IM type folks, and many other onliners besides!

I hear ya, Danny – there are free or inexpensive ways to achieve anything. I agree. However, when I think about the amount of time I spent trying to learn this SEO stuff (in particular), I know for sure if I’d invested in someone who really knows their SEO stuff, I would have got to where I am now a whole lot sooner (in fact, I did do that, but my IM/ SEO coach had such a terrible attitude and no patience that I lasted a week with him). Hence I do believe that there are some high end “things” that are very well worth the investment. Its like hiring a top SEO guy or gal who charges a fortune – you get what you pay for.

I’m looking forward very much to seeing the “cockpit”. Hehe – cool name!

Haha – I forgot that you had an eBay shop. What do you sell on there? eBay – I know what you mean when you say they are a dictatorship. Same as Google then, huh? And I think the affiliate payouts are very poor and also shrowded (should that be “shrouded”?) in mystery since they took on this EPC thing which is similar to the CPC thing that Goog uses with AdSense/ AdWords. I’m actually lowering my “stance” with eBay. Its been good for me, but I do feel there are better ways to go with regards to making money online.

Regards the guy who was making $5500 a month while utilizing 300 sites. A lot of glossy eBooks recommend this approach. “Ramp up your Amazon income this Christmas by making 1000 new Websites!”. I started out making my first affiliate income by doing that too. I think in all I had about 160 sites on the go. But I don’t enjoy that. I don’t like just setting and forgeting. Its not what the internet should be about, I don’t believe. Although there are far worse things than the “setting and forgeting” philosophy. I’d much prefer to have about 25 sites that I could focus on and give time and energy to each of them. Or maybe a few authoritarian sites, but the problem for me there is that I appear to have very limited interests so can’t figure out which niches to go authoritarian with. Just my way of thinking, and not suitable for everyone, of course.

Very good point you make – “cash and cash flow are king no matter if you are…”. Very wise words indeed. The way I see it is… What if you are indeed making some $20,000 or even more per month, but you are investing $18,000 a month to make that income. Hmmm… not so rosy any longer, is it? Its all very well to say that you earn $20k a month, but will that income continue if you stop investing the $18k? That’s the real agenda here, I think. I believe that if I dropped my monthly investment to about $70 or $80 I could still see increasing income – month to month. In fact I’ve done this quite a few of months over the past year, where investment was very low indeed but income improved. But the thing is, I want to see far faster growth because I’m not getting any younger

Ahahaha… keep the ridiculously long comments coming Danny. Don’t always expect a fast reply though. Ask Tom about that… To be honest, I think I spend more time replying to emails than I do on my internet business these days, and that’s no joke! But then look at my income from the likes of Clickbank, Paydotcom etc. Not so high but improving all the same. I think that’s got something to do with the amount of emailing I do

Oh geez, you wrote all that out on an iPad?

Regards
Jo

Hey Tom, sorry I’ve not gotten back to you via email as of yet – I will do so one of these days

Yup, I’m happy with the way November finally went with regards income. I know that one time, not long ago, I would have been panicking and all depressed after what was showing in the first 2 weeks – really low spending on eBay and a rubbish low income via AdSense. Now though, that’s not the case. Things seem to have a habit of coming right, one way or the other if you just keep chipping away at the old block.

Great stats you’re seeing – once again!

I totally agree re January. Its all very well getting really excited during November and December, but January can be pretty dead. You only tend to see the Christmas vouchers being spent throughout January, and not much else.

Regards expenses. Your expenses were massive! But I bet some IM folks (who never tell you how much their expenses are) have huge online expenses too. If you are not being open about your expenses then you are not telling the whole story and in a sense its a little like falsifying the real income stats – and the real income stats should be made available if you are selling products based on your online reputation. Its like those folks who show you their income stats in an eBook they are trying to sell…
“I made this much money from Clickbank sales, month after month after month – from using the exact same methods I show you in my (glossy) eBook”.
All very well, but are they also showing you the amount of monthly refunds?

Regards to sending emails back and forth. I remember back in the day Tom, when I was really struggling to understand SEO and internet marketing. I was making no money and spending often $500 or so each and every month on glossies etc. I would email the guy or girl who I had just bought a glossy eBook from with some questions regards their methods (or whatever). Maybe I’d get a reply from 1 in 15 of those guys and girls. I know for a fact that these folks are way too busy with so much other stuff to be able to write great long emails to folks who have just purchased their new eBook. But even a couple of sentences is far, far better than nothing – if just to say “thanks a ton for buying the eBook”. And anyways, I do like formulating emails and answering questions I get via email or on this blog or via Warriors – it allows me to formulate my ideas more solidly, and engender potential business relationships at the same time. occasionally its the guy or the girl who you helped out 6 months or a year ago who comes back to you and thanks you and offers you a hot new JV idea or something.

$4k for December? I have my doubts. But who knows what Christmas sales will do, when they’ve been so quiet during all of November (for me, anyhow).It may just be an insane month for those sort of sales.

Take care not to burn too much midnight oil Tom!

Regards
Joseph

Hi Michelle, thanks for stopping by and leaving your congratz!

