Here we are once more – stats and facts re the previous months income made up entirely from internet marketing endeavours!
You would expect December to be a “flying” month for sales – what with Christmas being a super time for folks to be buying up left, right and center, but I can’t say my own Christmas “type” sales have been wonderous. I remember back to Novemver and December of last year and it was really good, but not quite on par this year – and most certainly not last month, when Christmas sales did not really pick up at all, oddly enough.
Mind you, if you check out my Amazon affiliate stats down below, I have to come clean on this – Christmas sales really DID pick up here duing December! But I’ve not got many Amazon affiliate sites any longer, so my own Amazon income is never going to be high.
Nevertheless, no complaints from me 
No site flips for me during December. I don’t have any sites that I would wish to sell right now, and I do believe that December is not the month to be selling websites anyhow.
Let’s cut to it!
Again, to keep parity month to month, I will use the US dollar to UK pound exchange rate of 1.58 dollars to the pound. I need to do this because some of my income is earned in UK pounds sterling, while the rest is US dollars.
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Starting with outsourcing fees this month. Kinda “expensive” for sure, but all good investment and very worthwhile too! I’ve certainly been seeing some rewards from outsourcing investments made back in October and November, so its a winner for sure.
Outsourcing fees (not including any outsourcing fees for Kevin (the unemployed gentleman who I am helping to earn a full time IM income from zero at start, within 12 months): $693 (includes the cost of an eBook I had my writer complete for me and also the cost of outsourcing for articles for a new joint venture I am working on (I paid half) – details on that to come soon). Sidenote: my outsourcing fees will be a lot less during January because I’m expecting a lowly income from January!
Hosting fees: $20
Domain name purchases: renewed 1 (let go 7!); purchased 2 – total costs: :$29.55
Software expenses: $316
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Total December expenses: $1059
Oooh, I did not realize it had crept above the $1k mark. I’m aiming to average monthly investment at between $700 and $1000 for the next few months, at least until I can push my income up to the next level consistently – that would be above $5k a month.
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Before I begin the income stats run-down, a massive thanks once again to everyone who either purchased via my affiliate links, or purchased my 40 Day Challenge eBook – totally and utterly appreciated as always it is!!!
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I’ll begin this month with Amazon since this is where I did see some real nice Christmas earnings. Total income for Amazon in December was $106.26. That’s up something in the range of 700 % on the average month! And up $84.90 on last month, which was a piddly little $21.36 payout.
You see now about what I mean when I say that Christmas sales simply did not appear to materialize in November, whereas last year I remember full well that my Christmas sales on Amazon were really good for November.
Oddly enough, I sense that Amazon does far better for Christmas sales than does eBay. I say that because I have some sites on Amazon which are very similar in nature to some of the sites I have hooked up with eBay affiliate, but those sites on Amazon appear to have out-performed those on eBay by a whole lot, even though site rankings in Google etc. are fairly even across the board.
Quite a few I have in the top spot in Google, which came about due to the outsourcing work I did back in October and November with Build my Rank. I have to add, that the Build my Rank tool is a supreme tool indeed! I’ve been seeing a number of my webpages that were jumping about a bit a while back, have been increasingly settling at or near top spots in Google, even with a mere 40 or 50 backlinks from Build my Rank (I did not use any other tool for backlinking these sites due to fear of sandboxing or dancing even more in SERP).
Its a real pity that the price of BMR is now so high – $129 per month. Blog Blueprint in my mind is the next best thing around for gaining these sort of backlinks, and at $57 a month, its obviously far more affordable than BMR is!
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The Travel website: a bit better than previous months. I’ve not checked my Google rankings for this site for the whole of the previous month (I just did now – in Google AND Google dot com in the USA for my biggest keyword phrases which are ‘Kuching’ and ‘Kuching hotels’, I’m ranking 3rd for both - nice job!), but its nice to see a bit of a rise in income here. Folks are now spending a bit and planning their holidays for next year. Let’s hope that continues to grow.
