Here we are at the end of July and starting up what seems to be a face-melting month of August. Before I can move onto August, I wanted to share Murlu’s blog traffic and my income report for July 2011. Let’s take a look …
Murlu Traffic Report July 2011
Murlu is staying about stable at just over 5,000 visitors a month. One thing that I don’t like is the overall bounce rate; I attribute it to an article I wrote about Fiverr which people quickly take a look and bounce – it’s pulling in the wrong type of traffic. Other than that, I’m really glad to see that so many of you stuck around even during my absence from the two months of travels (along with even more time off from creating content for Murlu).
My goal for traffic on Murlu was to reach 25,000 visitors before the end of the year. I still have five months and I think I can do it if I step up my game which is why I plan to start doing more frequent release of content. Up until now, I generally posted once a week but that was because each piece was epic in nature (read: long).
I’ve bought a new laptop that will allow me to work on larger projects including screencasts, audio works and other really great projects so I think these will definitely attribute to growth.
Murlu Income Report: July 2011
Despite my leave for nearly three months, my online income stayed relatively stable and only fell by about 20%. Well, once I got back into my “groove” with online work, July started to shape up to be quite awesome in terms of online income. Some areas fell back where as others really stepped up and started earning a nice amount. I’m also exploring some new ventures that should become part of the report in the near future. Here’s how it breaks down:
Clickbank: $233.76
Clickbank has its up’s and down’s. Some weeks are really great on consistent earnings but then it drops off in other times. I have a few ideas to step up my earnings with Clickbank but overall I’m pretty happy that it’s pulling in a decent amount of earnings each month especially when it directly deposits to my account.
Amazon Associates: $636.70
Wow! Amazon Associates has been incredible. Reason? I believe having a hobby niche is the best way to get buyers. The income from Amazon Associates has really taken a steep rise this month and I hope it sticks this way going into August. When it gets around the holiday season I expect Associates to pull in some major bank.
Side note: Would you be interested in learning a niche course just about hobby based Amazon Associate websites?
PLRArticlesNow: $74.65
I’m working heavily on PLRArticlesNow because I really love being able to run a real business that provides a product for customers and not just sharing information. The feedback I’ve received from clients have been excellent. My current plan is to create a new mini pack each week and also work on a few larger packs that will be released once per month; I may expand the business into ebooks but I’m debating on holding off to create a new site just for this purpose. If you’re interested, you can see how I built this online business in two weeks here.
Google Adsense: $239.07
Adsense took a surprising spike this month because one of the articles on my other blog went wild in StumbleUpon and pulled in thousands of new visitors. I also changed up a few of the ad placements and removed some things about the blog that were distracting. I’ve been debating it and I may start working on a lot more niche websites in the coming months to really tackle Adsense and Amazon. My goal for every niche site is to earn at least $1,000 a month; these will be more around hobbies and interests of mine so I can have the opportunity to turn them into authority websites.
Freelance Writing: $608.06
Freelance writing, in July, has been very rewarding. I finished a large project for a client and also stumbled across GhostBloggers where I’ve managed to sell eight articles for very awesome rates. My plan is to do at least two articles each day to put up on the Ghostbloggers marketplace, essentially creating $100 in potential income each day; I don’t expect things to sell rapidly but it keeps the opportunity out there. I want to step up my freelance writing because I really love writing and the feedback I’ve received from clients are always warm and encouraging.
Misc Income: $157.60
I wasn’t sure where to put some of these earnings but I ended up selling a few unneeded items online through eBay and Craigslist. Also, I’m lumping in a few other items such as Hostgator payout and some of the various websites I’ve written on that has passive income models.
Note: If you don’t have a Paypal account, definitely get one. They’re great for accepting online payments and transferring money around in your accounts.
If anyone would like to get in touch with me about building your own online income streams, assets or online business, send me an email and we can talk, go here to the contact page.
