October Earnings Update

I’ve had another record month by a lot coming in at $1895.21 for October. I’m surprised with this because, while I’ve been been doing loads of work, most of my have been going towards a new site that’s not online. I haven’t really done anything to improve my active sites but earnings have still increased which is pretty surprising to me.

Here’s my earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense – $290.61 – Sooooo close to the $10 a day mark I desperately want to reach but I just missed it. I still had my best month by a massive $2 so that’s good. I think my new site is well set up for Adsense and I’m hoping it will bump my earnings up by $50 at least.
• Affiliate Sales – $1144.50 – My main affiliate program performed really well once again and I’m starting to rely on it as steady income whereas before I was fearful that it would crash and burn at some point. Some of my other programs came through with a few sales here and there this month too which is encouraging. Nothing major but it’s nice to see that they actually work. Hostelworld continues to suck.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads – $93.10 – Linkworth is a pile of poop. Text Link Ads were steady again. I’ve maxed my links on Travoholic.com and have three sold on my working holidays site which I expect to improve once I launch the new site.  I’ve just had my living in London site approved too and expect a few more sales. I’m not happy with the prices TLA have offered but for now I’ll take it.
• Private Link Sales – $367 – I have a couple links for $10 each that are on a subscription with Paypal so they come in each month with no effort. Plus I had a renewal of a six month link for $27. But the biggies were links for $120 and another for $200 that came totally out of the blue, as usual. Each month I wonder if I’ll land any big sales like these and each month something seems to pop up from nowhere.

I couldn’t really be more pleased with this month! I was expecting a drop in income since I was away for 10 days and am spending all of my time working on a new site. I think my earnings are a bit inflated due to over half of my earnings coming in currencies that are strong at the moment against the pitiful US dollar. I think it’s important to try to diversify currencies as well as income streams. So with that in mind, one of my goals for November is to snag some private link sales with British companies.

I plan to spend most of my time in November focusing on my London site. I want to move it to a better template (that is already built), add as much content as I can muster, snap lots of photos and get in contact with some potential advertisers. I’ve only got six weeks left here and I know once I’m gone my focus will shift so I really want to make it as good a resource as I can and then I’ll forget about it for a while.

I’m getting closer to that $2000 mark and with a final push I think I can get there by December. It’s strange to think that my goal for December about 6 months ago was only $500. Onwards and upwards!