Income from the travel site: $21.02. Doubled on last month! Oh, and I took out AdSense (which I added in last month) because it was pathetic as ever it was on this site! So I’m merely relying on Hotels Combined affiliate income from there now.
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Clickbank: although last month I said I was pushing CB a bit more than before, nothing has come of that push as of yet. To be expected I guess – patience is the name of this game, after all.
Income from Clickbank for December: $128.32. Ouch! Quite a bit down on previous month which was $248 US.
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PayDotCom: like Clickbank, quite a bit lower than previous month which was $166. It could be that folks were more focused on buying Christmas presents and not on purchasing software. To be expected, of course.
PayDotCom income for December: $40.00 which again – is way down on last months total.
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Unique Article Wizard: last month’s income was $107. And this month? $80.40
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Other affiliate income: Link Juicer saw $23.50 and Build my Rank saw $17.10 (I’m very surprised more people did not sign up for BMR when the going was good – one sale here for December – its such a good service!).
One other affiliate income was from Hostgator, which paid out $50. That’s a new “asset” for this month.
Total of other affiliate income for December: $90.60
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My Warrior Forum 40 Day Challenge eBook: another super month! Last month saw an income of $538.37 for sales on the eBook. And this month is even higher at $549.34!
I’ve started to “refurbish” the old eBook and add in new content in preparation for selling it via Clickbank and probably on Amazon too. Its a very slow process actually. There is so much I can add in, which includes not just fresh information but also a lot of graphics and also videos using Camtasia.
But where to stop? I could go on re-vamping it for the whole year, but I have to draw the line somewhere. If I can get the thing completed by early March then that’s not bad going.
My friend in the UK – Danny, who is going to help me with graphics and a number of other fancy-pants additions has gone through a major life set-back only a couple of weeks ago. I best not mention what that is here, but put it this way – its a horrible thing to have happened and I only hope he can pull things together (mentally more than anything) and bring in the new year of 2011 with a very bright outlook.
I’m routing for you Danny! Email me when you are ready and let’s put this show on the road! Oh, and my invite to you and your girlfriend to come and chill out with me here in Kuching still stands!
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AdSense: oddly enough I’ve had some horrible days with AdSense but still its the best ever month I’ve had with it – again, probably due to the Christmas buzz. Sometimes I get a click that is horribly low cpc on a site, then the next day I get a click on the same site and its like 10 times more than the previous click. This final week of December has been pretty abysmal for AdSense – lower visitor count to the sites and far lower click through than the average week.
AdSense income for December: £442.28 which is $698.80.
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And finally, the piece de resistance this month for sure – eBay!
Nice, very nice! Considering that Google has rocked my boat (downgraded my rankings, darn nuisance!!) once again with regards to my previously best selling site and also the Shelby site, eBay has come through big time!
I’ve added in a bonus that eBay provided from last month. The reason I have added it into this month (December) is that they only informed us (the eBay affiliates) of the actual bonus amount at the start of December, thus December’s bonus (which is going to be quite a bit larger than November’s) I shall add in for January’s income stats. Thanks eBay for my Christmas bonus!
Income (including the bonus from last month which was £87.77) was a real good butt boostering £1550.96 , which is $2450.52 US dollars.
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Thus, what’s the outcome for December’s income? Beaten the high of November ($3768 or £2385 UK pounds), or merely nudged it which is what I thought it was going to be doing only about 10 days ago.
Well, I’m happy to report that the income for December has indeed beaten November and stands thus:
US $4165.26
UK £2636.24
Malaysian Ringett at the currently very lowly 5 RMG to the UK pound sterling (I have to add in Malaysian Ringett because I want to set up free SEO and IM classes here in Kuching, and thus have to impress upon prospective candidates that my IM income is not only healthy, but is also growing very nicely month on month – although not in January, that’s for sure!).
13,181 RMG
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Now, let’s face the facts here, January is going to be a poor month for income, so its all very well to get carried away with these income stats and believe that I’ll be cracking the $5k a month very soon indeed. No. I have to tether down the spending a bit, in preparation for “black” January.