Blog and Income Wrap Up
July turned out to be a really great month. Besides just working on things, I’ve been focusing on the strategy end of the business. I’ve been spending entire days just going through some of the flow charts, spreadsheets and mind maps I’ve created for what I want to do over the next few months. I challenged myself to reach $3,000 a month by the end of the year. It’s going to take a lot of work but I’m certainly trying.
Total Earned in July 2011: $1,949.84
As always, I know how it feels when you sometimes read income reports. Don’t let any of this discourage your own earnings; think of it as an example of what happens when you bust your ass and work on building digital assets. It’s taken me a very long time to get to just this point so stick with it eh!
Disclaimer: I wanted to let you know that the majority of my earnings come from the combination of my niche websites, businesses and freelance writing. If anything, I think it shows the importance of business beyond blogging and using your skills in new ventures besides just trying to rely on a single blog.
My Top Resources for July 2011
In terms of awesome things I’ve found in July, here is my list of some items you should check out that are definitely worth your time:
- Affiliate Marketing without the BS – Steve Scott released his affiliate marketing course which is hands down one of the best I’ve seen. Steve has done an incredible job with his blog and business which has been integrated into his course; there’s no fluff and a lot of the techniques he’s covered are already being integrated into my own business models. The biggest take away from the course, for me, is the email marketing plan. You can check it out by clicking here.
- AffBuzz – Affbuzz sort off like a Digg of the IM and Online Business world. Sometimes it’s hit and misses but there’s a lot of great information there for all you business types. If anything, look at what people are writing about and use some of the titles as a swipe file for great link bait.
- GetListed – GetListed is a tool where you can put in a business name and zip code so you can see if the business is present in Google Places, Bing Local, Yelp, Yahoo Local and others. I’ve been using this to get my step dad’s business online and think you should definitely look into it if you’ve got a business. Also, you can make a bit of money with the tool if you offer local directory listings to local businesses – charge ‘em $50 or something and you’ve got a nice bit of income.
If anything, check out Steve Scott’s course because it’s one of the best I’ve ever read on the matter. I’m going to do a review of it very shortly; I highly recommend it.
Misc. Developments and August Expectations
Before wrapping up the post, I’d like to share a few things that I’d like to be working on in August along with some other developments.
- August 1st is my birthday! Yup, today I turn 24 years old, I made it this far. Besides this post, I plan to spend time with family and friends. My age is sort of a weird feeling because I’m about to hit the half way point of my 20’s. I’ve got a lot of plans for the coming year and a few others that will be awesome to explore down the line.
- My Japan/Thailand trip was great. I promised to tell a bit about my trip to Japan and Thailand so I’ll use this little section to do just that. Overall, the trip was mind blowing. We were able to explore all kinds of amazing locations, meet incredible people and have experiences that are going to stick with us for a lifetime. Lots of really weird things happened as you could expect including partying with homeless people, getting our credit cards stolen, partying every night with Thai’s on the beach and getting lost in Tokyo. I can’t wait to go back in the future!
- I’m working on big projects. I’ve been helping my step dad get his company’s website up to speed and I’m aiming to dominate the local area; when it’s done, I plan to do a really awesome case study on it. Also, I’ve been working on my other sites and doing a lot of freelance writing which has been great for building up my income. I’ve also got a few passion projects in the works that’s not so much business related, just some things that I’ve been wanting to work on.
- Wrapping up, starting series. Since a lot of my focus is going toward building digital assets, I’ve been using Murlu to do a lot more series style posts. I’ve got a couple in the works that I think you’re going to really get a kick out of. As always, I’m doing the activities in my off-time so I can be able to talk about the techniques without just coming across as some white paper BS piece.
- New social connections. I’m active on Twitter again (MurrayLunn) and I’ve got an account on Google Plus (check it here). I’m spending less time on them but I’m trying to only bring quality whenever I’m there so check me out and get in touch.
As always, I want to say thank you to everyone has supported me, shared my stuff and got in contact to chat. You guys are awesome and it’s the reason why I keep doing this. It’s always great to hear your feedback and see you use something on the blog for your projects.