I know you were doing well with regards your Amazon sales so Christmas seems to have come to you well and truly

Yes, that point I made in the post about earning 15k US in a years time via IM income – its going to be very much hit and miss really. I think most folks (myself included) first venture into IM with the thought of producing a product and selling it for a great amount of money. For most of us it does not pan out that way at all, but it does happen to a few fortunate (very, very fortunate) individuals.

However, the way I see it these days is that as we gain experience doing this IM stuff day in and day out, you get “the feel” for what is going to work and what is certainly not. That’s not to say that I know what will and will not work, its just a sense that if I do this plus this plus this plus this… then its got every chance of being a decent success. I was never any good at equations, but this IM stuff is kinda like that.

The flipping is kinda fun, and its pretty easy too but the dilemma here is – do you keep the site and develop it and thus profit even more from it in the mid to longer term, or do you flip it and see a quick profit, which may not be a sensible thing to do… I mentioned in my Flippa ad that I would continue to enhance the rankings for 4 keyword phrases on the site for a further month after the end of the auction. It could very well be that all 4 keywords are in top 3 by then and the site could make back the amount that I sold it for in a single month. Hmmm… is it such a wise idea to have flipped it at all? Tough call here, and one that cannot be accurately ascertained really.

However, if you can simply keep on building small sites and ranking them and making a couple of sales on them and then flipping them, seems to me that this is a very good investment on time spent. Some sites you will win on, some sites maybe not so much. All in the luck of the game.

Best wishes for December Michelle!

Joseph

Hi Devin, thanks for coming by and taking the time to comment!

Ah yes, I believe you are aiming to get to $10k within a year of marketing online… Very good luck with that! I’m not sure if you are aiming to achieve that from knowing absolutely nothing about IM, but I can tell you for sure that within my first year I spent almost 10k US and made pretty much nothing So if you are “starting from fresh”, that would be an amazing ahievement!

I never used to list my expenses either Devin, but I read a “ranting” post not long ago by Carrie over on the WorkingFromHome blog about the fact that most internet marketers don’t post up their monthly expenses, and I thought she had a very fair point there. Its not to say that we all should, but its something to consider you may wish to do, purely for reasons of true transparency. It really only applies once you start seeing regular income though because at the outset your expenses are bound to be fairly high (buying up info products and trying out services etc.) whilst your income is still fairly low.

Thanks for your good luck wishes – and the same to you!

Regards
Joseph

Hi Jasmine, nice to have you here on the SEO tips blog!

I found last year in November, my Christmas sales seemed to be rather a lot better than this year, but then I was not selling much other than what may be argued as being Christmas type stuff, whereas this year I’ve got a whole range of “goodies” on the go (and am cutting that back a lot as the months go by, to only focus on perhaps 20 to 30 sites – most of my older sites I’m letting loose because I was naive in choosing the niches in the first place).

I witness time and time again – from my own income stats and from other internet marketers too – that very often what it comes down to is creating enough sites that at least a few of those perform for you. Often you’ll find that only (for example) 5 sites from 25 will do much at all, but those 5 can be real big. You do get a better feel for this stuff though as you gain more experience, but that’s not to say you get it right every time.

I’m at the stage that even sites that make me over $150 a year – some of those will be dropped, because I know for a fact that if I spend the time that I do on those sites on something else, I’m going to be much more productive, and with much less work too – I’ll be outsourcing much of the work using my internet marketing income as the investment capital. But being able to do this only comes once you’ve gone through what you are now going through – the ups and then the downs of trying to make money from internet marketing, which tends to be a right old roller coaster ride!

I think your baby gifts site you have in the link here – that should be doing well at this time of year, providing of course folks are finding your web pages. Baby stuff is going to do well throughout the year, its merely about getting the right people to see your wares. Are you not getting enough visitors on that particular site Jasmine?

Best wishes with your internet marketing!

Joseph

Hi Master Scott, thanks for stopping by!

Yup – although my income figures are not nearly as huge as Pat’s (yet) the “good” thing about my figures is that they seem more “do-able” to anyone who is either just beginning in internet marketing and SEO or has been at it for a long while but not seeing much progress. Plus, every month my figures go up, whereas Pat’s do not (although his income stats are to be thoroughly admired all the same Maybe I’m just a little jealous, lol!). Personally I have no idea about iPhone apps so I would not be able to make many thousands a month from doing what Pat does there with them.

Cool that you enjoyed the eBook and found it very useful! I think its pretty decent too (I would say that of course ) – the exact methods have been shown to work, which is different to almost every other eBook I ever purchased, often at 3 times the current price of my own.

Best wishes with your own IM endeavours Master Scott!

Regards
Joseph

Hi Richard, thanks for coming over and taking the time to comment re the 40 Day C!

Hmmm… what made up the remainder of that cost?

I was not using Build My Rank back then, but Blog Blueprint and UAW I was, yes. I can’t remember to be honest. I’ve used quite a lot of different software tools over the months and years so its slipped my mind what I was using back then. If you are reading through the WF Challenge though Richard, you’ll no doubt come across all the tools that I used back then.

For information on any other tools I’ve used since those days, you’ll find that on my blog here with some details as to whether the tool is cutting it for me, or merely weighing heavily on my wallet.

Hope that’s useful, sorry I can’t be more definite than that though.

Regards
Joseph