January is a month that scares me as it should many internet marketers, but I have no choice but to work through it and try to keep motivation relatively high.
Fact is, that if you still put in at least some “grind” when you are having your real depressive days, you’ll see a brighter future. Believe me, quite a number of days during December I felt pretty low – blame it on hormones . But even on those days I still ground away at getting things done and keeping somewhat productive.
I believe that a person who can still function when he or she is feeling low and depressed, for whatever reason, well – those are the folks that are going to win out at the game of internet marketing! Sometimes you lose focus on your goals and on your previous achievements. But you still have to find the strength within to keep on going, even if its at half the normal pace. The IM game is filled with ups and downs – its a real roller coaster ride, that’s for sure!
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And briefly, as I don’t wish to bore the pants off you , what’s for the coming year?
Good things, good things!
By this time next year I would be delighted to see Kevin making a full time income. Again, Kevin being the gentleman from Australia who has really struggled to see anything from his 10 years of efforts online. Progress is not swift, but it is sure and we are making some in-roads as I write this.
Further, I would really love to get this free coaching program going in Kuching. Its to be seen how popular that will be, and even if it does actually get off the ground. But the wheels are now in motion to gauge people’s interest in what I am offering.
And I do remember that some months back I mentioned about my own income goals for 2011. I said that I would really want to be making $5k US dollars a month (or above) by the end of March (or was it April?). That would beat the shirt off the current UK national average wage, and quite frankly a lot of my income is fairly passive income. If I downed tools today and went off travelling around the world, I suspect my income would remain fairly stable month to month, or indeed would continue to grow at some pace if I were to re-invest and continue to outsource my work load. I will of course be doing the latter and not the former.
I believe I may have mentioned that I wanted to be seeing a regular $8.5k US dollars by this time next year (do correct me if I said something different previously). I suspect though that this figure is being very conservative. So how about $10k a month by the end of next year? If I continue to re-invest fairly heavily and my health is good, then there is no reason why this should not become the reality, and very possibly more than that.
The year 2010 has been a fun year for me – living in Malaysia, living my dream. And really pushing my IM income up to the heights that its currently at – that’s exciting stuff – I’ve never earned as much as this in my entire life – remember, me and a career simply never would go together, hence my inability to command a good salary
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So, how about you? Where are you going to be “at” come this time next year? Are you still going to be working your 9 to 5 j o b, and only dreaming for the day that you can pack that in and go lie on the beach of your dreams where the coconut trees sway gently behind you – whilst making a seriously good income from your own internet marketing efforts?
Are you going to set out at the start of this year with high hopes, only to see those hopes fade in the coming months (or even weeks), because you cannot dig deep enough within yourself to grind out those articles or to set up your next niche site? If that is the case, then it means you don’t want it enough – you don’t want to live out your dreams nearly enough, or else you would find a way!
No matter where you are now, its possible to achieve more – much more! And don’t forget to reward yourself each step of the journey. This is vitally important to see continual success! We are not machines, after all.
You are not alone either. I’m here, and if you ever wish to have an inspirational chat with me, then get in touch. I get lots of emails from folks around the world asking me about SEO and internet marketing - I’m all one for the inspirational chats, as I’m sure you are aware by now if you followed along on this blog or with my Warriors 40 Day Challenge 
I leave you now to consider this for yourself, and I wish you every success for 2011!!
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Not at all a bad haul for December Joseph.
I definitely think you should be able to crack the 5k a month mark within the next year. I think it is likely you will be able to get around the 8-10k range within the next year as well. I suppose that is your New Years Resolution haha.
I think mine would have to be earning anywhere from 1-2k per month within the next year. Maybe I will surprise myself though and earn a lot more than that.
Here’s to hoping we both achieve our IM goals this time next year.
Good stuff, Jo!
About how many sites in total is this (just a range)? I’m just curious.