Final Thoughts
There you have it. I may not be making a ton of money from my online projects but it’s allowed me to leave my job. If there’s one thing I learned is that you have to just do it. If you’re teetering on the edge of having your online income support your life than I say just go for it and take it to the next level. Also, work on BIG projects, BIG passionate projects. Have fun with what you do and always be learning.
Hello,
Can you please tell more about increasing Amazon Associate earnings?
I have 2 sites and they make nothing. How many sites do you have and some small mini-course would be nice
Hey Oxodon,
Glad you asked.
For me, it’s a lot about delivering the information people are looking for. Personally, I love to create hobby-based niche websites because people are so passionate about their hobbies and nearly all of them require you to purchase items in order to get started (you’re definitely not golfing without a set of golf clubs, ya know?). Even if the site isn’t hobby based, what I would recommend is to eat the cost and purchase the product because when you understand the product you know what people are looking for in it. You’ll be able to create content around the product with ease such as tutorials, reviews and even bridge this into other channels like video and audio.
The layout of your content also matters. You want to get people onto Amazon to learn more. You can accomplish this in different ways from having links to the reviews, making your pictures clickable, adding contextual links, having tables that display out pricing and features and much more. The thing to remember is that you’re creating a “pass through” type website; they’re not really there to hang around for hours on end – you’re providing them information they’re looking for and then pointing to a product where they can go and pick it up.
For example, if I had a golf site I would have a collection of tutorials related on how to find the perfect set of golf clubs, I’d also have golf club reviews and link the two together so people would easily transition between the two and have a logical path (and knowledge) to make a great buying decision.
I took some initiative and started writing the book actually. One chapter down and it’s already around 1,500 words. I’ll keep everyone updated if and when it comes together
Great job there Murray, even while you are away for two months, your income doesn’t seem to be affected much by that. Glad to see you are diversifying your income sources.
Love to know what strategy you will be using to reach your target traffic of 25,000 visitors?
Keep on rocking for your online business and happy belated birthday to you. May all your wishes come true.
Regards,
Lye
Thanks Lye,
I believe what I’ll be doing is trying to create more of a hub rather than a blog. I’d like to get multiple series “in the wraps” so I can start using them as definitive starting points for large subjects and so I can target some really big keywords. I also plan to step up my posting frequency, guest posting and overall interaction. I’m going to pound out the best content I can as frequently I can; that’s sort of the goal overall. Also, I want to branch out to different channels as well and really tap into my video editing skills.
Nice figures!
Is this the website that brought in the most revenue? If so, then congrats. Your traffic stats aren’t as high but the revenues are solid.
What other websites do you have? I bet you have lots of search traffic on those.
I could’t agree more about having a business, not just a blog. In the end one has to sell something of value to bring in revenue. Blogging for “zen” is just not practical.
And yes, niche sites tend to do more money than general community “zen” blogs.
Cheers!
Hi Constantin,
The majority of the earnings and traffics are coming from other online projects and websites. Murlu is more of where all of the things I’ve learned are collected although it does generate a small amount of income. I like to explore new ventures so I can come back and report on what works and what doesn’t; it also gives me the inspiration (from talking to people like you) to get out there and work on the next!
Thanks for swinging by and leaving a comment, much appreciated.
Very interesting to see this report, Murray, you’re doing so well. Good to see the hard work is paying off.
Interesting to see that Murlu.com doesn’t dip down in visits every weekend like my site does. And I’m particularly impressed to see what you’re making with Amazon since the margins are so slim there!
Very brave and fascinating for you to do this (I believe this is the first time you’ve added income figures to your monthly report, or maybe I’ve missed it before) but I want to check back each month now to see those numbers on the up!
Hey Rob,
I’ve been adding in the income for a while now but some of them are so low that it’s quite funny to look back at them now haha. I think the first one I did was about $125 haha.
As for the weekends, that’s actually a great topic that I think is worth dicusssing. Since people are active on the weekend, everyone seems to have a big dip on the weekends. I wonder what people are trying out to avoid the dip; that would be a really cool post. I suppose you could just stay active on social media and maybe even publish a post of course.
