Webinar from the Keyword Academy

I just spent the last 2 hours watching a webinar hosted by Court Tuttle from the Keyword Academy. It was entitled Massive Traffic 101. I knew some of the information already and felt good that I was able to follow what he was saying. At the same time, I learned a lot and also received some motivation to get more organized and systematic about my online efforts.


Granted I have known that I need to do a better job of organizing my efforts. It has been difficult for me to do it thus far as this has been a part time effort. However, I want to try and do a better job in the future.


February Goals


As a result of this webinar, I have elected to make my goals for February consistent with the principles that I learned. I would like to get more organized and will seek to do so in the following 3 ways:

1. Spend at least 1 hour each weekend doing keyword research for my residual income articles and get a list of keywords to target in my blog posts and article writing.
2. Spend at least 1 hour each weekend reviewing my existing articles and taking those that have the most traffic and earnings and getting more links to those articles.
3. Take those keywords from step 1 and write a few articles for HubPages, Xomba, and my blogs .

Right now, the biggest issue that I see with achieving my passive income goals is traffic. Actually, it's the lack thereof. To be truly honest, I am getting some traffic and the traffic that I am getting is decent. I just want it to grow faster than it is. I hope that by making a few adjustments, I will be able to increase my traffic. Overall, I would like to see it double by the end of 2010.

Getting back into the swing of things for February will also be a major objective of mine. I think it is doable. Now that I am healthy and refreshed from the time off, I feel like I can go at it pretty hard for several months.

As always, I will let everyone know how it goes. The other thing that I took from the webinar is that it just takes time and effort to build an online income. I have always known that. I just plan on taking it one month at a time.

Made Google AdSense Payout

I am excited since I met my goal of making Google payout in 3 months this time. I was getting slightly concerned since I had 4 days without any revenue but that all changed Monday. I am now safe and should get a check next month.

My overall impressions and revenue is down this month since I have essentially taken the entire month off with my illness and golf trip. It has been difficult getting back into the swing of things but I am going to give it a try and start pushing it again. I had gone 7 months straight without any sort of break (only a day or two) so I also think some burn out played a role.

However, it is nice to know that there is a baseline level of traffic upon which I can count. Now I want to develop more content and more traffic so that I can increase the baseline to a higher level along with the passive income. Let me tell you that the passive part of the income has been nice but still is not enough to life off. It is going to take quite a bit of hard work to earn meaningful revenue.

If you remember from reading this blog, the sense that I get from several other sites is that it will take 2 years to really start to take off. I am sure that has something to do with building up traffic, links, and search engine rankings. I will be curious to see what can happen in that time frame, but I need to get back into the swing of things. I think that will be easier once the days get lighter as well. I don't know that I have seasonal affective disorder, but I do notice that I am more tired in winter.

I hope to be able to again reach Google AdSense payout in another 3 months (Feb, Mar, Apr) and then start making payout in 2 months' time, then monthly. Obviously, I will have to spend some more time writing content and getting traffic. It will take a lot of work, but I think that I can finally get back into it again now.

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog. I appreciate it.

Back Home Again in Indiana!

Well, I am back home from golfing in South Carolina. It was great to have a break. The weather was nice with the exception of one day when it rained fairly heavily for about 3 holes. We got absolutely soaked. It seemed like an inch of rain fell in about 15 minutes. One of the days was cloudy with just a few sprinkles. All the other days were sunny and in the mid 60's so I could golf in a short sleeve shirt after about 10:30 once it warmed up a bit.

I had a good time and golfed fairly well also. I took DeAnna's advice from Write Moms and other than one blog post did not do any writing. It was just as well since the schedule is pretty brutal. Get up at 6:15, eat breakfast, and drive to the golf course for a 9 am tee time. Then play 18 holes followed by another 9 holes. Finish about 4 or 5 depending upon the pace of play, drive back to the hotel, eat dinner, get back to the hotel about 8 and fall asleep in order to repeat the next day.