This is good encouragement for me to pick it back up again. Actually in 2010, I did almost no affiliate sales (I think I did around $1500 total for the entire year). But in November and December of last year, I did a good job in Amazon affiliate sales focusing on just their high end stuff. So it’s encouraging and I need to pick it back up again. I’m an affiliate with some good programs in Share-a-Sale and Pepperjam and Commission Junction. I stay away from Clickbank (they irritate me to no end). So anyway, we’ll see! Between you and James (the average genius) I’m more interested in IM again.
Cheers,
Tia
Haha – I forgot about making new year’s resolutions Chris – when the bells struck for midnight, I was in deep conversation with a chap who is an IT troubleshooter who is currently living in Singapore, but mainly lives in Switzerland – arguably one of the most beautiful countries in the world! I use my visualization “methods” to achieve my IM goals
rather than new year resolutions.
I suspect with the sites you have recently started and with our venture together, you will be seeing rather more than 1 – 2k a month within a year, Chris! Fingers crossed on that though!
Cheers!
Jo
Hey Tia, its been a while – thanks for coming by and commenting!
How many sites? As I mentioned, I let another 7 domains go this month and purchased 3. I think it fair to say that currently I have about 25 decent performers (depending on what you evaluate “decent” to actually mean). Over time that will be reduced to perhaps about 15 in all.
I don’t think you need to depend on your income to be made from affiliate sales though Tia, thus there is no real need to focus much time and effort on that aspect of your business. Is that correct? Not that there is any harm in varying where your income comes from – as the saying goes – “don’t keep all your eggs in the one basket”.
And to be honest – I’m not going to be doing as much affiliate sales during 2011 because I want to focus more on my own product range creation. I’m dropping a whole heap of eBay affiliated sites month on month, even though they don’t take much time to keep generating income.
I hear you re Clickbank. There’s all sorts of speculation in various forums that CB don’t tell you the real truth about your income, and I have my own reasons for suspecting this is in fact true.
Good luck with your affiliate sales for the coming months Tia!
Joseph,
Nice income for this month, you are definitely a person to follow. It’s interesting to see that you are dropping sites yet your income still keeps up. This does make a lot of sense when I think of it but it is always good to keep building some new things as the others mature just to keep things interesting… lol… I think.
Let’s hope that 2011 brings us all the best of things!
Hey Tom, thanks for your comment!
Yes – the reason for letting go so many domains month on month is that when I first purchased all those domains my mindset was that I had to build up a mass of sites to each then generate small income. This is common-place line of thinking – 200 sites each making an average of 10 bucks a month…
But as you gain experience and knowledge it becomes a whole lot easier to “downgrade” the amount of sites and merely focus on a handful and thereby generate far more income by doing so.
As an example, my work with Kevin – we will merely be focusing on about 4 sites in all, and I would certainly expect to get his income up from zero today to over $2k within 12 months of now. Its much easier to work with 4 sites than a whole lot more, but you have to “know” that those 4 sites are actually going to generate the income once you achieve the rankings. And that “knowing” comes along with the day to day grind of working your IM business
Best wishes to you Tom for 2011!
Joseph
Happy New Year Joseph from Strasbourg, France!
I usually spend my Winter Xmas and New Years hear and even with all the snow, it only adds to the festive atmosphere. A nice change from the grey grimness of Kiev. Although, Kiev does have some positive attributes as well.
I appreciate your monthly updates, especially listing your expenses as so many IM “gurus” seem to conveniently leave out. I guess many who get into this can’t seem to want to accept the fact that not only can this be a grinding learning process, but also a monetary investment as well, which is what I’m sensing from your posts. The effective tools you seem to use in your IM arsenal cost some money and every month, but appear to be vital in building and growing your online ventures. It’s almost like any other bricks and morter type business which has necessary expendetures. I again, really appreciate your details regarding these and more importantly how effective they really are in your success. You need to spend money to make money!
Some quick questions:
You mention that you are moving from affiliate driven income to developing your own products. Is that because you feel that its more lucrative or more that you feel you have something to offer that is truly of value?
Also, what is your opinion on the current trend of building big authority sites with the “silo” approach versus the smaller more keyword focussed sites approach?
