My InfoBarrel Income Report – October 2011

It’s been a while since I wrote an Income report for my InfoBarrel earnings. I won’t go back and detail out the last few months but I will say that despite taking largely a complete break from InfoBarrel for roughly 3 months or so my earnings climbed month over month over month as articles aged, as I built some media pages on the site, and as I built a few links to some of my previously published articles.

My last income report published in July for earnings in the month of June saw a monthly IB income of $518.78 with revenue split between Adsense, Chitika, and Amazon. At the end of June I was removed from the Amazon Affiliate program due to my residency in the state of California however in early October CA affiliates were let back into the program due to CA state politicking.

I won’t go into the details but for now it looks like I’m in the program until at least next Fall and then it’s up to legislation whether I will stay in. We all hear about business uncertainty – this is a perfect example of how government creates uncertainty. Should I invest my time and money into selling Amazon goods? I don’t know… I will marginally push forward on that front I suppose.

July, August, & Sep In Short

In July I went and changed a few of my prominent Amazon links on IB so that I wasn’t leaking as much traffic to not monetized destinations and I got lucky that traffic started picking up that month allowing me to fully recoup that income.

The loss in Amazon affiliate earnings was definitely felt in all three months although Adsense did start picking up for various reasons including a better CTR on IB articles (thank you IB admin for getting the placement of ads right) as well, more media pages published on the site, and a recovery of traffic from the Spring algo updates.

In July I made $557.06 across all sources.
In August I made $557.25 across all sources.
In September I made $494.17 across all sources.

During this time I built some strategic media pages on my IB articles but I mostly focused my efforts, (writing & publishing) on other sites I own and maintain. These other sites of course make their own stream of income which I don’t typically report.

An October Surprise

Around the third of October I was happy to receive the email welcoming me back to Amazon Associates and I was really pleased that they reactivated all my existing affiliate links. This meant that I was essentially going to be making a good chunk of change on Amazon overnight with no extra effort at all. The income is completely based on work I did many months ago – it’s nice to get that back.

I also started building out more media pages on older existing articles here on IB which all convert into revenue much better than normal pages. I outlined how I do this in this post on using pictures on IB. In the end my traffic to media pages increase October over September by roughly 35% and my income on media pages alone topped $125 for the month.

During The Month of October 2011 I made:
Adsense - $534.94
Chitika - $66.70
Amazon - $75.51

For a grand total of $677.15 for the month – a 37% increase over Sept and 9.3% increase over my previous best month on IB, Feb. 2011.

This was not my best month ever online but it was my best month ever for InfoBarrel… and I was only at the 75% revenue sharing tier for the month.

November – A Look Ahead

I posted a bit on the IB forums the last week of October that I was planning on investing heavily into my IB portfolio over the next couple months and that I had set a $1000 goal for the month of November on the site. In future blog posts I cover some of the ways I intend on doing this but in the mean time I’ll shorten it to say I will be marketing my best earning posts, building media pages and linking to them internally, and publishing a ton of new content on the site.

To start off I finished up October by publishing a set of articles on Microsuede Throw Pillows which should do well with some time and love and this put me into the 80% revenue share tier for the month of November. That alone should boost my earnings by a bit month over month but I still will be needing to do a ton of work.

Look for more stimulating article on throw pillows which have yet to be published… and make sure to check out this awesome pet hair remover article for a look into how I like building affiliate sales on the InfoBarrel domain.

Good luck to you all, May November treat you all well.

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Benefits Of Backlinking On Revenue Sharing Sites

In early November I started a niche site when I joined many other bloggers in the Niche Site Duel. I have since posted five updates on my niche site: http://bestshoesfordiabetics.com. You can catch up on those posts here, here, here, here, and here.

Recently I’ve also been publishing a series on making a living online and a recent update on that series I noted the importance of building your initial backlinks to your niche sites on revenue sharing websites because they are relatively strong backlinks and they are capable of absorbing a bunch of backlinks right off the bat due to their being published on an established domain.

Today I wanted to drive this point home by showing you the results of my initial five backlinks to my diabetic shoes website. As I noted back in my second niche site update I posted five main backlinks to the niche site from InfoBarrel, HubPages, Snipsly, Posturown, and my own Longevity Blog. That is five sites which earn me money for my publications.

After publishing those five articles I went on to publish others and I also went on to backlink those articles to ensure they get indexed, stay indexed, gained some authority, and passed the best link juice possible to my new website. I published those five articles a little over 4 months ago in mid-November 2010. In that time my entire niche site has made a little over $100 but these five articles alone have made an additional $65.54. That doesn’t even include any of the other backlinks I’ve built on revenue sharing sites so adding those in would increase the numbers even more.