Anyway, thanks for the support
. I’m really excited to see how Amazon pans out as the holiday season gets closer because people go on buying rampages when it gets down to the wire. I’ll probably be talking about a few strategies around this as it gets closer too.
Thanks again man and take it easy!
Yeah, some more tips on Amazon niche sites would be great. I’ve had quite a bit of success on Amazon but I’m always interested to see how others do things – is that income from across several sites?
You said that you were going to make some more niche sites – would your course be a case study of those sites that we could follow or would it just be general information?
I like the look of your PLR Articles site – it looks like it could be a great earner in the future. It’s a great idea because you’re continuing to get paid monthly for something you only had to write once. Cool!
Hey Nathan,
After hearing some feedback on Amazon, I think I will be going through with the information on building niche sites. I think this will be taking in case studies on the process besides the general tutorial on how to do so.
As per the question, the earnings are mostly from my hobby niche sites and misc. writings on third party websites (like Hubpages) that you can tap into Associates.
Thanks about PLRArticlesNow, it’s still an up-and-comer, I have high hopes for it especially because it’s not just to sell some articles but to reach out to people that are doing big online projects which may blossom into new ventures. It should be interesting to see how it pans out in the coming year because I’m focusing heavily on it; I’m definitely going to stick with it and make it one of my main focus – I’ll keep ya updated
In the meantime, have any direct questions you wanted to ask about Amazon? I’m always happy to answer them and it would help me understand what people, such as yourself, ma be looking for in the larger work.
Well, I don’t have any direct Amazon questions as such – I’m sure all that will be covered in the cast study/course.
Just a quick question about Ghost Bloggers though – I signed up (through your link
) I hadn’t heard of it before so I was quite interested. Since they have a massive 30% commission on each article sold, are you reducing your rates for the consumer so that they don’t have to pay as much or are you just writing to the price that you would usually charge and then letting Ghost Bloggers add their commission on?
I worked it out and if I charged what I usually charge then it would mean the total cost would be huge compared to what others on the site are writing for. I also suppose it depends on how much time it took to write the article and research etc… I just can’t see how anyone would buy one of my articles if I charged my normal rate. Not because I don’t think it’s worth it but because of GB’s hefty commission…
I actually just keep the price as I would normally charge which really threw me off guard at first because I wouldn’t expect people to pay so much for articles but then again, you have to remember that you’re bringing real quality to the table. To undercut yourself too much means you’re not going to bring enough to the table to get by so rather than dropping the pricing down, I just leave them as-is; it also keeps the quality up because it doesn’t bring out the ‘freebie hunters’ and the ‘low ballers’ to the marketplace.
Some of the articles I’ve had up there were well over $100 but people are paying for them so I’m not going to cut that price short, ya know? Some people have massive budgets for articles and I rather have them purchasing from me than someone that’s complaining that they want the best quality for the lowest price.
Write your book. That’s the best advice I can give you with where you are at. Trust me, products you create will sell amazingly well to your own audience and with a little work outside as well. Product sales make up 99% of my profits even with google adsense at $300-$400 each month.
If you need help let me know, I’ve written a product for clickbank that makes 80k per year and a bunch of ebooks. You’re a strong writer… Go make a great book!
Thanks for the kick in the ass Chris.
I wanted to put together a freebie that puts people into the right mindset of branching out from their blog but what I’ll do is write both in conjunction with one another. Leaving my work has freed up so much time that I can finally tackle these big projects without feeling burnt out. That would be awesome to scale up earnings by another $500 which would put me just on the edge of hitting the $3k mark I want to hit by the end of the year.
I’ll keep in touch and thanks again for the inspiration buddy!
Great job, Murray. I just started my blog recently. so I really appreciate you releasing such detailed numbers, as this is something that most others don’t do. It helps new bloggers like myself put things in perspective of which areas to invest our time in to bring in money.
Happy birthday and keep up the great work!
Thanks Adarsh!
