November turned out to be a decent month. My income is still increasing as I am still building momentum. I agree with what has been hinted at that there is a limit to what one site can bring in with certain types of advertising. I think that is the reason why diversification is necessary - not just with income sources for blogs, but with blogs as well. This is part of the reason I have a couple blogs. It takes a little extra work, but not too much. :)

Thanks for the input Corey. I think you're right. Money can be increased by tacking on a few extra projects. Plus, if you're good at creating passive income, then this could become quite profitable without much extra time invested!

From what I've been able to tell, it kind of comes and goes depending on the month, and you never know when one 'nice' deal can change things from a really bad month to a really good one.  I kind of look at it from a year to year basis, or maybe a quarterly check is a good approach.

Taking a look at your finances from year to year is probably a bit more stable than month to month. I like it. Now that I actually have a year under my belt, I'll be able to compare earnings year over year.

Derek its not bad, new site idea is a good one. You'll surely achieve that $30k goal

I'm glad you think I'll achieve my goal this next year. I can't wait to get some of those new projects under way! :)

I think there's a lot of be said for product creation if you can come up with something great. Many of the top PF bloggers make the vast majority off products (Adam Baker, Ramit, etc). It's not for everyone, but I think it can be more effective when Adsense isn't cutting it.

I would guess that most people would see a plateau, or even a decline considering the holiday month, and budgets getting used up for the year.

Either way, Derek your site is doing awesome!

I just ditched Media.net actually...im back with adsense, the first day I had it back up it already surpassed the previous month from media.net lol.

Aaron Hung said:

Have you tried Media.net yet? their rates are much better than adsense IMHO. Just got paid too straight to my PayPal. So yes they do pay out just in case anybody have any doubts.

This is a good point Jeremy. I have started to shift my site toward Affiliate earnings, and it is slowly, but surely paying off. I just need to increase my number of visitors per month!

 

I am starting t come to the same conclusion.  Sponsored posts are great to a point (yay income!) but if there's a slow month or you want to focus on something else, it can get dangerous.  I know I need to diversify my income but haven't found the sweet spot with affiliate sales yet. 

In the beginning I tried to do affiliate sales for some clothing stores I liked but it didn't generate anything (so much for random banners with no context in my sidebar) but if I go about it this time I'll do it a bit differently!  

I don't on PFW. But I have around 10 other active sites - 3 use Clickbank, 2 use CPA offers, 2 are Amazon affiliate sites and the rest are AdSense.

 Watson Inc said:

Jeremy @ Personal Finance Whiz said:

It looks like the majority of your earnings comes from sponsored posts and links. There's always going to be an upper limit on this type of income. If I were in your shoes, I would work on monetization that is more closely tied to your level of traffic - AdSense, affiliate, and CPM ads. Then, increasing revenue is just a function of increasing your traffic. 

If you don't mind me asking, do you personally do any affiliates on PFW? I didn't see any obvious ones (like a big Amazon Store image) with a quick look, but that doesn't mean links aren't in posts.

Oh I see. I guess in 3 months when I begin to decide on monetization,
I'll have to explore some of these other options. Based on the variety of advertising that you are using for your
sites, I suspect you have a great idea of what will work and what won't
based on your data. That's awesome! I'll be very interested in checking out how everything is working for you. Cheers!

 Watson Inc said:

Jeremy @ Personal Finance Whiz said:

It looks like the majority of your earnings comes from sponsored posts and links. There's always going to be an upper limit on this type of income. If I were in your shoes, I would work on monetization that is more closely tied to your level of traffic - AdSense, affiliate, and CPM ads. Then, increasing revenue is just a function of increasing your traffic. 

If you don't mind me asking, do you personally do any affiliates on PFW? I didn't see any obvious ones (like a big Amazon Store image) with a quick look, but that doesn't mean links aren't in posts.

It looks like the majority of your earnings comes from sponsored posts and links. There's always going to be an upper limit on this type of income. If I were in your shoes, I would work on monetization that is more closely tied to your level of traffic - AdSense, affiliate, and CPM ads. Then, increasing revenue is just a function of increasing your traffic. 

If you don't mind me asking, do you personally do any affiliates on PFW? I didn't see any obvious ones (like a big Amazon Store image) with a quick look, but that doesn't mean links aren't in posts.

There's a trend in your earnings.  You tend to make more in the first and last months of the quarters.  That's how my revenues tend to be, too, since companies reallocate resources to marketing usually on a quarterly basis, while keeping within their quarterly projections.  

 

There's not enough data to say it's a trend, but I've seen similar things in my income.  

Good to know. Thanks for the analysis JT!