The REAL March Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
April 16, 2009
I hope everyone enjoyed the April Fool’s Day post showing my fake March income results. I was planning on posting my real stats sooner but I’ve been too busy to post lately. Luckily I should return to regular posting now and this income report is better late than never! My last (real) income report was my February report which saw most income come from Freelance work rather than my own sites.
Earnings Breakdown
DotComDud.com
Private Advertising = $3
Other Sources
Freelance Work = $15
Affiliate Earnings
PayPerPost = $0
OIO Publisher = $0
Total Earnings = $18.11
Conclusions
It wasn’t a fantastic month and it’s clear that I am still trying to find the right methods to monetise DotComDud.com. It also seems that OIO Publisher isn’t a simple “set & forget” solution to blog monetisation like I was hoping for. Instead it will require some tweaking and promotion itself to start attracting advertisers. Therefore I have adjusted my ad pricing to help make advertising on DotComDud.com an even better deal (a second text link has already been purchased in April).
I also asked ProBlogger for some tips via Twitter to see if he had written any posts on the subject that might help me out and here are a couple of them;
So I’ll put these plans into action and report on the results I get. If any readers have some tips of their own or links to other handy posts about finding private advertisers, please leave a comment and I’ll definitely take a look at them.
I’d like to thank my first private advertiser, which was a text link to How to Make Money Online for Idiots and this was also my only advertiser during March, so hopefully next month the ‘Thank You’ list will be much longer!
How did everyone else’s earnings look in March??
March Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
April 1, 2009
It’s the first day of April and that means one thing - time for a DotComDud.com income report!! Income has been a little slow in previous months and hasn’t been bringing in much cash, have I been able to turn it around over the past 31 days?
March was an amazing month for DotComDud.com and even though OIO Publisher didn’t get me great results, my new AdSense strategy did extremely well. I’m now a millionaire and well on my way to becoming the richest person on the Internet!
Earnings Breakdown
DotComDud.com
AdSense = $4,000,000+
Click the screen shot below for proof…
Conclusions
Conclusions? Who cares, I’m a millionaire! Instead I’m going to spend the rest of this post showing you what I bought with my AdSense millions!!
My New Car
I thought about a sports car like a Lamborghini or something real classy like a Rolls Royce for comfort but I realised these are for people who are only sort of rich, not super rich like me! So I decided to get the quickest car I could find; an F1 car!! This thing is great for long drives or even a quick spin down to the shops to pick up a hamburger.
My New House
Naturally I needed somewhere with lots of storage for all my millions as well as somewhere to park the F1 car too. While browsing around I came across this little place so I decided to put a deposit on it. I’m moving in on Friday, I’m just waiting for the current owners to move out!
My New Boat
Finally I thought I should spend some money on something fun! I had already taken care of the essentials like a car and house, so I figured I could splash out on some new toys as well. I’ve heard that fishing can be fun so I got myself a little fishing boat to sail around in, at least until I find something bigger!
April Fools!! I’ll be back with the real income report tomorrow.
February Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
March 5, 2009
It’s a new month and as always I’m going start if off with a Blog Income Report. It’s a few days late this month and I wish I could say that I’ve been too busy counting my money to get around to posting but that unfortunately is not the case this month. Before diving in to this month’s report I encourage you to read the January Income Report for a reminder of how things have changed during the short month of February.
Earnings Breakdown
DotComDud.com
AdSense = $0.50
Other Sources
Freelance Work = $15
Affiliate Earnings
PayPerPost = $0
OIO Publisher = $0
Total Earnings = $15.60
Conclusions
As you can plainly see, February saw earnings dive to almost a third of the previous month’s income and the lowest since September 2008. It’s a shame because even though my blog income hadn’t been reaching a significant amount it had at least been increasing steadily and if things had of stayed on track then February should have seen me clear the $100 threshold.
It’s clear that AdSense isn’t working and as my traffic declines so do my affiliate earnings. Some freelance work I’ve done has netted me some money but not enough to really matter. I’ve been planning on installing OIO Publisher for awhile now and I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews for it, so March might be the month it finally happens.
However I think it’s time that I really assess my strategy and re-evaluate how I am going to make money online. I know success does not come overnight but I feel that my current approach is still letting me down. I’ve learnt a lot since starting DotComDud.com but I have failed to put a lot of that knowledge into action which has led to these poor results.
Therefore in my next post I am going to take a look back at the progress that DotComDud.com has made and then start creating a solid plan for building it (and my other sites) in the future. When I started blogging and then trying to earn an online income I didn’t set specific goals or have a written plan for what I was going to do and I think that’s a big (and very common) mistake.
