Income Report - June, 2012

I have to say that June has been fairly good to me.  Things are looking good.  I put in a little more effort on promoting my posts and it has paid off.

If I haven’t mentioned it in the past, my focus is no longer on getting indexed on Google.  I mean, I know it is good but with all the changes that are happening I just believe that as writers and content providers we have very little control over it.  Instead, my focus is on providing good content and sharing it socially.  I think if the quality is there that people will share what you share and that will help with the search engines in the long run.  People also use social media platforms, like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter as search engines and if you ignore that you’re losing out a lot. I think so anyway.  So, I’ve started using hashtags more.

One of the things that I have done is added a Tumblr account.  I mostly share posts that are related to entertainment.  You can follow me here and I’ll follow you back if you’re on Tumblr!  I’ve also started using Pinterest more often and I’m finding that because I’m there more often people are re-pinning my stuff more, too.

Anyway, on to the report!

Image via CrunchBase

1. Bubblews

I did great on Bubblews this month!  I cashed out 12 times and earned a total of $339.74.  I made 117 new posts.  So how did I make more?  I think it is the combination of the Tumblr account and more Pinterest activity and the hashtags that have made the biggest difference.  That and more regular use of social media (I was a little sporadic before June).  I made $74.44 MORE with less work.  So, I’m pretty happy with that.

2. Adsense

Adsense is still not where I want it but it is better.  I made $3.37 this month compared to the $2.44 I made last month.  I’m going to contribute that towards the new ads on my main blog.  And posting a little more so getting more traffic.  How did I change the ads?  Well, first, I put a text link ad at the very top of the page.  Thanks to my friend Michelle for that tip!  Why is that good?  Well, the ads are just so much more relevant!  I also changed all the ads on the blog to text ads only – no more graphics – except for the one in the footer.  Again, wow – relevance!  And that is key. If you go to a blog about freelance writing and you get ads about banking, how likely are you to click on them?  Pretty unlikely I’d say.

So, I’m happy to see a little increase and I’m hoping it will continue that way.

Image via CrunchBase

3. YouTube

I only put up one new video last month and it is hardly worth counting because it only had 9 views. So, all of my YouTube earnings are completely residual. And I really do love that.  I made $8.73 on YouTube this month compared to the $7.78 I made last month.  Sweet!

4.  InfoBarrel

I didn’t add anything new to InfoBarrel this month but I did make a bit more.  I earned $2.98 compare to $1.99 last month.  Nothing new going on there.  I have decided to pull some of my articles that are doing absolutely nothing on the site (no view hardly at all).  I’m likely going to give them a little re-vamp and put them on  my own site (more about that in a bit).

5. Ebooks

Ebook sales are up this month, too!  I made $8.68, compare to $5.21 from last month.  I also added a new ebook but only one of the 6 sales was the new book.  I’m working on learning more about promoting my ebook and I actually have an advertisement on a writing site this month so I’m curious about how it will do.  I might try a Facebook ad this month later on, too.

6. Amazon

Amazon was my slowpoke in June.  I made $2.51 there this month.  Last month was over $6 so that was king of disappointing.  But that is directly related to the chaos that is Squidoo.  All hell has broken out over there, traffic has dropped substantially, lenses are being locked.  It’s pretty crazy.  So, I’m working on a new plan for making money on Amazon.

Image via CrunchBase

7. Squidoo

As mentioned, all hell has broken loose on Squidoo and my earnings in June (from April) showed that.  I only made $2.47 at Squidoo this month compared to the $15.62 I made last month.  I’m not giving up on them though.  I am just going to work on making the lenses that I have better and if I make a new one it is going to be damn good and worth sharing and it is going to feature products that actually cost something.  I have a bit of thinking to do about this site but I’m not completely done with it.

….and the new site I’ve been promising to tell you about….

8. LOLSpots

Some of you will love this.  Someone has come up with a way to make Facebook profitable.  If  you’re great at creating pages people love with funny content you’re going to want to try this.

LOLSpots is a site that helps you optimize your Facebook page.  Some considerations:

• you have to have 1000 or more likes on your page

• this works best for funny stuff, humor, etc.

• it’s not for everyone

My Facebook Page is All Uncensored Me.  I’d known about this opportunity for some time and I’d been working my butt off to get it to more than 1000 likes so that I could join the LOLSpots program.  I finally got there right at the end of May and was signed up and approved by June 1^st.

