Where I'm Making Income

Wow, it's been a while since I made a post.

Anyway, given the passage of time, it's become clear to me that I make most of my online income in the following areas:

1) Text links.
2) Adsense.
3) Share-a-sale.
4) Kontera.

Yes, those are in order. Across a variety of web sites with varying popularities I have been able to consistently earn three digit revenues from static links on a monthly basis.

Adsense is generally providing a mid two digit revenue -- and I greatly wish I could increase that without violating my own sense of ethics.

I haven't been doing so well with Share-a-sale or other affiliate programs. Many people are doing well with Clickbank and other programs -- but, again, this isn't an area that my ethics will let me excel at.

Kontera brings in single digit revenues. I don't work very hard at it and think it is just supplementary -- allowing me to continue pursuing other revenue sources at the same time. I did try Adbrite, but they were absolutely useless for my properties.

The great thing is that I have a full time job and associated income, while my web properties are pretty much on auto-pilot right now.

A New Revenue Sharing Model

It's called open revenue sharing and it's deceptively simple.

A publisher simply allows anyone to add their Adsense ID to a link. So simple it's ridiculous.

However, the issues solved, and created, are potentially enormous. Good work Grokodile!

Building Adsense Revenue: Half A Map

I've been looking at my Adsense revenue reports for 2007. No, I'm not just looking at the total dollars brought in. I'm looking at the eCPM for each of the page specific URL channels that I've defined. Specifically, I know which posts are bringing in the highest levels of revenue over any specific period last year.

For example, my highest earning blog post was on a fitness related blog. The post was about research concerning a certain type of diet pill. Looking at my traffic statistics, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools data, I can see what keywords are being used to find that post. I can also find out what ranking my post has in the SERPs for those particular terms.

If that wasn't clear enough to inspire you here is the partial roadmap:

• Create page (or section) specific channels so that you can monitor income levels at a low level.
• After a period of time determine income levels for each of your channels.
• Determine which keywords are bringing visitors to your high earning pages.
• Work on improving your SERPs for those productive pages.

At this point I am assuming you know how to improve your search engine ranking!

Pay Per Post Review

I've recently tried the PayPerPost network as an advertiser. It is a little confusing at first, but if you are willing to be patient, something I'm not, then you can hang out in their public forums and become acquainted with how things work before you jump in.

As with any type of business, Internet or otherwise, there are things that work well with this model and things that don't work so well. Obviously, to protect your investment you have to review and approve individual posts. This works well if you are on a tight budget but have lots of time.

For larger corporate activities I suspect it will more be a matter of limiting who can participate in a campaign based on PR and Alexa ranks. With these basic quality metrics (as well as PayPerPost's proprietary "tack" rating) in place, a larger company will simply fire and forget, trusting the systems in place. These systems ensure that the requirements of the paid posting opportunity are in fact met by individual bloggers before they earn revenue.