MYBlogEarnings For March 2007

April 1st, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

Last month I posted my blog earnings for the first time in an attempt to encourage other bloggers to follow suit, so that we can all learn from each other and improve our blog earnings. I think many of you will find this month’s report interesting as there’s $100 at stake!

Thilak and John Chow also posted their earnings last month, and based upon their successes I picked a few areas that I wanted to try and work on in March:

I noticed that Thilak was making a killing from TribalFusion with $420.68 in February, so I made getting accepted by TribalFusion a priority. After numerous emails and phonecalls I finally managed to get approved and up and running mid-month
I was determined to try and generate some income from ReviewMe given the successes of Thilak and John Chow, who undoubtedly is the ReviewMe king
Understanding why I was making less from Feedburner than Thilak, even though I have more subscribers and site traffic
Selling more direct advertising given John Chow’s success, where direct sales are his biggest income stream
Generating some referral income, particularly from Text Link Ads

So how successful was I with my goals? Here are the scores on the doors for March 2007 (February numbers in brackets):

Google Adsense: $3485.34 ($2,775.5)
Direct Ad Sales: $3236.00 ($150.00)
Intellitxt: $625.30 ($75.82)
Feedburner FAN: $533.17 ($240.77)
Text-Link-Ads: $351.94 ($319.37)
Tribal Fusion: $214.46 ($0)
Blogads: $149.37 ($100.42)
Vizu Polls: $180.65 ($118.9)
ReviewMe : $50.00 ($125.00)
Chitika : $31 ($0)
Robert Sherman $50 ($0)
Advocalcano $6 ($0)
Adbrite: $0 ($1.83)
Grand Total: $8,913.49 ($3,907.67)

My blog earnings this month were way beyond any of my targets, increasing by a whopping 128%, and judging by the majority of competition entries way beyond what any of my readers expected. Anyway, congratulations to Mark from www.bloglyne.com who pipped Sanketh by one dollar. $100 in Amazon vouchers are on their way to you.

In both dollars and pounds I still feel a bit giddy about last month’s performance. In dollars, if I could maintain this run-rate it would turn me into a six figure blogger. In pounds, it equates to Â£4.5k per month - nearly twice the average salary in the UK.

Successes For The Month

Direct Ad Sales

Obviously the biggest single success for the month were the direct ad deals I managed to close. I tried approaching a few companies directly without any joy - all of my sales actually came from approaches. The majority of the income came from Ciao who signed a long-term deal, so it is unlikely that I will repeat a deal of this size in April - but who knows! I also managed to find a sponsor for my theme for a month. I actually managed to do another deal with another site for 6 months and took a deposit, but they pulled out. I’m confident though that I’ll be able to find another sponsor before the current deal expires.

Intellitxt

This month was my first full month of running Intellitxt, and the numbers improved from around $16 a day to $20 a day making it my 2nd biggest ad network after Adsense, which I was very happy with. If you have over 200K impressions a month and want me to refer you then please drop me a line in the forum. You can of course apply directly but they are ridiculously slow, and at least I can add your site to the ones I chase Intellitxt about a few times a week.

Feedburner

I realised that one of the reasons why my Feedburner income was lower than expected last month was because I hadn’t implemented the code on all pages. I actually realised about a week ago I still hadn’t done it properly, so hopefully next month I will see the full benefit. Even still my Feedburner numbers went up 121% this month so I’m very happy.

Text Link Ads

My actual income from Text Link Ad sales dropped because I removed 8 of my advertisers as they were only paying $40, whereas the going rate was $150. Although I only managed to sell one new link in March, I managed to make up the difference with 3 affiliate sales. Hopefully, in April I will sell a few more links which will validate my decision to remove old advertisers, and hopefully I’ll do a few more affiliate sales. I also managed to sell 5 links in the forum, which bodes well given that it is predicted to get a PR of 6 this month. If this does happen I will also list my directory, which is also predicted to go up to PR6.

Disappointments For The Month

Adsense

The biggest disappointment for this month has been my Adsense income. Although it was still by biggest earner and I broke for the first time the psychological $100 a day barrier, the monthly increase was only 13.4% over February which was my lowest for a long time. For some reason I knew March would be a tough month, but I didn’t expect the source of the problems would be adsense themselves not traffic driven. The poor performance was driven by an unstable CPM rate which on some dates halved. I spoke to a couple of other sites about this and they had similar problems in March, so hopefully whatever is causing the problems will be sorted in April.

ReviewMe

I didn’t write one ReviewMe review in March, although strangely I did mange 2 signups. I think the problem I have with ReveiwMe is that compared to other sites including the ReviewMe King John Chow, my Alexa rank is low even though strangely my stats according to Google Analytics are higher. Unless my Alexa Rank corrects itself I don’t expect to sell any reviews, so I’ve given up pushing ReviewMe for now.