What is interesting is that I haven’t even gone gangbusters on backlinking these five articles. I have only sent 6 links at my longevity blog post and it’s indexed at PR0. I’ve sent 9 backlinks at my IB post and it’s indexed at PR0. My hub has gotten 10 backlinks and it’s indexed at PR0, Snipsly has 5 backlinks and it’s indexed at PR N/A. Lastly my Posturown article has 11 backlinks pointing at it and it too is indexed at PR0. All in all my backlinks have given most of these articles enough authority to get them past PR N/A and I haven’t even hit them hard with backlinks.

What is all of this to say? If you are building a niche site do not underestimate the power of building your main backlinks first from rev share sites. They are a great way to build your first backlinks because of their earning power and their ability to grow in authority quickly. In the last 30 days these five articles have made me almost $10 in Adsense income which is a drop in the bucket but quite significant considering my entire niche site only made $56 during the same time period.

If you are building a niche site make sure to not overlook this income source.  Write good articles to build these backlinks and then promote them with backlinks of their own through article marketing or through guestposting on blogs.  PostRunner is the best system around for this in my opinion.  Once your niche blog starts ranking better and pulling in revenue then your income will start growing exponentially.

All Other NSD Posts
NSD1 - Niche Site Duel #1 – I’m Jumping Into The Game - November 4, 2010
NSD2 - My Diabetic Shoes Site Is Seeing Results After 4 Days - November 7, 2010
NSD3 - Making Progress On My Diabetic Shoes Niche Site - November 17, 2010
NSD4 - Providing Value With My Diabetic Shoes Site - December 31, 2010
NSD5 - A Site On Diabetic Shoes – Another Niche Site Duel Update - March 16, 2011
NSD6 - Benefits Of Backlinking On Revenue Sharing Sites - March 21, 2011
NSD7 - Diabetic Shoes – How My Niche Site Earns (1st $100+ month) - April 1, 2011


For reference here is the Niche Site Duel hub on Pat's site.

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A Site On Diabetic Shoes – Another Niche Site Duel Update (#5)

It’s been some time since I talked about my diabetic shoes website that I started as a part of Pat and Tyrone’s Niche Site Duel. In previous posts (1, 2, 3, 4) I discussed (among other things) my feelings about using spun content or mass auto generated article submissions. I know they work and all but I’ve never felt they were something I would feel comfortable doing… so I haven’t.

Instead I’ve built my site (and backlinks) up slowly with unique content I’ve written myself. I have also focused on building my backlinks by focusing on building up only a few backlinks from the major revenue sharing sites and a few strong article directories and then backlinking those URLs to make them strong pages on their own passing a lot of link juice.

What I’ve Been Publishing Lately
Lately I’ve been adding more content to the main diabetic shoes site and some of it I have been publishing based on long tails of things already drawing trickle traffic as well as on other keywords which will actually help the site be a better resource to real diabetics with real foot problems. Basically I do want this site to have a wealth of information on it that is helpful to anyone needing these products and this kind of information.

Some of the keywords I’ve gone after have also been carefully selected based on their difficulty level as defined by Niche Refinery (see my Niche Refinery Review for more), the proprietary keyword selection tool available to members of The Keyword Academy.

Site Indexing
As a result I have built a site of roughly 16 pages plus tags, categories, and administrative pages. The whole site is basically indexed just fine (107 results for the site found in Google as of today’s writing) and many of the pages are ranking well for many long-tail keywords and moderately well for some shorter keywords. One suggestion I may have in this area for you is to get each of your category feeds setup under Feedage as well as your main blog feed. I wrote this article on submitting your InfoBarrel RSS Feed to Feedage a while back which may not exactly be focused on blogs but should help you understand the process nonetheless.

At this pace it will be a while before I take any 1st place rankings for any major traffic keywords but in my book slow and steady, calculated and intelligent design of content publication and backlink promotion will always win in the long run.

Site Design

http://bestshoesfordiabetics.com

It took me a while but back in January I finally worked on the aesthetics of the site a bit by adding a (bit) more “attractive” header. I also set up an appropriate contact page complete with working email form. I should have done this from the get-go but simply didn’t. I have some trouble with building aesthetics when I know there is no search traffic coming in.

I still plan on working more on site design in the coming month but only a little at a time. As I build more content and work on better monetization the site design and aesthetics should slowly change for the better. In the end I want this to look professional but not flashy at all and I do want the site to remain largely text based. My idea is to make many of the pages on the site feel a bit like a store to stay in line with Dave’s Amazon layout for blogs.

