July, 2011 Income Report & Upcoming Posts for August

A little bit of a slump in income for July but overall I’m not too worried about it.

I just decided the other day that I’m going to get back into creating new sites. These authority sites will be created around these new quality guidelines:

• 700-1,000 words per post, LSI content.
• Awesome designs, low bounce rates (hopefully)
• Solid social media profile backed by a “real” persona.

I already have 3/4 positions filled on my list for these projects (2 previous hires and my tech guy) but finding a good designer is more difficult than I expected. I would like to have them pump out 1 good site every 2 weeks, I think that’s a very conservative goal.

This would make a positive impact on my affiliate revenue but it will take months before anything substantial is realized.

Monthly Milestones Reached

In terms of productivity, July was a good month. I got a lot of important things done like…

• I’m on the brink of launching a brand new service for Marketer’s Center called Social Media Supremacy, something I have been working on for the past 3-4 months. Excited about that, but it takes a seriously long time to put together something of quality.
• I got all the wireframes, program spec, and hired a Ruby developer for my subscription panel. Talked to the developer on the phone today actually. He sounds super sharp and had a list of questions, glad I hired him.
• I’m now testing a lot of new analytics stuff that I never bothered touched before. Analytics books by people like Avinash Kaushik have so far been gruelingly long reads (these suckers are 500+ pages) but so far I’m learning a ton. P.S. That man is a genius.

3 Important Things I Learned in July

1. Web analytics almost comes naturally for many of you guys involved in PPC, but for SEOs it’s a seriously neglected skillset. Relying on free traffic can really make you complacent in this area. I’ve decided to bone up on analyzing click, conversion, and referral data. I’m already excited by the possibilities behind the more advanced stuff which I will be sharing later on in the month.
2. Keep a close eye on your sites…even the crappy ones. One of my sites that gets around 300 visits a day has been down since July 4 till today, an entire month. It was an internal server error. I must have missed out on a good $100-$200 a month because of it plus not to mention the damage it’s done to my rankings. Oh well, lesson learned. It should bounce back.
3. Finding a good designer at a decent rate is very difficult. There are a million and one designers with average talent and just a handful of great designers. Plus, when you find a good one he’s usually very busy.

Let’s Get to the Numbers: $3,817 For the Month of July

Adsense: $1,681 (-$149)

This figure keeps going down with pretty much every update that rolls around. I have one of my top earning sites in particular that I’ve been neglected that is usually a very good Adsense earner. I was looking at the charts for it just the other day, look at this traffic slump:

I think part of the problem is there’s been only 4 new posts for the entire year of 2011. All my good bloggers are spread so thin, I need more.

Amazon: $726 (-$129)

Not a great month for Amazon either.

Ebay Partner Network: $1,275 (+285)

Woo hoo at least EPN spared me mercy this month and softens the blow a little bit. That is something I like about diversifying where your money comes in from. When other streams tank hopefully something else can pick up the slack.

Commission Junction: $51 (-$131)

Infolinks: $48 (-$19)

Chitika: $31 (No Change)

Lending Club $?

Hit over $1,000 in my Lending Club account, so that’s a nice little milestone. As far as interest goes, no idea since the statement isn’t up yet. I would guess around $5-$6 bucks maybe.

Coming Up in August from Passive Profiteer

Here’s what I have planned for you for the month of August.

• Case study for the top 3 automated linkbuilding services: Drip Feed Blasts, Backlink Genie, and Dripable.
• Hopefully showcasing my first web application project near the end of the month.
• Finally revealing my site from the Niche Site Challenge (it’s about time) along with everything that goes into turning it into an earner.
• Book review and notes for 37 Signals’ “Getting Real”
• Advanced analytics and click tracking for affiliates.

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