Plans For April

Try and stabilise my adsense income at the same time as continuing to reduce my reliance on this scheme
Find a replacement sponsor for my theme and new direct advertisers
Get the handful of Intellitxt referrals I have submitted accepted
Check that I have finally added Feedburner properly
If my Pank Rank does increase, review my TLA prices
If the Directory’s PR does go up to 6, start selling links in the directory
See if there is any way I can improve my Tribal Fusion CPM
Find ways to improve affiliate income
Improve my Alexa Rank

I hope that the amount of information I have shared here will encourage you to do the same (An alternative way is to tag your post ‘MyBlogEarnings‘ so that your details can be found easily on Technorati), or provide you with food for thought. The more info we share with each other, the more we will all hopefully make.

Update: Thilak and John Chow have posted their earnings for March

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About the Author

Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and currently runs the Portal and online operations for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. He also writes for Windows 7 News.

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There Are 48 Responses So Far. »

#1

Comment by Mr.Byte on 1 April 2007:

I thought that you are having a huge income boost when you asked cos even John Chow did the same….Man! I wish I Predicted it a little higher…
#2

Comment by Vinod Ponmanadiyil on 1 April 2007:

OMG!
Congratulations Everton. This can easily quit your day job now for sure!
#3

Comment by Ashwin on 1 April 2007:

Congrats Everton! All the best for April. Hopefully you get 5 figure mark next month.

If you’re working.. then P.I.M.P that job.
#4

Comment by Brown Baron on 1 April 2007:

Congrats. That was a pretty good month. Nice job.
#5

Comment by Everton on 1 April 2007:

next month shouldn’t be as high, but who knows….

As for quitting my day job, I can’t as I have a lot of bills to pay including a very big mortgage!
#6

Comment by bill on 1 April 2007:

Wow! Congratulations Everton!

This month I managed to grab some pretty significant increases myself but nothing near as good as yours.

Congratulations again!!
#7

Pingback by Tips for Readying your Blog for a New Month on 1 April 2007:

[...] an Earnings Report: I’ll be writing one of these soon for Bill2me dot Com, Everton from Connected Internet already has his posted.Â At the end of each month it can really help to review the month’s [...]
#8

Comment by Dan and Jennifer on 1 April 2007:

Hey Everton,

Wow, congratulations, I’m very happy for you! Very cool.

Thanks for all the excruciating detail, that is all extremely helpful.

Glad to see you you mention the very issue with AdSense that we saw this month - for no explainable reason we basically made half the money per click compared with previous months. Really hoping to see this fixed asap.

On AdSense BTW - regardless of this issue above, I would really expect to see a higher CPM when our pagerank goes up in the next week or two. Does anyone have specific knowledge/experience of this one way or another?

I’m already seeings signs of the pagerank change - daily direct search traffic went up a bunch in the last week, and as of the same rough date, the number of “backward links” is up by a factor of 20 - yes, twenty.

Our earnings in March were roughly $1,650 USD - less than I’d hoped, but higher than February.

Here’s the breakdown of the notable sources:
- ClickBank and other affiliate sales ($646)
- followed by AdSense ($637)
- then ReviewMe and Text Link Ads ($165)
- and our own Online Dating Secrets eBook sales ($162)

Our overall traffic in March was up only marginally from February, but the great thing is that natural direct traffic made up a much larger portion of the total traffic - much less direct promotion on our part to drive one-time traffic.

Feb - 68k pageviews - 37k uniques
Mar - 74k pageviews - 43k uniques

And now a new month begins.

Great luck all around and let’s all learn from what we’re each doing right.

Have an awesome day!
Dan
#9

Pingback by MyBlogEarnings for March 2007: $3204.29 on 1 April 2007:

[...] vs Everton: Everton took a huge leap by over 128% compared to that of his February earnings. He made lots of cash through direct ads this month, [...]
#10

Pingback by Guide To Making Money Online With Blogging | Connected Internet on 1 April 2007:

[...] the results and in 6 months I’ve managed to increase my income from $573 in October 2006 to $8913 in March 2007 - that’s a 1455% increase and an annual salary of [...]
#11

Comment by Everton on 1 April 2007:

On AdSense BTW - regardless of this issue above, I would really expect to see a higher CPM when our pagerank goes up in the next week or two. Does anyone have specific knowledge/experience of this one way or another?

Good question. I hope the answer is yes, but I don’t think it will be guaranteed. I’m convinced that Google’s system is optimised to serve the best ads on the sites with the best CTR. Hence, I don’t think that sites with more traffic automatically get the best ads as they might have poorly positioned ads.
#12

Comment by Martin on 1 April 2007:

Ev that is really a nice increase and I’m happy that you mad this much this month.