So, how does this work?  Well, first, it automatically posts content for you.  It takes all the pictures that you’ve posted on your page and puts them on a page on the LOLSpots network.  These pages have ads.  Then it shares your pictures and everyone else’s pictures on your Facebook page with a link. Some of the pictures have little teasers (like something circled) and a title that leads fans in to click.  You get paid per views.

Recently they have added “articles”, which aren’t really articles but instead are collections of funny memes that follow a theme.  Most of them are pretty good.

All of these pictures and memes that automatically get posted on your Facebook page (you can determine how often) can also be posted manually on other Facebook pages you own, on Twitter, on Pinterest, and on Tumblr.  I’m trying to work out a system of sharing these pics/memes that works well.

I didn’t get rich off this site but I did make another $2.45.  Not bad for my first month.

If you have a funny/humor based Facebook Page with more than 1000 likes (or if you’re close and need some help) and want to get in on this send me a message and I will help you get set up!

Update to add...

9. My Writing Site

I almost forgot to add this because I don't usually make any money from this site but my main site actually earned me a nice little chunk of change this month.  I got paid from an affiliate (that I always forget about) and I made one affiliate sale so I made $49 from affiliate sales!

My Own Residual Earning Site

As I mentioned on this blog, I and a friend, started our own residual earning site.  I'm not going to be including stats from that but if you want to know more about the site check it out here.

Grand Total:

$419.93 (up $115.32 from last month)

Income Report - May 2013

As some of you know I’ve been having a bit of a time this month trying to figure out what I want to do online and where I want to put my focus.  It’s been a little wonky.  So, would I say this has been a typical month?  No, not at all.

1. Bubblews

This is where I have been spending the majority of my time.  No matter what some people say, I think this site is going to continue to be a nice little earner.  Since my last cash out of the month on the 28^th and up to today, I have only published 5 articles.  I have not been tweeting articles that weren’t freshly published.  And I’m almost ready to cash out again.  So, really, if I could do almost nothing and still make $25 in 5 days that means I should be  making $100-125 a month doing nothing.  I’m tempted to try it.  We’ll see.

Anyway, on to the stats…

I published 143 new articles between the 1^st and the 28^th of the month.  I cashed out 9 times.  And my total earnings was…

$265.30

When you consider that this was an average of 5 articles a day I think that is pretty good.  And these are not usually long articles.  I’d say that more than ¾ of the articles were less than 10 minutes to write.  More like 5.  They are “interest” pieces.

I’d like to experiment a bit and see what writing some longer keyword pieces can do.  I know at least one person that is having some success with this.

2. Adsense

Adsene – my goodness I had quite the month with them.  It was slow, slow, slow and then all of a sudden I’m getting a bunch of clicks for days in a row and they are big numbers.  Not massive, but big in comparison to the rest of the month.  Honestly, I’m terribly worried that they are going to ban me for click fraud!  I’ve contacted them to let them know it was not me or anyone I know but I don’t know how that is going to go.

Google seems to agree that there’s something weird about that because in my payments I can see that I was only credited with $2.44 for the month.

Sucky huh?

Image via CrunchBase

3. YouTube

When it comes to Adsense, the majority of my earnings have always come from YouTube.  I actually added 4 new videos this month.  Not bad.  Better than in the past few months for sure.  They are just vlog videos so nothing spectacular.

According to my Adsense dashboard my earnings are $7.78.

4. InfoBarrel

Since I’ve been concentrating more on Bubblews I haven’t written anything new at IB this month.  I did fix up a few of them that are kind of staggering, but that’s it.

I changed over to the IB earnings program so I have a mixture of Adsense and other earnings here. Again, it was slow though.  Much lower than in previous months.

Combined, my earnings at IB were $1.99 (and yes, I’m really embarrassed about that!)

5. Ebooks

Finally ebooks.  Another slow month.  Seems to be slow all over really.  I had 3 sales for a total of $5.21.  I got my banking info set up so I’ll actually get a payment from Kindle this month.

**June 4: adding content because being the spaz that I am I FORGOT to include two things!

6. Amazon

Since Squidoo has gone all stupid my Amazon earnings have also decreased as that is where the majority of them have come from.  But anyway, with no major addition work to actually try to earn here I made $6.27 with 9 items shipped.

7. Squidoo

I had been trying to give a current month status but that just doesn't work with them so the amount made is what they actually paid me last month.  That means it was earned in March.  I got paid $15.62 last month.

Grand Total

$304.61

Not my best month.  Not my worst.

But I have something new in the works that you all will hear about soon!  It has a lot of potential and I’m really excited about it and I hope you all will be a part of it!

Review: Squid Pro Quo - Building Squidoo Lenses