Income Report December 2011 and End of Year Summary
At the start of each new month I try to break down my monthly income results for the previous month – including all affiliate results and Adsense income, as well as any other news from the previous month or highlights of upcoming events and opportunities. Each month these continue to be my most popular posts. You can view all of my past income reports here.
Well I made it through another year of earning online passive affiliate income AND my blog is just over one year old (my first post was on Jan 13th of 2011)!
Although the year started out slow, it really picked up over the summer, but things kind of fizzled out around the middle of October. Since then, it has been a downward spiral – which is part of the reason that it has taken me so long to get around to writing this post. I was also out of town from Dec 28 to Jan 5, as I was visiting my Dad in Montreal, so I did not really have access to a computer while I was gone.
When I returned from my vacation, it took me quite awhile to get back into the groove. I actually enjoyed my time away from the computer, so it was kind of a slow process to get back into the swing of things and re-motivate myself to start working again.
As you’ve probably guessed, my December numbers were pretty bad and continued the downward trend that started in October. Let’s take a look, and then I’ll talk about the numbers and try to summarize my entire year, as well as look forward to 2012.
| November Income | December Income | Difference | |
| EPN | $361.18 | $360.47 | ($0.71) |
| Adsense | $518.82 | $352.20 | ($166.62) |
| Commission Junction | $21.84 | $94.07 | $72.23 |
| Amazon | $1.20 | $50.40 | $49.20 |
| Clickbank | $17.95 | $17.95 | $0.00 |
| Niche Site Platform | $44.25 | $0.00 | ($44.25) |
| AvantLink.com | $39.99 | $9.82 | ($30.17) |
| TOTAL | $1,005.82 | $884.91 | ($120.91) |
What’s Going On?
Without looking back at every month, I’m pretty sure this was my worst month of the year. I’ve mentioned in previous months that I need to diversify my income. Unfortunately that has not yet totally happened and the majority of my Adsense money is still earned from one site. That one site was Panda slapped in the middle of October (ok, I don’t know if it was Panda or not, but something bad happened) – and traffic has been declining ever since. January is shaping up to be even worse, so at this point I’m just waiting for a bottom, so that I can start my climb back up.
If you look at the Adsense income for my #1 site: In September of 2011 the site alone earned $597.66. In December of 2011, it earned a measly $172.61. That pretty much tells the story right there. I’m doing my best to throw some more links at the site and hopefully get it back onto the front page of google for my main keywords, as well as continue working on new sites.
Accomplishments in 2011
Despite the crappy news, I did spend a lot of time on my computer (just ask my girlfriend) so I did accomplish a lot in 2011, which will hopefully lead to some profits in 2012.
Started the Blog and Created an Ebook – Around this time last year I started this blog and I’m proud to say that I stuck with it for over a year. It has been a struggle at times and I have had some lapses, but I’m glad that I made it through at least one year. I’d previously attempted a blog about this same topic (nichestorenow.com) but I stuck with it for about a month before I blew it up.
In addition to writing the blog and attempting to track my own progress, I also wrote a short ebook which I give away for free on the site. The book is nothing ground breaking, but it still gives a nice incentive for people to sign up for my mailing list.
Created an Authority Niche Website – Following in the footsteps of Pat Flynn’s “nice site duel”, I created my own authority niche website, which has seen mixed success. I’ve reached the front page of google a few times for certain keywords and even #1, and then dropped back out and off of the front page. I’ve had some really good spikes in traffic and Adsense income, but nothing consistent. Regardless, I think it was a good learning experience, and something different from my other affiliate websites and smaller niche websites.
Created Several Deal of the Day Websites Using Avantlink – I’m big into outdoor sports – running, skiing, and surfing – so when I found the Avantlink affiliate website in 2011, I was happy to see that they featured many merchants that I’ve actually bought products from in the past (Backcountry.com, Whiskey Militia, SteepAndCheap.com, etc.) Once I dug a little deeper I found out that I really enjoyed working with Avantlink and all of the cool affiliate tools and resources that they have to offer. My favorite tool of all was the “deal of the day” feeds. This inspired me to create several daily deal type affiliate sites which have been moderately successful thus far. Despite the fact that Pennsylvania’s sales tax laws have caused some merchants to terminate their relationship with me, the sites are still up and running for the time being – as I was able to still find merchants to work with.
Created 5 new Adsense niche websites using Market Samurai – I’ve created many small niche website over the last 3 or 4 years, but I’ve never had as great as success as I would ultimately like to have. I decided to try to improve my keyword research skills, so I’ve been following some keyword strategies provided by the guys at Adsense Flippers to try to improve my Adsense income. You can read more about my efforts and the five sites that I’ve recently created here. I hope to have an update on these sites soon. They are coming along more slowly than I had hoped for.