Hope we get back on track with Adsense in April though. Pagerank btw has nothing to do with Adsense..
#13

Comment by Zath on 1 April 2007:

Huge Congrats Everton! This month’s has been a great achievement for you!

I knew I forgot to do something, forgot to put my guess in - however I would have been way off your actual figure anyway!

I’ve managed about a whole $15 in my first blogging month, which is nothing really, but it’s been a big learning month for me!

Well done and here’s to an even better April!
#14

Comment by Dan and Jennifer on 1 April 2007:

Hey Everton,

Thanks. Our CTR is pretty darn good, so I don’t think that will be a problem. It’s improved this month if anything. we split test and optimize that regularly. we’ve removed any non-performing units.

Have an awesome day!
Dan
#15

Comment by Brendan on 1 April 2007:

Impressive Everton. You should sell some consulting as people undoubtedly would benefit from your knowledge.

Great work!
#16

Comment by Dan and Jennifer on 1 April 2007:

Everton,

Ok, here’s an update on earnings. I sat down with Jennifer and got our firm traffic and revenue numbers for the past few months.

Interesting trend… check out the really cool increase in traffic and revenue - a very good thing.
Dec - 8,219 pageviews — $232 –> eCPM $28.00
Jan - 17,889 pageviews — $468 –> eCPM $26.00
Feb - 68,670 pageviews — $1,365 –> eCPM $20.00
Mar - 74,434 pageviews — $1,611 –> eCPM $22.00

Have an awesome day!
Dan
#17

Comment by Everton on 1 April 2007:

Jenn seems like a woman after my own heart with her grasp of numbers, although I don’t think she’d be impressed with my spending habits!

I really should look at the eCPM per page for my site as well as this is a good way of comparing sites. $20+ for a site I think is very good and it will only get higher for you guys.
#18

Comment by TJP on 1 April 2007:

Congrats, man. You have done especially well at monetizing your site.

I need to calculate my eCPM as well.
#19

Comment by Maki :: Dosh Dosh on 2 April 2007:

Very impressive, Everton .. Congrats!
#20

Pingback by March Big Blogs Earning: John Chow Wasn’t the King at Baron VC on 2 April 2007:

[...] MYBlogEarnings For March 2007 | Connected Internet [...]
#21

Comment by Mosey on 2 April 2007:

Aww… if only I had posted each figure individually Nevermind… one day I shall come out of anonymity and setup a proper blog.
#22

Comment by Mosey on 2 April 2007:

Forgot to mention - congrats to Mark!:)
#23

Comment by Everton on 2 April 2007:

Just calculated my eCPM - $22
#24

Pingback by Quick Tip:Directory Submission - Enblogopedia on 2 April 2007:

[...] ConnectedInternet is doing a great job these days and it`s really a blog that you don’t want to miss! Beside the great blog, ConnectedInternet offers a forum and a directory for it`s readers. According to the PageRank prediction tool, Everton(ConnectedInternet Owner) is expecting a PR6 to it`s Directory, I don’t think that such tools are accurate but I hope that this Directory gets high PR! (At the end I have two blogs submitted there!) [...]
#25

Comment by Everyday Weekender on 3 April 2007:

WoW!.. congrats on the earnings.. but can you let us know what you will do to correct the feedburner ads?

Everyday Weekender
#26

Comment by Everton on 3 April 2007:

I hadn’t added the code to all my pages so I should get around an extra 20% impressions this month if all things remain the same
#27

Comment by Dan and Jennifer on 3 April 2007:

We signed up with FAN also but our experience was a little odd. We got a few campaigns but VERY few impressions, although our code WAS on all our pages. I remember the main campaign did say something about having some geographic targeting.

But we had to turn FAN ads off since we’re syndicated in Blogburst and they don’t allow FAN ads in the feed.

Looking at your revenues with FAN thought I think I’ll see if it’s possible to add it to the site but not the RSS feed. There didn’t seem to be a checkbox to turn off feed ads in Feedburner. Does anyone know off hand how to do this?

Have an awesome day!
Dan
#28

Comment by Vinod Ponmanadiyil on 3 April 2007:

Everton’s FAN earning maybe partly because his theme still contains the FAN code above the comments section.
#29

Comment by Everton on 3 April 2007:

nope, FAN CPM isn’t affected by placement. The reason you prob had low imps Dan is because you need a lot of campaigns running to get a decent fill rate, and by decent I mean about 30%.

