What I Have Learned in Two Years Online

This month marks my 2 year anniversary of writing online and trying to earn a little bit of income.  In fact, it was 2 years ago on May 26th that I wrote my first Hub at HubPages.  Actually, I didn't even really think of the income aspect as much as I wanted to spend my time online doing something productive rather than spending too much time playing games or wasting time on Facebook.

More Than a Hobby

Although I initially thought of blogging as more of a hobby, it has become a little bit more for me now.  I view it as a passion and a challenge.  The passion comes from writing and sharing my thoughts.  The challenge comes in trying to actually make a little bit of money on the side and create an income stream that can be used to pay off some debt.  I have not been very successful at that aspect yet but I have learned a lot.

Meeting New Friends

There are a lot of people that I have met online and lest I forget anyone will not name them one by one.  Suffice it to say that I have a blog roll full of those whom I follow closely.  These bloggers offer much advice and encouragement.  They will post their results whether good or bad.  If you are just starting out, find several bloggers that you can follow and with which you can grow.  I have learned that bloggers are a rather friendly lot who will help you out.

Build Your Own Site

Yesterday, my OptionsDude.com traffic was higher than HubPages or any of the other content sites where I have articles.  I have been blogging there and then commenting on other blogs.  I am not earning a lot but the fact is that in 3 months, I have been able to get more traffic there than anything at HubPages or even this blog speaks volumes.  First, I am doing a much better job of marketing the site through blog comments.  I even have a guest post out there.  Second, I am so much more motivated to make it a success because I don't feel as if I am working for someone else.

Diversify for Income

This is a biggie if you want to make money.  The Panda update really demonstrates the need for diversification.  I was very dependent upon HubPages and its authority to get traffic and earnings from AdSense.  That isn't happening any more so it is vital to develop my own site.  I think I like the blog format and WordPress better than the static type site so I will be starting my own WordPress style blog using HostGator over the long holiday weekend and seeing what I can do over the next 2 years.  I would bet that I will be much farther along.

These are just a few of the things that I have learned about making money online over the last 2 years.  Of course, I have gained a lot of technical type knowledge about SEO, backlinking, etc but that wasn't the main point for me.  The point is that I am enjoying what I am doing, am meeting new people who enjoy what they do, and have this wonderful opportunity before me to make some extra cash that is only limited by my own effort.  Time to get started. 

 

My First Guest Post

As you know, I have been working on a new site since the Panda update.  It is through Weebly and I had to pay for the domain name and hosting for a year.  It cost me all of $40 but half of the AdSense views go to them and half to me.  It is a format with which I was familiar having written for the "content farms" which share revenue.  Since that model is broken, I decided to start my own site.  My only goal is for the site to break even by next February and then I can decide what to do from there.

I have been working hard to develop traffic by doing blog commenting and regularly interacting on other personal finance blogs to develop my name and personality.  I decided to contact one of these blog owners about writing a guest post.  He was receptive to the idea so I sent him a post, he liked it, and posted it on his site.  I am so thrilled!  It has a link to my site.  I can use Google Analytics to report on the impact later.  I am sure you are curious so here is the post:

Options Trading: Intrinsic Value and Time Value

Mark at buylikebuffett.com has a great site.  He is a professional investor and writes great posts.  If you have any interest at all in stock investing, be sure to check out his site.  He is also a great blogger.  I appreciate his willingness to let someone untested guest post for his site.  I do need to get busy later today and write the follow up piece.  I will let you all know when it is up and let you know about the results as well.

Anybody here ever write a guest post?  What did it do for your traffic?  Did you keep any regular readers?  Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Photo credit: The McClouds

eHow, HubPages, and Future Plans

Rest in Peace

Needless to say, there have been a lot of changes in the online income game over the past few months.  The rules of the game have changed.  It is survival of the fittest.  It is time to adapt or die.  I refuse to be a buggy whip manufacturer but will stay as nimble as possible and continue to do what I can to continue this hobby of mine and maybe even make enough on the side to pay for my other hobby, golf.

eHow Cancels WCP

Several of you may have heard that eHow will be shutting down its Writer's Compensation Program.  The choices are to accept a buyout offer for the rights to my articles or watch them get deleted.  Now I could claim them for myself and publish on another site, but I really don't have any place to put them.  So, I plan to accept the buyout offer.  It works out to about 6 months of revenue so I can't complain too much.  I have earned my fair share for the amount of effort that I put into those articles.