My only concern is that showing numbers may cause some discouragement but I think it also shows what happens when someone puts in a TON of work. So many products out there just show numbers but don’t really share what it took to get there; my earnings are the result of busting ass for over three years now and it’s just now finally taking off. Persistence is really key. Also, going outside the box to explore different ventures is absolutely essential. It’s going to be hard to capture the same audience as the “big boys” because they’ve already got a stranglehold on the market but we all have a lot of great skills to create different topic websites that will certainly earn us a cool income.
Keep it up man, you can definitely do it if you keep with it.
Hey Murlu – contests on the amazon earnings! Are those earnings from one site or multiple sites?
It’s from multiple sites but about 70% is from a single of my other niche sites for Amazon Associates. The traffic is really far up there and I’ve been really working on conversions over the last few months on the site.
To answer your question about hobby-based Amazon Associate websites…. YES! I would love to see an article about this.
Also, in regards to your EPIC (ie, long) articles, I love the content of them, but it is a lot to take in all at once. Maybe you could do a week long (or monthly long, or what have you) series that goes in depth on a topic instead of a very long article. I find that around 400-500 words, my brain needs time to process!
Thanks Catherine, on my different levels.
I love to hear something like this because it grounds me in terms of what I need to get done. I think it’s now clear that the longer posts really aren’t the format to utilize because it really is too much information at once; my thought was always that if I’m going to cover something, I want it to be definitive. However, I think I will start breaking things down a bit more so they can easily be digested. As for the Amazon course, I can’t promise the moon in comparison to what others have put out but I do want to make it very specific – hobby based – because I believe that’s the best entry point rather than throwing a dart at a dart board in choosing a niche topic.
Thanks again Catherine!
Nice to see you are still plugging away Murray, I always love rreading other income reports as it never fails to inspire me to dig in more with my own blogs.
And thank you for GhostBlogger, I shall check that out (and sign up under you, of course).
Hey Dean, glad to see that you’re still at it buddy. I noticed a few people dropped out of blogging while I was gone; hopefully they just moved onto bigger projects instead of completely off the map. The summer months are the real grind because there’s so much to do – few people want to sit around and create content but if you get through the months and hit the winter time when everyone is staying indoors, you’re going to be in an awesome position. I’ll keep at it if you keep at it
Hi Murlu,
I have been popping by now and then wondering when you would be back from your journeys. Welcome back!
Some great posts about starting up a new business. I had to laugh because I too realised that I enjoyed writing and could make a business from it.
I followed Tiffany Dow’s PLR ATM course and have set up http://www.theplrboutique.com/
I have started building up my list by offering a free WSO but would appreciate any more hints and tips you could give.
Have a great August
Tiptopcat
Awesome buddy!
I love how open we can be about business because we are, in some ways, competitors but then again, not really. I appreciate anyone that brings something great to the industry and love that you’re taking a very active approach to PLR rather than what some people do which is just hit publish and then slink away into obscurity. That’s really awesome that you’re tapping into the WSO, I’ve yet to do mine because I want to make sure I have a large offering before people hit the site and I want to work on a big project for the PLR site prior to going all out with promotion. One thing that I’m actually staying away from is the ‘free plr’ packs because although they bring in people, I think it puts people in the wrong mindset once they land because it then makes it seem like everything should be free – ya know? That’s one of the problems with blogging in the long run because people have such high expectations to get every bit of information for free that if you were to offer something for just $10, people won’t bite, ya know? Anyway, it’s awesome to see you rockin’ it and best of luck to you buddy! Would love to see you back here and maybe shoot me a message and we could talk more about PLR.
Wow Murlu! Great stats here. Looks like you’re doing a really good job in diversifying your income.
Thanks buddy
Wow, nice job with Amazon and Clickbank. I really like seeing those earning because once the content is there, it just generates the money for you!
Definitely, once you have the vehicle to deliver products (content) it works for you all the time as long as it stays online.
Congrats on the great month Murray. I really need to start monitizing and getting a steady steam of income coming in. This post was a good kick in the ass.