Are you sure blogburst don’t allow feed advertising? I haven’t had any traffic from them, which could be why, but I would have thought they would have told me if that’s the case
#30

Pingback by » Online Income the Blogger’s Way Digital Phocus: “Focused on the Business of the Web” on 6 April 2007:

[...] Blair of Connected Internet took in a tidy sum of almost $9,000. Thanks to some additional sources of revenue such as Feedburner’s [...]
#31

Comment by James Methvin on 11 April 2007:

I thought that you are having a huge income boost when you asked cos even John Chow did the sameâ€¦.Man! I wish I Predicted it a little higherâ€¦

online money
#32

Comment by Dennis BjÃ¸rn Petersen on 11 April 2007:

Wauw - Very impressive. This is my first visit here and the first time I’ve seen how much people make from the ads. Thank you very much for sharing. I’m updating my own blog at the moment and I will defininetly take your advice into consideration.

Thank you again!

PS: I will certainly come back here.
#33

Pingback by RobertoAlamos.com - The place to learn how to make money online » Blog Archive » How much can I make with my blog? on 12 April 2007:

[...] Everton from ConnectedInternet reported net gains of $8913 during March 2007. [...]
#34

Comment by Arun on 12 April 2007:

Congrats… How you get this much of traffic??
For More Online moneymaking ideas.. http://cashland.awardspace.com/
#35

Comment by Martin on 12 April 2007:

Tribalfusion is a great addition to Adsense. Can only recommend it to everyone who has more than 2000 visitors a day.
#36

Comment by Dan and Jennifer on 19 April 2007:

Hey Everton,

A few questions on CPM earnings… I notice you’re using some different Tribal Fusion banners now than a few weeks ago.

1. Are these performing better for you? I guess I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible to get over $5 CPM with them.

2. I saw that you made twice as much with FAN as you did with Tribal Fusion. We signed up with FAN also, but were only getting a few impressions a day… how long did it take you to get enough impressions to get a decent CPM?

3. Also, do you know of any good alternatives to Tribal Fusion that may pay better?

Thanks!
Dan
#37

Comment by Everton on 19 April 2007:

1. The 300×250 TF ads do have a higher CPM than the 468×60s. My traffic has gone up a bit, but I think they pay about 30-40% more. I don’t think you’ll get a $5cpm overall on TF unless you experiement with what categories your site is submitted to.

2. I messed up a bit on FAN last month (see latest post) where I made around $100 from sites using my theme where I’d forgotten to remove the code. I also didn’t have TF ads running for the whole month (forgot to say in post). This month I’m making nearly a bit more on TF than on FAN.

3. None that I’ve come across. If you can get onto a bigger network like federated media then maybe. Intelllitxt have an ad network that I keep meaning to ask them about that might pay more
#38

Comment by Vinod @ VinodLive! on 19 April 2007:

Maybe offtopic: Why is your RSS subscription reduced by almost half today?
Is it a feedburner problem?. For the past couple of days traffic is very low to me. Maybe because I have not posted frequently for those period.
#39

Comment by Vinod @ VinodLive! on 19 April 2007:

Are you planning to post April month earning?
#40

Comment by Everton on 19 April 2007:

@vinod

My feedcount is down because I had to create a new feed to fix the ad problem. It had only been live for 1/2 a day when FB updated their stats so (hopefully) tomorrow it’ll be up to the normal count, although FB are having a problem moving my email subs.

Yes, I’ll be posting my earnings every month until people tell me to stop
#41

Pingback by MyBlogEarnings For April 2007 | Connected Internet on 1 May 2007:

[...] a big dip from last month’s total which was inflated by a very big one-off Direct Ad deal, I’m quite happy with the final [...]
#42

Pingback by 7 Levels Of Revenue For Your Blog | Connected Internet on 6 May 2007:

[...] and I think it will continue to be, unless I get lucky and sell more direct campaigns like I did in March where I sold over Â£3k in direct ads. However, constantly generating Direct Ad sales is tough [...]
#43

Pingback by Millionaire Bloggers Hall Of Fame | Connected Internet on 13 May 2007:

[...] around $20K. I really believe this blog can make this in 2 months (record is $9000 in one month in March), and also this blog is worth more than $20k to me. But, I have to admit that if someone offered me [...]
#44

Comment by Mark from Bloglyne.com on 19 May 2007:

Holy smokes… I won??? I didn’t even know, cuz I have been out of pocket for so long. wooo hooo - talk about pulling a number right outta my rear end! Congrats Everton!
#45

Comment by Everton on 19 May 2007:

Mark - didn’t you get your vouchers? I sent them on 1/4
#46

Comment by Mark from Bloglyne.com on 20 May 2007:

@Everton - Found them in the ol’ email *grins* thank you so much for everything dude. Any books you recommend I buy to help monetize my site better? Remember, I need to build my traffic more to be able to monetize with some of the same sponsors you have.
#47

Comment by Adsense Blog on 20 May 2007:

Excellent Job. I bet you can do even better now!

And I dig the new shopping section on the site. Very clever way to make some more cash!
#48

Comment by Everton on 20 May 2007:

And I dig the new shopping section on the site. Very clever way to make some more cash!

i forgot to tell people that I was trying that out. Quick post coming up