Passive Income Update

That busy schedule is why there is little time for writing so it was good to have some avenues for passive income already in place. I took the time to add up what income I received while away and not able to participate actively in generating content. I did this so that I can compare to next year's trip and see what I am able to earn in 2011 while golfing.

For the 7 days that I was travelling and golfing, I earned a total of $8.14 with AdSense and received $5 from Life123 for a total of $13.14! That is enough to pay for one of the extra nine holes of golf on one of the days. Next year, I would hope to double or even triple that amount. I should have close to triple the amount of content since once I get back to a regular schedule, I will have almost 12 more months of writing under my belt.

I would also like to mention that I am less than a dollar away from getting the next Google AdSense payout. That will happen in the next 10 days for sure so I will have met my goal of hitting the next payout in 3 months after receiving the first in 5 months. I hope to get another check in 3 months again meaning February, March, and April. After that, I would like to be able to reach the $100 in 2 months for several checks and by the end of 2010 be making $100 in AdSense on a monthly basis.

Well, that is all I had for today. I have a lot of mail to catch up on and some other things to take care of. Friday I have to go back to work and get back to the daily grind. Eventually, I may have more time to golf but for now, passive income just isn't enough for golf and food.

Blogging from South Carolina

I am currently in South Carolina on a golf trip and am just simply amazed that I can write this blog from a small town using wireless. I am also thrilled that I can make a little bit of passive income while out hitting my ball into the water hazards. That is just the greatest thing about making money online--the potential to work from anywhere.

Someday, I think it would be awesome to be able to travel the world while making passive income. Of course, it would have to be greater than the $0.57 that I made today. But over the next several years, I trust that I will be able to build up a little extra income using the internet that will add to my retirement income. It may end being just enough for golf money.

Paid by Life123

I also got the $10 deposit in my Paypal account from last month's Life123 earnings. That is always a nice little email to get. I have 2 more articles which are getting close to paying out for the first 50 views, but need 8 more for each. Here are the links to those articles:

Stock Investing Greats and the Lessons They Teach
Scabies Caused by the Human Itch Mite

It has been somewhat difficult it seems to get traffic to Life123. So far, that seems to be the most dissappointing aspect of writing for the site. But truthfully, it isn't all that much different from my other articles. I think that I must write about less popular topics. But that's OK. At least I am enjoying what I write about and am having a good time.

I would like to maybe write an article or two for Life123 while on this trip. I will have to look and see if I can come up with any good golf articles or topics since that is the mode that I am in. In the meantime, I think I will get some extra rest and get to sleep early tonight. Without the obligations that I would normally have, I can get more rest than I might otherwise.

Passive Income is Working Well

I must say that the past week has been very enlightening in terms of the potential for passive income. The reason has been that I got sick with a stomach and intestinal virus on New Year's Day and was able to lay around over the weekend while making grandiose plans. I lost about 6 pounds and didn't do a lot. Once Monday rolled around and I had to go back to work, I found that I had absolutely no motivation or physical energy to accomplish anything except work and basic survival tasks.

As a result, I did not keep to my schedule the way I had envisioned in my last post. I ended up doing very little in the way of writing or even interacting in the blogosphere. I was able to check e-mail and respond to a few comments but that was about it. So, I would like to apologize for not posting on this blog as often. I will try to assume the schedule that I proposed beginning in February. Even though I feel that I am finally getting back to 100% both physically and mentally, I am preparing for a week long golf trip in South Carolina. Thus, I make no promises as to what I could get done so I am planning on doing nothing except golfing and answering comments.

A Test of Passive Income

The silver lining coming out of my illness and lack of production for one week has shown me that it is still possible to make online income passively. The traffic at all of my sites has had fairly steady baseline which was maintained. Traffic at this blog was slightly decreased but over the past month has been up. I suspect that I will be able to post more often again which will help. I doubt that I will get any other major articles done for the month so have written it off from that regard. If I do get something done, great! If not, I won't be worrying about it. (I also have a work project that I need to get done so any free time will be spent working on that.)