HubPages and the Ad Program

My HubPages traffic continues to dwindle.  It seems yet to find a base.  I signed up for the HubPages Ad Program figuring that I might be able to some revenue from the limited number of views that I get daily.  I am not sure how well this is working.  It is really hard to say since my AdSense revenue is now nonexistent.  No revenue at all for the month of May is unsettling to say the least.  It is reminding me of the first few weeks of writing on the internet although at this pace, I will have earned more then.

Is the HubPages Ad Program having a negative effect on my AdSense?  It is hard to tell what I might make with the massive traffic decline.  The Ad Program does replace several of the AdSense blocks.  I will say that the eCPM for the Ad Program is similar to what I was able to get with AdSense so maybe the impact is negligible.

Future Plans

Since my 2 main sources of online revenue have been destroyed, it is time to start over again.  I have learned quite a bit these past 2 years and plan on using that newly acquired knowledge to make a real go at earning online income.  I plan on taking this hobby thing to the next level and officially making it a part time venture with the goal of creating online assets that will supplement my golfing fund in retirement. 

I can think of no better way of spending my time than getting up early and heading to the golf course while letting my wife sleep late.  Then I can come home, blog and work on sites for a few hours after lunch, then have the evening free.  Sounds like a great life to me.  Unfortunately, it is probably about 15 years down the road.  But that gives me plenty of time to develop a few sites, right!

I plan on using the eHow buyout to fund a hosting account and domain.  I figure that would give me about a year to get the site supporting its own hosting costs.  If I can't get it making $7 per month in a year, then I will have to re-evaluate my abilities.  I might have to retire as a starter at a golf course instead.

I should also be able to reach the $50 HubPages payout in another couple months.  I am about halfway there now.  Once I get to that point, I will try a little experiment and discontinue the program to see what the AdSense impact truly is.  That $50 can also pay for some of my hosting expenses and maybe even another domain or two should I come up with a couple good ideas.


Well, that is the approach that I plan to take for the rest of this year.

Readers, what are your thoughts about my plan?  How have you altered your online strategies with all of the recent changes?  Are you defeated or adapting?  I would love to hear from you.

A Brilliant Idea from Kristi

I just had to share with you something absolutely brilliant that I read about at Kikolani.com.  You can see that I have had Kristi's blog in my blog roll for quite some time and for good reason.  She had a wonderful post about using Google Reader for blog commenting.  I found the title interesting and decided to check it out since I have been trying to do the same thing to help with getting OptionsDude off the ground.

It turns out that her idea was absolutely wonderful.  First of all, I never really understood what Google Reader was or how it worked so I learned something there.  Secondly, I actually started subscribing to various blogs and doing what she suggested.  Since I already was in the habit of checking my gmail account a few times each day, I just click on the Google Reader link and check it out as well.

Google Reader will bring up all the new posts for every blog to which I am subscribed.  I can then quickly decide whether to read the article or comment.  This has helped me immensely.  In fact, yesterday's traffic to OptionsDude was the highest it has been.  I plan on subscribing to as many blogs as possible and networking in this fashion.  This will help with linking as well as provide ideas for content.  I can also even locate blogs for writing guest posts.

I have to thank Kristi for this great idea.  I think that it can help you grow your site which is something that we all need to be doing.  You should really go and check out her post. 

April Worst Month for 2010 and 2011

Even though April is not quite finished, I have no doubt that this will be the worst month for AdSense revenue in 2011 so far.  It very well may end up being worse than 2010 for that matter.  I started writing online at the end of May 2009 so by April of 2010, I had been at it for almost one full year.  I was actually quite surprised with the results at the time and suspected it had something to do with the fact that I wasn't very active during the early part of 2010.

Now I recognize that there can be seasonal variations in online revenue and traffic.  I suspect I am seeing some of that seasonal variation in addition to the changes at Google.  At least I hope that is what I am seeing.  It would make sense to me.  With the majority of my traffic coming from the United States, it would make some sense.

April is the beginning of warmer weather in the Northern parts of the U.S. and people (including myself) are anxious to get outside.  Yard work, walking the dog, jogging, and golf are all activities that haven't been enjoyed for many months so at the first signs of spring, everyone gets away from the computer to head outdoors.  It seems logical and is what I am telling myself.