Thanks Eugene,
It was a lot of work, I admit it but it needed to be done. I think what it really shows is that it’s important to diversify the income streams because solely relying on just one can have major dips during some months especially when you factor in outside forces like the economy being down (people less likely to buy) and that certain trends don’t hold up over time.
Hi Murray,
Great job on the income. I’m glad to see you doing so well with the freelance writing. I think you shouldn’t worry about the numbers on early blog and income reports being so low. It would be irresponsible to suggest people can just quit their day job and start earning a living online. Like you said, you have been building this online career for three years now.
I wish you had tagged older income reports so we can see them.
For example, I can see here that in July you made twice what you made in March. That’s inspiring, to see that you can double your income in four months time. And if we had the old reports we’d see other stuff like that.
You think your early income reports are discouraging, but actually, they give people hope. When they have that first $50 month, they shouldn’t be thinking they must be doing something wrong. Instead, they should know that they did something right that they need to do again and again. Start at $50/month, double your income every four months, and you could be pulling in $6400/month two years later.
I like that your income sources are diversified. Should something go south for you one month (God knows why, but these things happen) you have your eggs spread across several baskets.
Definitely bring on the Amazon tutorial, I need to learn how to do better with Amazon.
Hey, I didn’t tell you, but the first day I was on Google+ you were crowing about selling an article on Contest Blogger in, I don’t know, like an hour or something. I checked out CB, but right now the prices are too low. Anyway, after CB I went to Constant Content and wrote an article to a customer order and it sold 15 minutes after it went live! I was pretty psyched about that, so I am writing more over there. So you inspired me to put more effort into that income stream.
I keep saying I will write two articles a day for CC, but then I worry about saturating the market for my topics. I need some fresh ideas. I’m thinking of spending some time at the beach and then writing some travel pieces.
So glad you’re back and blogging again.
Oh, do you still earn income on Hub pages for all those articles you wrote in your 100 day challenge? I would be interested in hearing an update on that.
Cheers!
Tammi
Hey Tammi,
Glad to see you back on here
(I’m planning on doing a lot of optimization on my older posts so I’ll be sure to make sure I’ve got the income reports tagged for people).
Thanks for the boost in inspiration about the reports. I’ve always felt them a little discouraging because I know how exactly it feels. Hell, I love Pat Flynn’s income reports but sometimes it makes me think: man, what do I need to do to step up my game? But then I realize that everyone has a different approach and will take different amounts of time so it’s a good way to discover what people are doing and generate a few ideas that you can branch out in
. Diversification, definitely key. Clickbank has been sucking this month already but Amazon has definitely gone up which is really awesome that it’s there; I’d hate having only one source of income for exactly those reasons you’ve stated.
As for CC, that’s really awesome to hear! I need to improve my writing because, at one point, I had a CC account but I got banned after submitting content; my one thing that I don’t like about them is that you sometimes don’t know what you did wrong with the article (grammar) and after a few strikes, you’re out. All the while, I see some content on there that, just being honest, sucks … yet none of my stuff seemed pass – blah – I’ll probably be trying again in the future because I’d also love to have CC on my list of sources.
The travel stuff would be perfect, right now. It’s summer, people are traveling – definitely go for it because you could really capture the essence and find a really rabid market at this time. I’ve been thinking about doing some travel stuff too for the exact reasons and since I got back from a really long trip.
As for the other stuff, Helium really dropped the ball when they did their major revision; income on those sites dropped off considerably but it still pulls in a little bit every once in a while. In my free time, however, I’ve been creating some stuff for Hubpages that isn’t like anything on here, for example: Top 5 Free MMORPG’s – this would never fit on the blog but I love writing about stuff like this, I’m using the site as a way to do the content I’ve always wanted to do but never had a place for it; should be interesting to see where it pans out to over time.
Anyway, thanks a lot Tammi. I’d love to talk to you sometime about the projects you had going on, catch up a bit and discuss some freelance writing stuff!