Anyway, Happy New Year and when I feel I’ve got more of a grasp on the whole building a site, link structure along with the techniques for link building, SEO and monetization down a little better, I’ll be sure to purchase these tools through your affiliate links.
Best regards,
David
Those are great numbers for December — even without the “Christmas Rush.”
Cheers to your success in 2011 — I’m sure you’ll meet your $5k goal in no time.
Hi David, nice to have you come by and merci beaucoup (or should that be spasiba balshoy!) for your comment!
I spent a couple of Christmas’s and New Years in Russia, so I hear where you are coming from with regards to “grim” Kiev. Nevertheless, aside from the cold, the snow was lovely to see.
Indeed so David – the investment in this business is very important. And I also believe this to be true from the outset. Its all well and good to try to skimp on investment but you will see far less productivity because of it. At the same time, there is a lot to be said for “working the system” on your own without much in the way of investment, in the effort of learning from the ground up, so to speak.
I wish to develop my own products because I do feel I have something special to offer and yes – its more lucrative by a long way. I’ve had the good fortune of working with one exceptional writer who works very hard at any topic I provide her with. Thus I am assured of real quality info which will then be offered to my potential customers. The eBook she wrote for me throughout December is a large part of the over-all expenses but it will be well worth that investment, I have no doubt.
The other side to offering your own product range is that you can create a list of folks who have the “need” for great info in that particular niche. And as Pat Flynn recently said, its not about selling to that list – its much more about offering information that will help them, regardless of sales made.
I’m also intent on building a “brand” for each niche I venture into. So its not merely a case of setting up a website, creating an eBook and building a list. Its much more about the longer term branding ability which is what Google appear to love, and thus the rankings in SERP for a whole range of keyword phrases will slowly and surely become easier and easier for these type of authoritarian sites. But it takes a lot of time to get there, meaning years and not just a few months.
I don’t go in for silo as such David. As I mentioned way back in my Warrior Forum 40 Day Challenge, the mere mention of the term “silo” bores me to tears. I go with what I feel works well, so its much more of a gut instinct than anything. I think if I am pleasing my site visitor then I am pleasing Google too, at least to a fairly large extent. I also like the more focused approach, which would generally be built upon an exact match domain name. But those domains are few and far between these days, so its wise to come up with a different game plan.
That’s very kind of you – I always appreciate other people “investing” in my business, which is part of the reason why I make a really big effort in answering all the questions I get day after day.
Have a pleasant new year in Strasbourg David!
Regards
Joseph
Hi Yolanda, thanks for coming by and offering your good wishes! To be honest, its been a real struggle trying to rank one of my new projects, but I suspect when I do that then the income will easily surpass the $5k a month mark. That’s to be seen however, so best not get too carried away with the figures just yet
Kind regards and best wishes for your own IM income during 2011!
Joseph
As always, thanks for sharing your data with us Joseph. I especially appreciate seeing your monthly investment. It’s a good reminder that I can’t expect to earn an income without investing something. My biggest challenge continues to be finding the time to concentrate on affiliate marketing.
I know you know about the Internet business ideas book that I collaborated on with 11 other bloggers. I did what I thought I needed to do to promote it including creating a website and even running a classified ad on eBay. To date, the sales have been dismal. I can only hope that since January and February are known months for people looking for ways to earn money and start their own business that my sales will pick up.
Hi Sherryl, thanks for coming on by!
Yes, there has to be some form of investment – be that your own time or money or both. But if you think about it, what if you were investing $2k a month in tools and outsourcing and your income was $10k a month. That’s a very good deal you got yourself there and I believe its very possible to achieve something similar.
Sorry to hear about your book sales Sherryl – that really sucks! It can be tough going creating an info product that sells well – its very hit and miss. Perhaps you’d be better trying to rank a webpage in Google with very closely targeted keywords – that way you most likely would get sales because you’d be finding a very specified customer base.
Good luck Sherryl!
Joseph
Whenever you start any new business first thing you have to do is investment(money, time & effort). After that you can expect something from business but when I saw your result JOSEPH…. I realize that I can also improve and now I’ll try it with more focus.
