Blog Earnings: August 2008
September 2, 2008 Posted by Tyler CruzYou know what’s satisfying? Sticking with something and working day after day because you know there’s potential lying underneath.
While I originally created my blog simply to act as a medium to chronicle my day-to-day operations as a web entrepreneur who makes his living form the Internet, it’s no secret that I’ve been trying to monetize it over the past year-and-a-half.
While my blog has seen enormous growth in terms of income during the past couple months, I can’t be too quick to celebrate as the majority of the increase is a result of my recent affiliate marketing competitions. I need to be wary because if my referrals stop generating income, then my referral and thus blog income will drop accordingly as well.
But now’s the time for celebration, not hesitation, and the fact is that in the end, money is money, regardless of where it originated from. So how did last month do?
My August 2008 blog income came to: $3,830.15
What’s interesting is that July made $1,000 more than June and August made $1,000 more than July.
My blog has now made close to $10,000 this year so far from private ads and close to $15,000 overall. If we assumed my income stayed at a fixed $3,830.15 a month, that works out to $45,961.80 a year. That’s $45,000 a year from just blogging! I could live off that.
Now, if you triple that, then you could justify traveling the world blogging for a living. If that isn’t the life I don’t know what is.
The huge increase was again largely in thanks to MarketLeverage. As you should know by now, I’ve been running MarketLeverage competitions and have so far referred a total of 89 affiliates. They generated $43,282.20 in August, and since I get 5% of whatever they generate, I made $2,164.11.
Now you guys can see the power and methodology behind PublisherSpot.
I’m not thrilled by the fact that my affiliate breakdown is so heavily dependant on MarketLeverage though. It would be nice to start generating some other sources of passive recurring income as well…
The pie chart below is beginning to get pretty crazy. It looks (appropriately) like a purple PacMan trying to eat the rest of the revenue sources. I shudder to think what it will look like next month…
For the same reason as above, the following chart sees the Affiliates wedge grow from an average of 26% to 35%. I’m not sure what the best mix is, but I think anywhere from a 30-70/50-50 split is healthy.
Affiliate Sources
- MarketLeverage has continued been a fantastic revenue source for my blog. In the month of August alone, my referrals generated me over $2,000 in commissions. This is not counting the money I make with them through my PPC affiliate marketing efforts.
WordZe has continued to prove to be a consistent source of residual affiliate income. I only wish I catered more to affiliate marketers so I could promote it more. Their referral program is really lucrative, check it out if you have the chance, or read my extensive review of them.
My AdToll income stems from the Peel Away Ad located at the top right of my blog. I’m now booked out until Oct 14th! I love Peel Away Ads because they are a new and unique form of advertisement. They are also very visible yet not over intrusive. If you want to buy a Peel Away Slot on my blog, the cost is $15 per week through AdToll.
BannersMall has an affiliate program and since their service is awesome their conversion rate is very high. I made $85 from them in March of 2008 which says a lot about their conversion rate considering I only get 10% and their banner prices are cheap…
Private Ad Shoutouts
I’d like to give some quick shoutouts to my repeat sponsors and advertisers:
MarketLeverage – ML is a very loyal sponsor, having purchased many private ads and sponsoring numerous contests on my blog such as the Affiliate Marketing Challenge.
MotiveInteractive – They’ve been my 300×250 Embedded Ad Sponsor since March 2008 and have continued to renew every month. They’ve also purchased a paid review as well. Check out my detailed review of them here.
BooksWealth.com – This is their 7th month renewing their 125×125 Sitewide Banner with us. Scott Phelps runs the site and also writes great guest posts here, so if you haven’t checked BooksWealth.com out yet, maybe you should!
SharpWitDesigns.com – Another advertiser who has renewed many times. Need a custom WordPress skin? Check out their colourful designs.
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September Goals and Predictions
My blog has undergone some huge growth during the past two months largely in part due to my referral income from MarketLeverage, which is continuing to grow.
Because of the trend my ML referrals are on, both my prediction and goal for August is for my blog income to reach another new record and hit the $4,000 milestone. I realize that is only $200 more than I made in August, but there is one less day in September and I had received several paid reviews last month which helped as well, so my $4,000 goal is still something I’ll have towards.
As usual, stay tuned a month from now to see the results from this month, and wish me good luck!
WOW! Congrats on your success man! That’s awesome!
Congrats tyler stats get better everymonth
Yes. Especially this month. The earnings have gone up a lot.
[…] Tyler Cruz – $3,830.15 […]
You need some products of your own man! You have this huge audience you could be selling to and lots of connections to spread the word. Make 100% commission at a price point you set.
My WordPress plugin you reviewed, through just a couple reviews like on this blog, has made more than 3 times your yearly online income in the past 2 weeks alone. And that’s just one of my dozen websites.
You can do it too!
Congratulations Tyler. Another great month.
I like the genius behind the PublisherSpot project. Very smart indeed.
I’ve done a bit of changing and purging on my Blog, so my income actually dropped this month, but it’s all part of the plan and I’m expecting to see some nice growth in September.
Congrats Tyler!
I have to say, the “purple pacman” line really cracked me up, people in my office are looking at me all funny now… i’m such a big kid!
Your welcome! I just noticed that I signed up under you, and I just had my biggest month by far with ML.
Nice work. It would be awesome if you could sustain numbers similar to august in the upcoming months. Good luck.
Tyler,
Nice job! You had quite an increase over last month. I am sure you will make the $4,000 mark during September.
See you and Lisa in Vegas in a couple of weeks.
~Debby
Good job! Your income continues to go up. Pretty damn inspiring.
You should have participated in my PepperJam contest last month, I bet you would have been really successful.
Sweeeeet!
Congrats Tyler! It must feel good! And I can only hope I’ll reach that myself in the future.
Those are extremely high earnings. Will probably make more every month now. Keep it up
Next stop: $4000.
Very nice monthly income report.
Greg Ellison
Nice job…you’re rolling now!
Congrats Tyler.
Keep up the good work.
Tyler, Thanks for stopping by and commenting on the Damn what a Comment post at BlogSavvy.net but hopefully you understand that i have been an avid reader for about 6 months, back when you did food displays for the number of RSS readers you hit, Any way hopefully there are no hard feelings and i just wanted to wish you luck so that you didn’t have to do the loser video! Good Luck!
Some nice figures there Tyler, do you think your MarketLeverage referal figures will stay strong after you stop holding the contests?
Seems you make significant increament every month. Keep up the good job!
lol, more than i make with my blog
wow, it was great idea holding these ML contests to get referrers to signup under you, they’ve boosted your blog income like crazy! yeah, so wat if it wasn’t all really generated from your blog, money is money right? your income will only continue to grow as participation of future contests will definitely increase!
Though the other earnings are impressive too, the Market Leverage competition was a real winner.
Soon you will be making more than most full time jobs!
Congrats..
You become more experience and rich blogger…
As John Chow likes to say, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
Just continue to have the contests and you will be fine
WOW! Thats so inspiring! Hope I reach there soon
Lets hope ML continue to sponsor you in the way they have been doing so.
[…] Tyler Cruz konnte seine Einnahmen im August steigern. Um mehr als 1.000 Dollar gingen die Einnahmen in die Höhe. […]
Nice job Tyler. I hope I can earn at least that much some day.