Income Report March 2011: My Niches Revealed
It’s that time of the month again. According to Google Analytics, my February Income Report page had the most page views this past month (by a pretty wide margin), followed next by the Income Report category page.
Hopefully my income reports can prove to people that making passive income online is real, and maybe be a motivational factor to get some of you out there to start researching some more and maybe even creating some online income of your own.
Obviously people are infatuated with stats and numbers, so I’ve decided to break things down a bit further this month. I’ll compare March’s earnings to the previous month, and I’m going to take things even a step further. I’m going to break down all of my Adsense earnings by niche, so you can see exactly where I am making my money. I won’t reveal specific websites, but I will give you the general niche for each of my Adsense streams of income.
As an added bonus, I’m going to include a graph from the eBay Partner Network stats page, that shows what eBay categories I am making my eBay money in. Hopefully this can be helpful to you, so without further ado, let’s go to the numbers:
| Feb Income | March Income | Difference | |
| EPN | $518.77 | $375.64 | ($143.13) |
| Adsense | $430.35 | $582.93 | $152.58 |
| Commission Junction | $37.85 | $53.26 | $15.41 |
| Amazon | $0.00 | $5.89 | $5.89 |
| Clickbank | $40.13 | $0.00 | ($40.13) |
| Web Design | $270.00 | $0.00 | ($270.00) |
| Niche Site Platform | $0.00 | $29.63 | $29.63 |
| PHPBay | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| TOTAL | $1,297.10 | $1,047.35 | ($249.75) |
I earned a bit less than last month, but a majority of the difference is in the web design category. Other than the $270 difference from the lack of website work, there was not much change between months. My Adsense jumped up considerably. Ebay started the month very slowly, but really picked up at the end of the month, so I’m hoping my higher cost per click will carry over into April. I would try to explain how eBay pays their affiliates, but I don’t even understand how the cost per click system works anymore. It was much easier a few years ago when you were paid for exactly what you sold… but I digress.
As promised, this chart will illustrate exactly where my Adsense earnings are coming from. I’ve included all niches that earned me at least $1 for the month. I didn’t bother adding up sites that earned pennies for the month:
| Niche | Adsense Earnings |
| tires | $343.92 |
| geo metros | $83.39 |
| rims & wheels | $59.37 |
| vacuum cleaners | $15.66 |
| led lights | $14.18 |
| home saunas | $10.38 |
| silver dollars | $9.15 |
| rc cars | $6.36 |
| tattoo removal | $5.75 |
| baseball cards | $5.38 |
| snow blowers | $4.58 |
| boxing equipment | $3.84 |
| antique furniture | $3.24 |
| infrared heaters | $1.91 |
| scooter batteries | $1.63 |
| cardio workouts | $1.59 |
| olympic coins | $1.41 |
A good majority of my earning come from automotive related websites. Do I know anything at all about cars or tires? Hell no. Am I passionate about cars? Not really. The only thing that I really care about as far as cars and tires go, is that those topics are currently making me money.
And despite the fact that I make most of the money from automotive niches, there is still a wide variety of other niches making me a little bit of income. Some of them have potential to make me a lot more once I get around to building backlinks for some of the sites.
To further illustrate things (and because I think pie charts are sexy) I will include this little graph that is included as part of the eBay Partner Network statistics page. This breaks down what categories I made eBay sales in for the month of March:
Can anything be learned from this graph? Probably not. But I think it shows that there are a wide variety of income opportunities out there. Choose a few niches and run with them. Making money online is all about trial and error.
How was your March? Is everyone ready for Spring and Summer? We woke up to snow on the ground here in Pittsburgh on April 2nd, so I know that I am more than ready for summer!
Related posts:
- Income Report January 2011
- Income Report February 2011
- Niche Site Platform Coupon – March 2011 (w/ Video)
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Mike,
These are some great results over the last couple of months!
How long have you been running these niche sites?
Eugene recently posted..Creating Your Reality Business- Chosing Your Business
hmm, i’d say they all vary. some of the sites are still around from when i first started creating niche sites (early 2008).. some are less than a year old.
i’ve not concentrated on keeping my sites maintained consistently over the past 3 years.. there are definitely periods where I have become frustrated and/or just slacked off for months at a time.
i’ve only recently become more motivated at the start of this year… specifically after reading pat flynn’s blog.. which is what inspired me to start this blog.
i’m hoping to double or triple my niche site earnings within the year..
thanks for stopping by.
mike
mike recently posted..Jenna Rose Jacked My Swag
Yeah, Pat’s site is definitely pretty motivating. Especially when you see his results!
I think you’re well on your way (and definitely farther along than I am). I haven’t been doing it for that long so I’m not earning quite as much yet.
Good luck with your goals! Given the results you already achieved I have no doubt you can get there.