Hi Shailender, if you can keep focused throughout the trials of the IM and SEO game, then you are a big step ahead. If you can keep on going and work through the troubles and toils and still make some progress then I believe this means you are a winner.
Good luck with your own online business Shailender!
Regards
Joseph
Congratulations on hitting the 4k mark this month, Joseph. That’s really wonderful. I expect you will hit 5k in no time at all! My AdSense was down by about 15% in December, and surprisingly, ClickBank was actually up. Amazon did well, of course, but no surprises there. It seems diversity is always the key. I wish you the best in 2011!
Hi Michelle – many thanks! I see you’ve also had some super results – sorry, not been over to comment as yet, but I shall be…
I’m not enjoying January though, but to be expected. Certainly will not be seeing the 5k mark this month!
As you say though – diversity is the key. When one thing goes down fairly often something else rises.
Regards
Joseph
Rock On Jo! Those are great numbers my friend! Ping me for a chat when you have a chance. Happy new year!
Yes, pretty decent Rob, but January is not working out too well, which is to be expected, of course. How did things go for you? Happy New Year to you too!
It has definitely been a nice year for you. And I do wish you all the best in your plans. I hope we all have a happy and fruitful 2011!
Hi Andrew, its coming along – yes. In fact, there’s no stopping me, lol! I’ll be in touch again in a few days and hopefully we can make some progress there-after with the tidy-up on the blog! Here’s to a happy and very fruitful year for us all!
Regards
Joseph
Great Income for december. Keep it up
Thanks For sharing with us.
Hi Harneet, thanks for the feedback! I’ll be trying to keep it up, that’s for sure
Nice, Joseph! Congratulations on the book sales, and I didn’t realize your indirect backlinking method (which really works out nicely) is part of the book – or is it? I’m trying to infer that correctly.
In any event – congrats, and may your 2011 income double and then some.
Too bad about BMR…I was considering it but, alas – not now. (Which I think is the point – the higher price weeds out a lot of low quality, reportedly – which dilutes the efficacy of the network.)
Oh – and the blue background – love that as well. Reportedly blue backgrounds are one of the ways to optimize for more sales and CTR.
Hey James, thanks for coming on by!
Yes, the eBook is based on the basic backlinking method.
It is a pity about BMR. I hear what you are saying about weeding out low quality James, but fact is that posts were already rejected for the slightest infraction, therefore the quality was always going to remain high. The price hike may rule out almost everyone because add that to outsourcing the post writing (they don’t accept any spun content) and you have yourself a massively expensive tool.
Haha – the blue background – I never knew it was supposed to help in conversions. I tell you though James – its not working well on my blog, that’s for sure! There’s still quite a bit of work to be done on here though, simply to make it a bit more appealing and tidier.
Hope things are progressing really well for you and you’ve finished with the “massive client backlinking campaign” that I keep seeing appear under your name on Skype, lol!
Regards and best wishes for 2011!
Joseph
For the record, I learned the backlinking method from you – and YES IT WORKS.
(Just in case anyone’s wondering.) Thank you for the idea – it’s now a staple in my efforts online.
In fact, it was your method that helped me net over a dozen 1st place rankings on my best, most profitable site.
Re: Skype – I was getting too many interruptions from one individual who essentially wanted a hand-in-hand walkthrough with his websites, SEO and backlinking and it became a bit overwhelming after a while.
I LOVE to help people, but every 2-3 hours…it became a bit much.
After that, I had a client who was a bit chatty, and then I relegated Skype to an email “leave me a message” format. I was wasting too much time on it.
But if you do leave a message, Tweet or email, I’d definitely return the call/mssg.
Anyhow, a while back you mentioned that this IM thing is lonely – I can’t recall the post – too true! It’s one of the “risks” or tradeoffs in the business. I imagine it’s worse for you in Malaysia, although reading the 4-hour Workweek, I think you’re genius for it.
Best to you, Joseph, and know that I lurk on your posts. You’ve had a big hand in helping me achieve a certain level of success, and opened up a new avenue of ranking that really works.