Hey man, congrats on a great month! Read this a couple of days ago but only just remember to drop back and leave a comment. Hope things are going great and looking forward to watching you increase this number again this month.
Thanks buddy.
August seems to be starting off pretty decent. Clickbank has seemed to drop off – boo – but other areas have increased. I’m focusing heavily on the PLR site because I really want to get a good client base going; I’d like to be able to release a pack and instantly have a flurry of buyers which would be really awesome – if that happen I’d create a new pack every day! haha. Hope all is well with you man, keep rockin’ it.
Well good income report. I wanted to know how you earn from amazon? Is it from this blog. Any good tips to earn money from amazon.
Thanks in advance
Indeed, it’s from a blog. I mostly focus on hobby niches because people HAVE to purchase items to get started which puts you in the perfect position to get them to buy since you’re telling them great information and pointing them to reliable products. I dislike sites that are based on “internet research” because people are just doing a rewrite of information; it can work sometimes but I much rather build a site around the products I’m already using in a hobby I love that way I can create killer posts and make real recommendations.
Hi,
First of all Happy Birthday for the 1st Aug! I quite liked being 24yrs old many years back.
I was blown away by your statistics and also your honesty approach and great analysis of your earnings.
I’m going to subscribe to your blog Sir.
Best Regards
Andrew
Thanks Andrew, it’s taken me many years but I think it’s finally getting to the point where all the thousands of hours are starting to pay off. I know I have a lot more to go and got some major projects I need to stop slogging ass about but glad that I’m able to still bring some entertaining and inspiring content your way in the meantime.
I love to read income reports of others. For example I booked-marked most of the websites you mentioned earning from. Anyways, good job, I could only dream to earn that much.
That’s very impressive income, Murray. I hope to learn more from you here.
Btw, how many sites do you have to reach that revenue?
Thanks Tuan,
The majority of my earnings come from two sites but I have about five major ones that all contribute and leverage one another
Great job
I’m surprised that you’re doing well for both Adsense and Amazon… Most of the time, content that work for Adsense doesn’t work as well for Amazon. I gotta learn more from your site
Question, my site’s traffic and uniques are about 3x higher than yours but none of the earning avenues on my site (mainly Amazon actually, secondary is adsense) are even close to yours…
While I know that we’re totally in a different niche, it’s still an eye-opener for me that traffic ain’t everything..
I don’t see any Adsense units on murlu either… Where are the clicks/impressions coming from?
Glad to read about your progress, keep it up!
Dave from David’s Simple Photography (http://reviews.davidleetong.com)
Darn, sorry, I missed the disclaimer at the end…
“Disclaimer: I wanted to let you know that the majority of my earnings come from the combination of my niche websites, businesses and freelance writing. If anything, I think it shows the importance of business beyond blogging and using your skills in new ventures besides just trying to rely on a single blog.”
So for Murlu.com alone (not inclusive of time-for-money ventures, how much did the site make and from what channels? Clickbank only?
Still, great job
Do you think that it is possible to make a decent living (3-5k/month) writing for sites like ghostblogger.net and constant-content.com? I just got started (last week) after reading about your success with Ghostblogger and have even lurked your profile on the site.
It would be an awesome way to make a living if it was possible.
That’s a toughie Mike,
I would say it would be possible to probably crack $1k between those sites if you really get a good amount of repeat customers and touch on topics that few people want to dive into but it’s all about experimentation and promotion. I don’t think you’d be able to sell that much just from letting it run on its own.
The most I made, in a single month, from sites like Ghostbloggers is about $400 which is really awesome yet I couldn’t have predicted the sales. I would bet if you had a list of customers for a freelance writing business and linked your articles you could definitely spur up enough sales. The problem is that you don’t want to sell yourself short so you keep the articles up high yet that drives away a lot of people – however, you don’t really want the low-ballers that only want to pay $5 an article cause you’re going to get burned out fast.
I would say make a habit out of writing something for both of them once a day if you can. Doesn’t have to be really long – maybe 600 – 800 words – and you’ll build up enough of a backlog that you should be able to pull in some consistent sales.