I need to figure out how to deliver value to my readers, increase my traffic and monetise effectively if I want to earn some decent money but knowing what to do is only half the battle, making it happen is the real challenge!
January Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
February 2, 2009
February has just begun, so that means it’s time to look at my earnings for the first month of the new year. January was an interesting month for DotComDud.com with a slow start but a strong finish. It also saw the drawing and give away of the most recent DotComDud.com contest, this added a cost of $75 this month where as I usually have no costs to worry about.
As usual I’ll break down my earnings by their sources to show what is working the best. You can compare this month’s earnings to my December Income Report to see how I am progressing.
Earnings Breakdown
DotComDud.com
AdSense = $0.03
Other Sources
Freelance Work = $58
Affiliate Earnings
PayPerPost = $15
Total Earnings = $73.27
Conclusions
January saw another increase in earnings over the previous month, which is positive. The numbers are still low though and I didn’t earn any more than I gave away last month, so I basically broke even. I didn’t keep up with my efforts to improve my monetisation strategy, so any big increases would have been unlikely.
The majority of this month’s earnings came from “freelance” work which is just some small stuff I picked up to earn some quick cash. It is a new source of income though, so it’s possible it will earn me some more money in the future too. I’ll make a more detailed post this week detailing the kind of work that is out there.
DotComDud.com still didn’t see any real income, with AdSense only bringing in a few cents. I realise I should optimise my ads more but I don’t think AdSense is the best way for this blog to make money anyway. In February I’ll be installing OIOpublisher so I can start earning from private ad sales. I’ll probably try to incorporate this into a redesign of DotComDud.com which is overdue in my opinion.
So how did you all do in the first 31 days of 2009?
December Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
January 8, 2009
Well 2008 is now officially over and a brand new year has begun. As promised, here is the latest income report, just a few days later than usual. You can read my previous blog income reports to see how I have progressed since starting DotComDud.com in August.
December was definitely a month of ups & downs. I didn’t make a lot of posts, especially towards the end of the month but my traffic was still higher than I’ve gotten previously and the guest posts I made on other blogs probably helped out too, so it should be an interesting month to analyse. So here are my earnings for December 2008…
Earnings Breakdown
Other Sites
Total earnings = $10.22
Sources
AdSense = $0.20
PayPerPost = $10.02
Affiliate Earnings
PayPerPost = $30
Total Earnings = $40.42
Conclusions
Well I almost doubled my earnings in December compared to the previous month’s earnings of $21.35, thanks largely to PayPerPost. This is a new high for my monthly earnings and it’s encouraging to see them continuing to rise month after month. I haven’t reached a full-time income yet but the more I learn then the closer I will get!
Last month I complained about this blog not earning up to it’s potential and I believe it still isn’t. I’m going to have to do more experimenting but AdSense and PayPerPost affiliate ads probably aren’t the highest potential earners available. Not to mention that I am still only really earning from 2 sources and that’s if you even include the minimal amounts AdSense is bringing in, this simply isn’t enough. I need to take my own advice and stop putting all my eggs into one basket!
My efforts to improve monetisation were a good start but they need to be taken further in 2009. I definitely think that adding the PayPerPost ad in the DotComDud.com sidebar helped me get those referrals, so that’s a step in the right direction at least. With further diversification of my income sources (and continued work on content and traffic) I can be sure that my earnings from DotComDud.com rise to a more respectable level.
AdSense on this blog didn’t perform very well. I can’t mention specific views or click-through-rates due to the AdSense T&C (terms and conditions) but I am sure it could perform better if I optimise it with better placement and styling. It’s current position in the header is sort of hidden away from the main content so it unlikely than visitors pay much attention to it. I’ll be working on different placements over the next few weeks, trialling them to see what works best.
I also briefly installed Text Link Ads on this blog but didn’t sell any links and I quickly removed the system. I am concerned if that I use Text Link Ads then my chances of growing Google traffic to DotComDud.com will be in danger and I’d like to avoid this.
In other news…
This post marks the 50th published article on DotComDud.com! I would have liked to have reached the half-century mark a couple of months earlier but It’s still something worth cheering about! I hope you are looking forward to reading my next 50 posts as much as I am going to enjoy writing them!
November Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
December 2, 2008
Another month is over and a new one has started so that means that it’s time for a DotComDud.com income report! It was an interesting month with a lot of my focus being on Blogging Idol and increasing my RSS subscribers, which meant monetisation took a back seat. I did set some goals for earnings, with the minimum goal being to earn $32.50 (doubling my October income).
