October most certainly was an interesting month! I don’t think I’ve ever paid so much attention to the site, particularly my SERPS after Google dropped my Page Rank.

I’m hoping that November will be just as interesting as I will have time to try and push my earnings onto the next level.

If you’re new to the blog my old MyBlogEarnings reports are available, as well as my Guide To Making Money Online With Blogging. The guide is worth checking every month or so, as I update it every couple of weeks or so.

Earnings Report For October 2007

Note: Figures for last month are in brackets.

• Google Adsense: $4,904 ($4,370)
• Direct Ad Sales: $4,692 ($4,080)
• Text-Link-Ads: $1,888 ($1,538)
• Intellitxt: $1,774 ($1,589)
• Tribal Fusion: $1,160 ($959)
• Feedburner FAN: $251 ($117)
• TNX $343 ($94)
• Linkworth: $168 ($168)
• ReviewMe: $0 ($280)
• Text Link Brokers $0 ($30)
• CashCrate: $0 ($20)
• Blogads: $0 ($9)

Grand Total: $15,179 ($13,253)

I thought it would be tough to better my record earnings in September, and things were going true to form until around the middle of the month when everything changed. My traffic suddenly shot up and the direct ad deals just kept coming in! Net result? Average daily traffic up 4% and daily earnings up 15%.

It’s been a year now since I decided I was going to try and see if I could generate an income from blogging. I’m stunned that I’ve managed to increase my monthly site income from $573 in October 2006 to $15,179 in October 2007, or 2549%.

Hitting my targets for quitting my day job next year is looking highly likely. I’m really quite excited about being able to do that as my personal circumstances and priorities have also changed a lot recently, and I really want to be able to create more spare time.

Successes For The Month

SERPs Stronger Than Ever

My Page Rank got hit for 6 (well 3) during the month and I was really worried that my google traffic would disappear. In fact, it’s actually increased thanks to some external factors resulting in some of my best terms getting more traffic.

Direct Ad Sales

For the first half of the month I’d only sold around $300 worth of advertising so things weren’t looking good at all, but the deals came flooding in during the second half of the month.

My concern is that Direct Ad Sales account for around a 1/3 of my earnings now, so I need to find a way of guaranteeing some sales every month, or I will have some big swings in my earnings.  The Advertising page and the Reviews category seem to be helping, but I need to take on a more direct strategy.

Hence, I’m looking to recruit an Ad Sales Manager who will get a percentage of any sales they generate. If you are interested then drop me a line. I’m sure that if you successful other blogs will use you, so it could be an interesting opportunity for the right person.

Record Earnings From All Programmes

Not only did I have record earnings from Direct Sales, but I had record earnings across the board. I was particularly happy that I managed to generate over $1k from Tribal Fusion, as I only use these banners in slots where nothing else works. In the last week I’ve been approached by two other ad networks so I’m going to test out their banners to see if they earn more than Tribal Fusion.

Finally Broken 2k RSS Subscribers

Even though I’d finally resigned myself to the fact that because approx 70% of my traffic comes from search engines, my RSS count would never be high as sites writing content for bloggers, it was nice to see my RSS count finally break the 2K barrier. Hopefully it won’t take as long to hit 3K!!

TNX

My earnings for TNX referrals exceeded my first month targets. However, I have a feeling they won’t increase in the future…..If you haven’t come across TNX yet then you should check them out.

Disappointments For The Month

Posting Level

I knew that I would struggle to make posts in October as soon as I saw my diary for the month. However, the rest of the team also struggled which was a shame so there were quite a few days in October with no new posts. I’ve just added one more author to the team and I have a lot more time on my hands this month, so hopefully November will beat October for traffic.

New Theme

The new Eureka theme is vital to maintaining direct ad sales and managing inventory. I think it will also have a role to play in improving the monetisation of my existing schemes, particularly if it helps increase traffic. Getting it deployed is now a priority for November and I will be bugging my designer everyday.

Plans For Next Month

The bar just keeps getting higher and higher. My target is to break October’s non-direct number.  I can’t guarantee I’ll generate over $4.5K in direct sales again in November, whereas I have some control over non-direct earnings.

Key targets:

• To have another record month for traffic through my own posts and motivating the team
• To have record non-direct earnings
• To maintain TLA earnings
• Find a better alternative ad scheme than Tribal Fusion
• Recruit one more team member
• Finish the new theme and de-bug it
• Try and recruit a sales manager

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.If you are looking for some quick tips on generating more income from your site then check out my Guide To Making Money Online With Blogging.