I've been trying to make money online since starting my first website in December of 2004. Like most people I started out trying to make money using Google Adsense and had no clue to what I was doing. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those guys who made a ton of money within a few months. It took me several years but I never gave up. I realized I needed a few more sites, so I started a few blogs. None of them really took off except for one that started making me a few hundred dollars per month but fell back recently due to Google cutting my traffic. I always wanted to try ecommerce so I started 3 ecommerce sites, drop shipping products to customers. They ecommerce sites are making a few hundred per month but nothing to brag about. Then I kept hearing about affiliate marketing and recently got into it. I have to say that affiliate marketing thus far has become the money maker. See my revenues and profit below going back to Jan-06. You can see that affiliate marketing really allowed me to take it to the next level. Hopefully, one day I can work full time on my online businesses and I strongly feel affiliate marketing will get me there. However, over the years I've learned a lot with Blogging and ecommerce! So if you are new to the GAME, don't give up. Never give up. The great thing about the Internet is that its easy and cheap to try different things. There are many ways to make money online and there are many paths to getting there. There is so much free information and free open source software on the web that you don't need to spend that much money. I recall the days I use to dream about making $1,000 per month to pay my mortgage. I couldn't wait to hit that goal. I just recently hit it and blew by it! Now I can't wait to quit my job one day! Date ---- Revenues ---- Profit ---- Profit Margin Jan-06 ---- $432.20 ---- $287.91 ---- 67% Feb-06 ---- $302.99 ---- $158.21 ---- 52% Mar-06 ---- $277.33 ---- $80.59 ---- 29% Apr-06 ---- $248.95 ---- $95.26 ---- 38% May-06 ---- $160.56 ---- $18.55 ---- 12% Jun-06 ---- $408.76 ---- $149.13 ---- 36% Jul-06 ---- $362.90 ---- $99.87 ---- 28% Aug-06 ---- $439.90 ---- $226.16 ---- 51% Sep-06 ---- $424.79 ---- $264.61 ---- 62% Oct-06 ---- $359.69 ---- $209.67 ---- 58% Nov-06 ---- $338.45 ---- $238.25 ---- 70% Dec-06 ---- $604.11 ---- $449.67 ---- 74% Jan-07 ---- $764.27 ---- $443.07 ---- 58% Feb-07 ---- $784.29 ---- $434.66 ---- 55% Mar-07 ---- $830.18 ---- $585.83 ---- 71% Apr-07 ---- $406.13 ---- $211.75 ---- 52% May-07 ---- $551.61 ---- $320.65 ---- 58% Jun-07 ---- $893.13 ---- $662.18 ---- 74% Jul-07 ---- $955.01 ---- $713.50 ---- 75% Aug-07 ---- $1,072.91 ---- $871.26 ---- 81% Sep-07 ---- $4,527.13 ---- $1,728.24 ---- 38% <== Started in ecommerce Oct-07 ---- $1,639.26 ---- $671.78 ---- 41% Nov-07 ---- $2,312.76 ---- $755.82 ---- 33% Dec-07 ---- $2,473.38 ---- $1,070.41 ---- 43% Jan-08 ---- $4,166.91 ---- $1,530.73 ---- 37% Feb-08 ---- $6,136.38 ---- $2,559.59 ---- 42% <== Started affiliate marketing Mar-08 ---- $7,779.92 ---- $5,004.18 ---- 64% Apr-08 ---- $10,085.40 ---- $6,877.18 ---- 68% May-08 ---- $10,522.97 ---- $7,220.31 ---- 69% Total ---- $60,262.27 ---- $33,939.02 ---- 56%
Man you are one of those brilliant ppl i would always love to be in constant contact with. I have been making money online for some 6-7 years already, have seen very good days (such as the total of your "Revenue" column per a month) and have seen bad days as well. currently i am making custom php "moneymakers" for myself and am looking for a business partner to share thoughts and to work together. I would love if you PM me with your IM (icq, aim, msn, yahoo) so we can talk. Looking forward to hear from you
interesting.. If you don't mind me asking did it take you awhile to get your AdWords click cost down or did you just jump right into an affiliate and start profiting off it right off the bat?
Thats great. What did you start out with? This time next year you will probably be making $30k or more monthly. Good luck.
No I didn't make money off the bat. I tried a bunch of stuff before I found something that worked. I've tried promoting web hosing, pay day loans, cell phone service, music downloads, ringtones, free signup offers, etc. with some to very limited success. I've tried placing banners on my sites, which never works. I've tried embedding links in articles on my Blogs with limited success. I've tried posting to forums with limited success. I've tried postings to free listing websites like Craigslist & MySpace with no success. I've tried advertising on advertising networks (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Miva, Looksmart, Facebook) and by far Google is the best. I mostly use Google & Yahoo. It's all trial and error and some luck! You can't give up. If you can't get an offer to convert well after much effort, scarp it and move on. Lick your wounds, learn from your mistakes and move on! The great thing about the Internet is it won't cost you that much money to try things out!
How was your PPC cost in the beginning on new keywords did they cost go down after time just from history?
Thanks for the compliments. To the question "How was your PPC cost in the beginning on new keywords did they cost go down after time just from history?". No the cost didn't go down and on the campaigns making money I haven't played with decreasing my bids. Maybe I should and save some money but why mess with it if its making me money!