Last month I made $16.25, for a more detailed breakdown please read the October Income Report. Here are the earnings for November…
Earnings Breakdown
DotComDud.com
Total earnings = $0!!!
Sources
PerformancingAds
Other Sites
Total earnings = $6.35
Sources
AdSense = $1.35
PayPerPost = $5
Affiliate Earnings
PayPerPost = $15
Total Earnings = $21.35
Conclusions
I didn’t manage to double my earnings, meaning I didn’t reach my lowest income goal. That is very disappointing but at least my earnings didn’t go backwards, they were still higher than the previous month and increased by just over 131% so November wasn’t a total disaster.
In the breakdown you’ll notice the exclamation points following the zero earnings on DotComDud.com as I am pretty unhappy (and concerned) that this blog isn’t generating any income! Even now that I have more than 100 subscribers and traffic is ever-increasing my results are getting slowly worse and have now hit rock-bottom! In fact, the whole month was pretty poor. If it hadn’t been for the PayPerPost referral, I would have seen a sharp decrease from last month’s income.
I am starting to think that PerformancingAds isn’t going to start performing for me anytime soon. I am not sure if it is the system itself or the way I promote it (or fail to promote it) that is letting it down. Either way, I think that by putting all my eggs into one basket, I haven’t been making the most of this blog’s earning potential. So I have decided that throughout December I am going to diversify the monetisation methods on DotComDud.com and try several different systems to see what works best for me. I plan on doing some reviews to let you all know the good and bad points of these methods too!
Speaking of new monetisation methods, the option of making Paid Posts on DotComDud.com is another thing I have been considering. There are definite advantages and problems associated with Paid Posts but they do offer one of the easiest and quickest ways of earning money on this blog. If I used them effectively, along with other monetisation, I think I could reach the $100+ income mark in a month fairly easily. However, readers might not appreciate them and Google is clearly against paid links, which I believe Paid Posts are counted as by them. I’d limit the number of these posts I made per month (a maximum of 5) but I’m still not sure if they are worth it. I don’t get a lot of search engine traffic right now so if I want that to change in the future then I don’t want Google to penalise me. I’d really appreaciate some reader feedback on this issue, thanks!
To conclude I have to say this, my goal is to earn a full-time income online but right now I’d be lucky to earn enough to buy myself a nice lunch. I clearly need to do something to change the situation so I am going to stop messing about and focus on making as much money as possible in December and hopefully I can finish 2008 on a high note!
October Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
November 3, 2008
I can hardly believe it is November already, with only 2 months left until 2009, a new year is fast approaching! With the start of a new month always comes the latest income report for DotComDud.com, with October being the 2nd full month of operation for this blog. The month started off quiet on DotComDud.com with posts not starting until the 13th. After that, however, the pace started to pick up with a flurry of posts, including the first Reader Challenge being run. The site also became a PageRank 2 in the most recent update.
Elsewhere, I also posted a couple of new posts on my old tech blog, which definitely helped. So how did I do in October? My results are detailed below. Check out my September Income Report to compare them to my previous month’s income!
Earnings Breakdown
DotComDud.com
Total earnings = $0.60
Sources
PerformancingAds
Other Sites
Total earnings = $15.65
Sources
AdSense = $2.15
PayPerPost = $13.50
Total Earnings = $16.25
Conclusions
Earnings have increased again in October! This is great news but to make sure things keep going well, I need to look at specific areas of my monetisation to see how well they performed. If something isn’t earning the money it should be, I’ll either have to fix it or replace it!
PerformancingAds, failing to live up to it’s name, was a poor performer. As PerformancingAds is the only income source on this blog, DotComDud.com didn’t earn much at all which is a bit disappointing, especially now that DotComDud.com is PR2. With PerformancingAds taking 40% of ad sales but not sending a lot of advertisers my way, it’s clearly time that I start looking into other monetising options for DotComDud.com that will help this blog live up to it’s earning potential.
Meanwhile, on my other sites, AdSense increased noticeably, which was a pure fluke to be honest as I didn’t actively do anything to improve it. I think that the majority of clicks I received were from the trickle of search engine traffic I get. Therefore, during November I plan to educate myself more about SEO and increase my search engine traffic as much as possible.
By far the biggest change in my earnings was from doing 2 paid reviews from PayPerPost.com which paid $5 and $8.50 respectively. These posts didn’t appear on DotComDud.com but the money they earn (along with how easy they are) make me wonder if I should start doing them on this blog. It is a difficult decision, as I don’t want to lose readers but it’s hard to ignore the money that I could be making right now. I think I will hold off a bit longer on that decision, I’d prefer to create more quality content and build consistent traffic, then monetise DotComDud.com in alternative ways if possible.