Eugene recently posted..Creating Your Reality Business- Chosing Your Business
thanks for the encouragement.
i’m sure it’s only a matter of time before your hard work starts to pay off. you’ll see results sooner than later.
mike recently posted..Jenna Rose Jacked My Swag
Good layout Mike. The dollars show that the energy is paying off. The best part of the net to me is passive income. Where your earnings are now, how many hours a week would you have to put in to maintain? Or is it all automated at this point?
Thanks.
Live it LOUD!
Rob recently posted..What I Know Is Enough
as it stands now, 0 hours of work go towards any of the above mentioned niche sites.
the “tire” site has recently jumped to #3 on google for my keywords, which is why it has done so well lately.
i’m curious how long it stays there. i’m not actively creating backlinks for it, so i wonder if it will eventually start to slip in the rankings.
most of my time now is devoted to working on new sites or this blog… and hopefully working on a droid app soon.
Interesting mix – I am making most of my money online from selling SEO services, especially link building, audit reports and competitor analysis. The only affiliate programe that works for me has been Amazon – a few autoblogs got ranked high in Google quite a long time ago and seem to hold their rankings. Once I noticed from the logs what longtails were driving most of the traffic, I started building some targeted backlinks for related terms and ended up with high authority pages for things like gas grills and self-help books (totally unrelated). Where do you get your automotive-related content from?
TireD recently posted..Does Anyone Have A Coupon Code For Malwarebytes Share your Malwarebytes coupon code here
well my top rated site, actually only has a handful of pages of content. mostly just stuff i rewrote myself, after studying some ezine articles.
i’ve also bought some articles on various freelance sites.
mike recently posted..Niche Websites- What Are They and How Can They Make Me Rich
Thanks for sharing your niches Mike. No offense, but God, they are boring….
Question for you, as I am trying to do the same…
How MANY sites did you launch per niche? One, many?
And how large are these sites?
I am trying to get a handle on how many websites must you own to start to generate enough passive income to quit your job. Because the more sites you launch, the more work it is.
Also, do you use the same Adsense account for all the sites, or do you set up different companies to run the accounts through. I know ppl who do this because they don’t want Google to know which sites they own, but that too, seems like a lot of work.
Thanks!
well let me know some niches that you think are more exciting and I will try to get a site up and running…
the above mentioned niches are all individual sites. my rim/wheel niche site and geo metro site were both doing fairly well, so I made the tire site because of that.
i don’t think i would try to create 2 sites targeting the exact same niche.. but tracking your keywords in google analytics can sometimes lead you to find another good long tail term, which can lead to another spin-off niche site.
i currently only have one adsense account. i’m not sure why it would matter if google knows which sites that you own… i would assume that those same people do not use analytics or google webmaster tools because of the same reasoning?
it does scare me a bit that if i screw something up on one site and cause my adsense account to get shut down – then i’m down across the board.
mike recently posted..Cloaking Your Affiliate Links- How and Why You Should Cloak Your Links
Ya, it’s the SEO paranoia thing…some of the SEOs I know don’t want Google to know anything about the sites they own, how many, and by default, the tactics they are using. Yes, the same people do not use GA for the same reason.
I am trying to find a good Google Adsense alternative. Would you have any recos?
Lorna recently posted..Growing into a Green Career in Forestry Management
i’ve never used any other pay per click programs – unless you want to count the ebay partner network, which has basically morphed into that with their quality click pricing.
but other than that, I’m relying heavily on Adsense at the moment.
If you come across something, please share your results…
mike
mike recently posted..Cloaking Your Affiliate Links- How and Why You Should Cloak Your Links
Hey Mike, thanks for being open and sharing your tires niche. I guess people clicked those Adsense for Tires discounts or services. Also advertisers are competitive and willing to pay for high CPC.
Eye opening for myself and I got some great niche ideas from this post (be creative about the niche and keyword selection). I have been thinking in the “box”.
Kent Chow recently posted..5 Creative Ways to Make Money Online
it’s kind of funny to me that I have some very specific niche sites… but my big money maker is a very generic term such as “tires”.
When you’re actually building each site, how much time do you put into it? A day? a few hours? a week?
I’ve been reading your series on building a niche site and it’s great stuff.
Andrew
p.s. yes, pie charts are the sexiest graph type
Andrew Handley recently posted..How Article Directories Were Affected By Google’s Content Farm Update
it all depends really. i’ve built some thin adsense or ebay affiliate sites in a couple of hours or less.
my content rich sites usually take at least a few days – or longer, in the case of my niche site duel site. it’s kind of been on the shelf for awhile.
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I just noticed that my EPN check for March was $410. They added some bonuses when they sent out the check… I don’t really feel like adjusting the numbers, but add about $32 to my March total
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