To sum it all up, I will be moving at a much slower pace for the rest of January but plan on kicking it back into high gear again in February. Thanks to everyone who has come by to read this blog. I certainly appreciate it. I also want to encourage everyone regarding the potential of passive income. Despite my lack of activity, earnings have held up and I have benefitted from the efforts of last year.

New Online Income Schedule for 2010

I am going to try and maximize my use of time while trying to make money online and force myself to abide by a somewhat regular schedule to see what I can actually accomplish. I would like to spend about an hour each morning during the week working on articles and writing. Then I would like to spend about an hour each evening while winding down answering emails, comments, creating links, and thinking about the articles for the next morning.



With this type of schedule and the tasks I am wanting to accomplish, this means that I will have about 30 minutes to write each article. I don't know that I can do that for each and every article, but I can give it my best. Of course, some days will likely be better than others. Some articles will be easier than others.



I plan on posting on this blog every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I also plan on writing an article for Life123 each weekday throughout the month. That will be the most difficult thing for me to do. Having to come up with a good idea and focus enough to write each day will be tough. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I will be writing for Xomba and HubPages.



In the evenings, I will link to the articles that I wrote that morning and post them on Twitter. I will research the next day's topics and spend some time interacting. These activities can be done when I am somewhat tired and should require less quiet and thinking. I may even be able to get an article or two written in the evenings and sleep in! That would be awesome.



I plan on keeping my weekends free from assigned activities since I will be working so hard during the week. Weekends can be used to get ahead and casually prepare for the upcoming week without feeling any obligations.



That is the plan anyway. I certainly don't feel like getting up early and getting back into the swing of things tomorrow. I could still use another week or two off for the holidays, but that's not going to happen. Anyway, wish me luck in this new schedule. I will try it for the month of January and see how it goes. As always, thanks for reading.

Earnings Report for Q4 2009

Well, here is the second (and last) of my earnings reports for the year 2009. I have elected to only post earnings on a quarterly basis so as not to clutter up the blog with monthly posts. Besides I would like to compare results a little less frequently since there can be so much fluctuation in internet income, and I don't want to get discouraged on a monthly basis.

One big highlight of the last quarter of 2009 was getting my first Google AdSense check in the mail. What an exciting day! I am looking forward to getting another one after January provided there is no major problem with earnings. I have continually managed to increase AdSense impressions throughout the quarter and hope to increase by roughly 5% each month so that by the end of the year, my AdSense impressions (and hopefully earnings, too) have doubled.

My goal is to take 3 months for the second check with which I am slightly ahead of schedule, 3 months for the third check, 2 months for the next 2 or 3 checks, then by the end of 2010 be on pace to get monthly AdSense checks. That would be a great accomplishment if I could achieve that this year.

I added some earnings from Life123 in November and December which helped out a lot. I hope to be able to watch this source of income slowly increase in 2010. If you read my 2010 goals post, you know that I want to try and publish 20 articles per month on the site. It will be a challenge to be sure. I will try to organize my internet time and create a schedule to better accomplish tasks on a daily basis.

So, without further adieu:

October Earnings:
AdSense -- $45.95
eHow -- $21.08
Other (YouData, Cash Crate) -- $4.37
Total -- $71.40

November Earnings: AdSense -- $35.60
eHow -- $12.57
Life123 -- $10
Other -- $2.64
Total -- $60.81

December Earnings: AdSense -- $38.04
eHow -- $15.54
Life123 -- $10
Other (Triond) -- $1.04
Total -- $64.64

Total Earnings for Q4 2009 -- $196.83
Total Earnings for Q3 2009 -- $108.90 (which actually includes June as well)

I was almost able to double earnings from the 3rd to the 4th quarter of 2009. I don't think I will be able to double again, but I hope to have steady growth through 2010 as more and more articles are published. I also hope to have my first double digit day (over $10) in the first 6 months of the year and my first $100 month sometime in 2010. I would like to earn about $1200 for the year which would mean averaging over $100 per month. I think I should be able to get there in the first half of the year and make up for the deficit in the second half.

That is all I had for today. How were your earnings over the past few months? How do you hope to improve earnings in 2010? Feel free to comment and have a Happy New Year's Day!