In September my earnings increased by 473% over the previous month, which I thought was a good result. I was hoping October would be able to get close to that percentage increase again but I expected it to be difficult. To my surprise, I did even better as my latest earnings rose by 745%! It is very encouraging to know that my blog is improving over time and November promises to be another great month. I have a few things planned in the next few weeks which should ensure that my earnings continue to grow and grow and grow!!
September Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
October 16, 2008
The month of September might be long gone but it’s still worth taking a look at my earnings. My previous monthly earnings were a measly 46 cents in August, down from my July earnings of 84 cents! I only made 9 posts during September, it was a bad month and there was no posts at all in the second half of the month, so it would be fair to expect little to no earnings. However, coming in to September this blog had gained some momentum and traffic was increasing steadily. The start of September also saw the launch of Dot Com Dud’s first blog contest, which had the potential to grab the attention of more readers. I also feel that the posts that were made during September showed a definite increase in quality compared to earlier posts. So September was a month of ups and downs but how did it all turn out? On to the earnings to find out!
Earnings Breakdown
DotComDud.com
Total earnings = $1.80
Sources = PerformancingAds
Other Sites
Total earnings = $0.38
Sources = AdSense only
Conclusions
It looks like it’s good news this time around! Total earnings for September were $2.18 which is still a small amount of money but at least it’s an increase. AdSense earnings were slightly lower than the previous month but with no effort from me to increase AdSense performance, I’m not surprised or worried. I will actually be concentrating more on AdSense in an upcoming project which you’ll read about very soon on DotComDud.com, so stay tuned!
The real highlight was finally earning some money on this blog, all of it made through Performancing Ads selling 125×125 ads on the right hand side of the blog. There is still some free space on the sidebar for more ads, so hopefully bookings continue to increase this month as I focus on getting this blog back into shape and becoming better than ever!
Overall, I am happy with these results as they showed that DotComDud.com is improving and even though I only blogged for the first half of the month, it shows that this blog has real potential. Earnings increased by 473% and if I can keep them growing at that rate, I’ll be doing very well, very soon!
August Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
September 2, 2008
Well it has been less than two weeks since the last income report but the month of August is over and it’s time to take a look at the results. They are, unfortunately, a bit disappointing, as I failed to crack the $1 mark as I had hoped.
Earnings Breakdown
DotComDud.com
Total earnings = $0
Sources = None
Other Sites
Total earnings = $0.46
Sources = AdSense only
Conclusions
To be honest, these results are not surprising. This site maybe too new to attract advertisers and I didn’t do anything to improve traffic on my other sites (traffic was down from July, under 1,000 visits in the entire month of August). So what needs to be changed to increase earnings? I’ll need to increase traffic and improve my monestisation methods.
Increasing traffic is always a good thing for a site, it will increase the exposure my ads get, making affiliate links more profitable and making advertising space more appealing to advertisers.
I think the monetisation opportunities can be improved on DotComDud.com as well, again to make the site more attractive to advertisers (combined with increasing traffic) and making better use of the free space on the site’s pages. I’ll also offer other advertising methods instead of Performancing Ads being the only option.
My other sites also need their monetisation methods re-evaluated, as there is more to monetisation that AdSense. So you can expect some posts detailing what works and what doesn’t during the month of September. I’ll be working much harder this month, making sure I increase my earnings so that the September Income Report has more positive results!
July Income Report
Posted by Dot Com Dud on
August 21, 2008
In the month of July I made a grand total of (drum roll)…
$0
I thought I should start this blog out with an income report (and a joke) as they seem to be all the rage these days. I also thought $0 was a good place to start, as things can only get better right? (anything else would be negative thinking and we’ll have none of that). So, to introduce this blog… well it’s yet another Make Money Online blog, just what the Internet needs! In reality though, this blog will be more of a running diary of my efforts to make a living online and if I’m lucky, I’ll make a very good living online and pass on a few tips of what works and (most likely) what doesn’t work 
To be perfectly honest though, my online income wasn’t actually $0 last month, I did in fact make $0.84. That’s right, 84 cents! That was made from a neglected tech blog (only had 1 post in July) that got 6 AdSense clicks. Hopefully that 84 cents is just the start, so stay tuned to see if I am successful and can become an Internet success story or maybe I’ll just end up another Dot Com Dud!
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