Hi James, I know one particular “gentleman” did “wonder” while I was doing the whole thing on Warriors. Suppose he’s been put to shame now for berating me the way he did, hahaha! In fact, I kinda got away from using the methods for a while – got a bit lazy if truth be told (not so much lazy, just wanted to cut corners) – but I’m now well and truly back to using those old tried and trusted methods, with a few tweaks here and there!
I hear you re helping people James. Its all very well trying to point out the key methods to achieve rankings etc. but when its 4 or 5 times each day every day from the same individual, its simply not do-able. Unless you had a good price on the job, that is, and you were being well paid for your time and knowledge.
I don’t have time for almost anything these days James. Not long ago I’d put in the occasional 3 hour day here and there, but these days I’m over-loading once again. Its funny that the more I outsource the more I have to do myself to keep up. That’s not what it says on the tin…
He-he – re the 4 hour work week – me and the 4 hour work week simply don’t go together right now – I’m working hard on changing that. But truth be told – I would always want to work far more hours than 4 hours a week. More often than not, I’m happy “working” those 80 to 100 hour weeks than I would be working a 4 hour week (I say “working” – quite a bit of that is doodling around – checking emails, AdSense income (or lack of, etc.). Odd that – we’ve always been told that to be happy in life its about working far less and making far more (money). That equation does not work for me though. But it depends where you are at in life, I guess. I’m no traveller though – now that I’ve upped and left the shores of the UK for Malaysia, I seem to have lost most of my desire to travel. Its disappeared.
Thank you very kindly James – your reply is very inspiring for me! Its thoughtful of you to say what you have!
Best to you!
Joseph
Wow, that must have been a great year for you!
Nice going there Joseph! I wish I could follow your footsteps, but my 9 to 5 day job barely leaves me anytime to spend online!
Oh well, I’m sure that slowly I could start building my mini-empire
Thanks for sharing and motivating me, hoping 2011 will be an even more fruitful year,
Regards,
Amr
Hi Amr, thanks for your comments and feedback!
Its been a good year yes – it could have been a better year but I lost focus for quite a large part of it. This is part of the reason why I sense that 2011 is going to be far more productive and far more lucrative. I’ve set my goals at being 8.5k – 10k US by year end. I suspect it will be quite a lot higher than that though. But I’m not at all one to talk the talk without walking the walk. So by all means come back to this blog from time to time and check up on progress.
Regards working the old 9 to 5. Devin, who on occasion comments on my blog – he works 9 to 5. But what he is doing is outsourcing almost every aspect of his IM business and spending a very large amount on doing so. Its not to say that we can all invest nearly as much as Devin is, but even to invest a small amount month to month on outsourcing can be a very intelligent way to progress.
In fact, there are many people who may well be in a similar situation as yourself Amr. But they are so fed up with the 9 to 5 grind that they push very hard to succeed at creating a good income from their own internet marketing pursuits. Sounds to me that you are intent on that yourself.
Best wishes to you Amr!
Regards
Joseph
Hi mate,
nice website you have here.
“I believe that a person who can still function when he or she is feeling low and depressed, for whatever reason, well – those are the folks that are going to win out at the game of internet marketing! ”
I believe this is the key to success. I was just thinking about that the other day. It is all well and easy to work when you have a good night sleep and wake up full of energy.
But what about the days that you wake up feeling like your head is gonna explode any second?
These are the days that will differentiate the good from the best. Those that go the extra mile in achieving their daily goals, these are the ones that will make it.
Good post mate, keep it up
see ya
Hi Wix, mate…
thanks for your comment and input. Yes – getting through those bad days, bad weeks and bad months and still keeping at least somewhat productive is key here. Its those days when you wake up and you feel you just want to go back to bed and hide – but you don’t – you keep at the grind – its those days that are going to help separate the longer term winner and the short term loser. Keeping the momentum regardless the mental torture…
Cheers Wix, mate
Joseph,
Thanks for all the info you’ve put up here in this blog. I’m at the beginning of my IM career and am going thru the difficulties of trying to find something that really will work for backlinking. Regarding your Ebay vs Amazon incomes. Are you using basically the same approach in your sites (are they product reviews sites, or what?), also is it basically the same kinds of products are totally different?