Created an Authority Blog / Travel Guide About Pittsburgh – This was kind of a spur of the moment thing. I got the idea after reading the Nerdy Nomad blog, which I found via the awesome income report leader board. Kirsty earns a good income by creating local travel guides for various cities that she had lived in and then selling advertising spots and links throughout her site. I decided to attempt the same thing by creating StuckinPittsburgh.com. The site is a work in progress. Thus far I only have Adsense adverts and some random Amazon links, but I’m having fun writing about different places to visit, drink, and eat in the Burgh. If you ever plan to visit, check out my blog for some tips and ideas. I actually have another Pittsburgh site in the works which I have not yet gone public with.
Goals for 2012
- I’d still like to earn $2000 per month and do it consistently. I was steadily increasing for most of 2011 and came close, but I hit a downward spiral that I have yet to recover from. I need to turn it around in 2012.
- Quit my day job. This is the ultimate goal. $2000 a month probably isn’t enough to live on for me, so I would need to meet and exceed goal #1. But in order to meet the first goal, I might have to take a risk and first achieve goal #2. Dive in head first kind of like Tom from Leaving Work Behind just did.
- Totally unrelated to online income, but I’d like to lose 15-20lbs and get in better physical shape. I’m not over weight by any means and I keep in pretty good shape by playing sports. But I’d like to start 2012 by getting into the best shape of my life. At 6 ft, I think I should be around 180lb, rather than flirting with 200lbs. It’d be different if I were covered in 200lbs of muscle, but I’m not. So I’ve started the slow carb diet from Tim Ferriss’ book The 4 Hour Body AND I’ve started doing the Insanity workout DVDs with my girlfriend. If all goes well, maybe I will do a followup post with my progress. If you don’t hear from me, then I probably failed and I am sitting on the couch eating donuts and drinking beer. Let’s hope that will not be the case
I think that wraps it up. It was a fun year with some ups and downs. Here’s hoping that 2012 will be just as exciting, with more ups than downs. Good luck to you all.
Related posts:
- Income Report January 2011
- Income Report July 2011
- Income Report June 2011
- Income Report April 2011
- Income Report November 2011 and the PA Affiliate Tax Law
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Another goal in 2012 will be to proofread my posts better before I hit publish.
I think I’ve just updated this post about 6 times already after reading through it again.
LoL Mike…I will recommend that any day. Proofread always
Now i am slowly moving towards creating bigger sites rather then mini sites. But it is risk of time and money.
Rahul recently posted..Online Income analysis year – year
Wow mike, thats pretty impressive! I always love reading all the income reports from blogs, because it shows that you can actually make a livable income from blogging. I’ve havnt made any money from blogging as of yet. But i hope that i can get half of the income your earning by the end of may. I also have a similar issue with content publishing like you. I don’t proof read much, and sometimes my contents comes out with alot of error and i won’t notice it. Until my friends start telling me about it.
Hey Mike take it easy on yourself. I know with some minor adjustments, you can figure out what is causing the losses and fix them. I must say you are really making some decent income from your IM business and kudos for always publishing your figures. They help to motivate others.
Hey mike,
Thanks for mentioning my site at the income report leader blog. Appreciate the effort!
Long comment coming up!
I think that fixing panda requires more than links. Site speed, site structure (whether everything flows logically) and content quality matters more. After all, it is a known fact that panda is a on site penality, not a off site one. I suggest looking closely at your site to see how the above fares.
In terms of targets, I like to break down the broad goals into specific income targets and then translating that into the amount of work that needs to be done.
For example, if I know a site in a particular niche earns me 200. I need to create 10 such niches or to grow the original site to ten times the traffic to get to 2k. I will then work backwards to know how much content and backlinks to achieve these targets.
Very often, it is the lack of resource committment to the targets that causes us to fail : ).
Enjoyed your blog.
Cheers
Aaron
Aaron recently posted..How to make money fast with adsense
I hit bottom a few months back and have improved my earnings by cleaning up some of my sites and ensuring that my new sites have great content first. I haven’t done any real backlinking as this is what I got punished with in Google so I’ve gone down the organic route first and once the sites are established I’m adding some links. It’s a bit slower but will hopefully be better in the long run.
I’ve finally started getting some income from Amazon and that’s where my focus is now so my next incoem report will feature on that.
Hopefully this month is where your earnings have bottomed out and it’s only upwards from here.
Adem recently posted..Google AdSense vs Amazon Associates
I think that’s a great accomplishment. To me, that says you can make a whole lot more. If I knew how to do that, I would be close to having it made!