The next few months should really tell me a lot about what the future might hold for online income.  It has been a struggle to stay motivated with so little revenue coming in.  It seems like an entire year's worth of work has been for naught.  Of course, it doesn't help that I have been incredibly busy or that the weather is nicer.  Oh well, I will keep on working on my new site as I am able and add content.  If I can get it to pay for itself, then I might take the plunge and do another one.

Starting to Get Search Engine Traffic

It may not be the best traffic (photo credit: Derek Harper), but I am starting to get some search engine traffic at my new site, Optionsdude.com.  It seems that the majority of that traffic is coming to the various posts on my blog through several longer tail keywords.  I can't tell you how exciting this is so soon after starting the site.  Unfortunately, the bounce rate is pretty high and minimal time has been spent on the site, but there has been one visitor who spent more than 1 minute!

I am also generating daily traffic by commenting on blog posts from blogs that I find on the Yakezie Personal Finance Blog Network at Yakezie.com.  There are a lot of good bloggers that are part of the network.  I know that I will never be able to have a blog like one of those, but maybe someday, I could come close.

By commenting daily, I am able to get a handful of visits daily which provides just enough motivation to keep going.  I did have one day last week which had no traffic at all, but that was the only one over the past 30 days.  My plan is to continue to read various blog posts and make relevant comments on ones that I might be able to add to the discussion.  I will do this as I continue to try and add content to my site.  Adding content is a little slow going right now, but I did add a page this past week.  Maybe I can get something up tomorrow also.

I would like to see the number of visits to the site surpass the number to this blog by the end of the year.  It will be tough going, but I think I can do it.  I will need to post some links to some of the various articles after I get more content up.  I really have yet to try and backlink any individual pages other than with a few blog comments.

I also want to say that I am seeing some of my pages in Google for some of the longer tail keywords that I have been following.  I am on page 2 for one and page 4 for another.  Too bad there is little monthly search traffic for these words, but at least I know the process is working.  Again maybe by the end of the year, I can get some serious ranking done for some of these keyword phrases with backlinking.

The bottom line is that the progress is somewhat slow for me since I don't spend 8 hours per day on the internet.  But at least there is progress.  Oh and by the way, I have earned $1.10 on the site, so I only have $38.90 to break even!

Online Income Earnings Report 1st Quarter 2011

If you have been reading this blog for awhile, you will realize that I don't publish monthly results since the variation can be unsettling.  Instead I prefer to publish quarterly reports and compare to the previous 3 month time frame as well as the results from a year ago.  I think this gives a better sense of true progress and smooths out variations that may occur with various seasons and holidays.

The first quarter of 2011 saw some interesting changes for the prospect of earning passive income online.  The Google update caused my HubPages traffic to drop.  According to Google Analytics, I am looking at a 25-30% drop in overall traffic.  I think that this will have some impact on AdSense earnings going forward.  I am hoping that some of the other sites will make up the difference.

HubPages also added an Ad Program that did make up the difference during the month of March.  It is based upon impressions and traffic so if you want to read a few of my articles, feel free to check them out through the widget in the sidebar.  I will be including the revenue from this program in the results below.

I did benefit from the Google change through my eHow articles.  In fact, March was my highest month ever at eHow.  I am curious to see if this trend will continue and I will see improved earnings or if this is a new plateau.  Either way, I will take it.

So here are my online earnings for the first 3 months of 2011:

January 2011 (Compare to Jan 2010 of $58.40)

• AdSense $54.06
• eHow $20.83
• Total $75.50

February 2011 (Compare to Feb 2010 of $55.97)

• AdSense $42.92
• eHow $21.33
• Total $65.59

March 2011 (Compare to Mar 2010 of $47.49)

• AdSense $44.26
• eHow $26.01
• HP Ad Program $13.25
• Total $84.03

You may notice that the total doesn't add up.  I didn't report very small totals like the amount from ListMyFive or YouData but did include in the totals.  I also do not report Amazon income until I actually receive it.  I did this because it took 18 months to make the first payout.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, I made $231.93.  This quarter I made $225.12 so I have seen a quarter to quarter decrease in income (although counting the roughly $18 I made on Amazon in Feb and March would have helped).  I will, however, remain optimistic that compared to one year ago I improved my earnings by $63.26 or almost 40%.  Last year, the summer was a slow time for me so I plan on busting my butt over the next 3 months.  I will post those goals and plans next time.  I hope everyone will make it through all the interesting changes and continue to build larger and more varied income streams.