Thanks,
Edward
Hi Edward, thanks for coming by and taking the time to comment!
At the beginning of your IM career, huh? Wow – you’ve a long hard struggle ahead then, lol!
Yes, the backlinking tool is a bit of a toughie really. I’ve trialled a few things in the past that I found fluncked big time, but yet I hear that others are using them even now. Linkvana for example, its very costly at $149 a month. I trialled it a couple of times for about 3 or 4 months at a time and found it to be useless, even though the concept is totally sound. But I know that some people use it consistently and appear to get decent results. Odd!
There are automation software out there that are pretty decent at helping you with Amazon and/or eBay product sites. But if you are intent on hand crafting your sites Edward (which is the safer way to go to keep moody old Google happy these days) then building up review type sites is a sound method for sure.
And in answer to the same niche product line or different. If I were to begin again, I would hand craft an authority site on a sub niche and work things that way. Say for example – tennis. Tennis is pretty much an evergreen sport (year round) and thus sales don’t really fluctuate too horribly at any particular time – that’s my presumption anyhow. You could rank for a whole lot of long tail keyword phrases if you begin building up an authority site. And as your site gains maturity, gains more authority, the rankings for various kwd phrases actually becomes that much easier – Google confer authority status to your site, and thus “help you out” to rank your pages above your competitors pages which are not yet of authoritarian status.
Mind you, if you are going down the authoritarian site route, its very important to have a passion for your niche, or be able to outsource quite a bit of the writing grind. Otherwise, you’ll very possibly get fed up. There’s no doubt I would
Regards
Joseph
Hi Joseph, it is me again. I hope I am not annoying you
I was thinking to monetize my sites. I have been testing my sites with adsense but I still can’t find a good template which can increase my low CTR rate. Anyway, will keep trying.
So I thought maybe I can start testing with the CPA and Affiliate programs. May I know how do you promote these things? I don’t think it is as easy as grab a banner ads, put it on the site and wait for the money. Do you have any tips to share? Thanks
Harrison, grab a banner, put it on the site, and wait and see what happens. If not a lot happens, place the banner some place else. Then do the same again, always using the same number of visitors in each split test so you get a much better sense of what works and what is a flop.
Really great success story….thanks for sharing your revenue:)
Hi Mark, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment!
Joseph
I have been looking through some of your posts and you seem like a good guy.
I too want to make some dollar bills in this business, but it takes time I suppose. I will be signing up through you for UAW before the end of May. After I complete my first 6 anchor layers to support the sites we have built/are building I want to use Synnd on those. I never found an offer from you on that here. If you become an affiliate, I’m getting the $149 version so can you offer a decent kick back for me on that?
Thanks!
Michael
Hi Michael, thanks for your feedback about me – I’m flattered
I appreciate your wishing to use my affiliate links to make your purchases. And yes – I do affiliate for Synnd, its just that I did not provide an in-depth review of the service and thus did not make a money-back offer. I’ll check out the commission for Synnd and get back to you on that shortly.
Regards
Joseph
Hi Michael, here’s my affiliate link for Synnd should you wish to utilize it…
https://socialmedias.infusionsoft.com/go/01/JosephAr/
For the $147 account I can offer you a $24 monthly rebate for the time that you continue to use my link.
Hope that’s appealing, and thanks again!
Joseph
That’s the best offer I’ve seen thus far. Thank you! I think Synnd will be the extra boost to give the sites that have great content on. For my crappier sites (adsense primarily), I’ll have to spruce them up before applying social.
Michael, cool! I don’t know what other folks are offering – I just try to “do good” with my cash back terms.
I had some problems getting my AdSense sites to be accepted by Synnd support so yeah – makes good sense to try to make those sites more appealing.
Wishing you the best!
Joseph