Well, there goes another year and time to reflect on how I have been doing at this making money online thing. Over the year that has passed I have been gradually switching my focus from surveys, cashback shopping, pay to click sites, etc towards internet marketing. With surveys I have focused my attentions on those panels that are nearest payout and then once I have received the money I have moved onto the next. Eventually I will probably phase this source of income out altogether, or I may keep a couple on maybe. They take up way too much time and the returns are not high enough.
In relation to cashback shopping, two of the sites I was using, R Points and Rewards Central, have ceased to be, and unfortunately the money that I had made with them has gone with them. The only one I continue to use is Mutual Points
In terms of my internet marketing efforts, I am pleased in one way that my returns from Clickbank have increased significantly from last year, but it is still way short of where I want it to be. This is the first year that I have made any serious efforts at making any money as an Amazon affiliate and it has been very slow going. As a non-US resident I have to earn $100 before I can get my hands on the money and I am frustratingly to getting my first payout.
One great thing this year is that I have received my first Adsense payout which has taken me nearly two years! Within recent months my income from Adsense has increased significantly, and as a measure of this I am already half way to my next payout.
So, here are my totals for the year:
Squidoo = $54.32 - this is quite low, but I don't use the Amazon modules, preferring instead to use my own affiliate links.
Ebay = $232.44 - These days I mostly just list what I find around the house that we don't need any more, so not bad, but I could do with listing more consistently.
Blogsvertise = $25 - This is rather low. I haven't had many paid post opportunities recently.
Surveys = $358.09 - This is rather higher than I had expected, but I am anticipating this source of income to drop off as I phase them out.
Swagbucks = $45 - This has been a great find this year. Will not make me rich, but has brought in a steady $5 every month.
Clickbank = $364.08
Other Affiliate Income = $45.23
Adsense = $101.42
Total internet marketing = $510.73 - This is about 4 times as much as I earned through internet marketing in 2009.
Private advertising = $60 - Not something that I have gone out of my way to attract, so this has been a welcome bonus.
Mutual Points = $31.12 - A slow and steady source of income
Cash for Cartridges = $39.61 - Not strictly online earnings, but I am going to count it anyway.
Amazon Marketplace = $10.99 - I don't list much on Amazon, so this isn't too bad.
Grand Total for 2010 = $1367.30
Not a bad total overall, but actually my short-term target remains at $500 per month. I have only actually broken through $200 once in 2010, so clearly a way to go.
What for the Coming Year?
One thing I think I have learned in recent months is that it is better to concentrate on one thing at a time rather than try and juggle several projects at once. Having said that there are a number of ideas I want to try out.
- More One Week Marketing Campaigns, but this time really work at them, writing lots of articles, and exploring as many ways to get traffic as I can think of. I am working on one currently and I really want to try and figure out what really works.
- I want to try my hand at list building, possibly linking into a OWM campaign. I also want to use a Squidoo account as a springboard for building a list. This is a process I have started, but this has ground to a bit of halt while I focus on something else.
- Create and sell my own product. Well actually my wife is going to create a product based on an interest of hers and I am going to try and market it.
- Create more niche sites. I started this last year, but I did not build any more as I was concerned about the rising cost of my domain names. However, I do intend to do more of this over the coming year as I have shown that I can make this work, even if they make a few pennies daily through Adsense, they are still worth doing.
- More Squidoo lenses/Hub Pages with more tightly focused keywords and building more backlinks for traffic.
- Learn more HTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript. Over the last few months I have learned some HTML and CSS. I intend to focus my skills in this respect more and learn PHP and Javascript. This is with a view to being able to market my skills once I have perfected them.
This is enough to keep me going for the time being I think. In terms of earnings, as I said previously, my initial target remains at $500 per month. If I achieve this then I will aim higher. Let's see what 2011 brings shall we?
What do you think of my goals and do you have any for the coming year?