Traffic And Monetization Methods
Today the site is roughly 3 ½ months old. I went live on November 4, 2010 and as of today’s writing is starting to make some decent gains in search traffic. I’m slowly adding backlinks to the site in general from the revenue sharing websites as well as the revenue sharing bookmark sites and will be starting to increase my backlinking effort from PostRunner guest blogging submissions (see my post explaining what PostRunner is). I expect in not too much time I’ll continue to see good improvement in the way the site responds to search traffic.

For months now I’ve had Adsense on the site in addition to Amazon affiliate links but as I get more and more involved with Amazon’s affiliate program every day I am starting to lean in the direction of Amazon.

I have also been reading Dave’s excellent material on Making Money On Amazon which I HIGHLY recommend you read (I’ve linked to it twice now already!) and have been slowly implementing some of his advice into my site in the way of side bar links to Amazon product categories and building some posts up as an Amazon store on top followed by an informational blog post on the bottom.

This is new for the site so I haven’t really been able to measure the results of these changes quite yet but I can see how they will help. On my next report I’ll have to add to this topic with my observations on the monetization layout.

In the future I’d like to build in some integration with some specific medical supply stores (diabetic supply affiliate programs I’m thinking) but as always I like to see some traffic first before trying to satisfy their needs with ads and products.

Results so Far
So how has the site been doing so far? Not bad but there’s a lot of room for improvement. Over the last 30 days the site has seen 489 unique visitors with 76 percent coming from search engines. My main low volume keyword: “best shoes for diabetics” brought 18 unique visitors to the site over that time period and I currently rank #3 for it according to Scroogle. Some other long tail keywords worth mention include “best diabetic shoes” and “shoes for diabetics” ranking 7 & 92 respectively. With my upcoming PostRunner submissions those numbers should improve notably.

Always do your searches in Scroogle as your personalization is stripped out of the search results and you get a more accurate picture of where you rank.

As far as earnings on those visitors goes, over the last 30 days I have made $30.60 in Adsense and $25.63 in Amazon earnings for a total of $56.23. Since inception the site has made $48.51 on Amazon and $53.57 with Adsense totaling $102.08 in its first 3 ½ months. Again, not bad but I really should have spent more time on this project considering my last month saw revenue of over fifty dollars on less than 500 unique visitors. That’s a rate of more than $100 for every 1000 visitors which is pretty darned good.

In the coming weeks and months I expect to do some heavy backlinking to the site from PostRunner submissions. That will start inching my search rankings higher and I’ll start seeing some really good traffic and earnings if this earnings pace continues. Obviously I will continue to edit my pages and tweak the placement of monetization links to maximize my revenue per visitor.

One Side Note
I have been busy publishing my 28 days to start making a living online series and much of what I have done for my Diabetic Shoes site has followed what I’ve been discussing over the last couple weeks. I haven’t followed it to the letter or anything but only because I am slowly building the site and because I have access to PostRunner for my backlinks. For a beginner with no cash flow, many people prefer to stick to the free methods before investing in any programs.

Are you participating in the Niche Site Duel, let me know in the comments because Pat’s list is too long for me to follow along with them all. Good luck and good work guys.

All Other NSD Posts
NSD1 - Niche Site Duel #1 – I’m Jumping Into The Game - November 4, 2010
NSD2 - My Diabetic Shoes Site Is Seeing Results After 4 Days - November 7, 2010
NSD3 - Making Progress On My Diabetic Shoes Niche Site - November 17, 2010
NSD4 - Providing Value With My Diabetic Shoes Site - December 31, 2010
NSD5 - A Site On Diabetic Shoes – Another Niche Site Duel Update - March 16, 2011
NSD6 - Benefits Of Backlinking On Revenue Sharing Sites - March 21, 2011
NSD7 - Diabetic Shoes – How My Niche Site Earns (1st $100+ month) - April 1, 2011

For reference here is the Niche Site Duel hub on Pat's site.

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My Online Income Report

Last Updated: 3/28/2010

Looking for more information on how much money I’m making online? I share a lot of my income results – not everything – but a lot and below you will find a summary of all the income reports and information I currently share.

I first started making money on my first blog, my site on longevity and health, and then quickly started making money on eHow – in fact I wrote a long guide to improving your eHow Income which is quite notable now that eHow closed their Writer’s Compensation program (WCP) back in April of 2010. You can still write for Demand but the classic publications on eHow are no longer available meaning this guide is the best way you can increase your eHow income if you want to put in the work necessary.

eHow Earnings
I don’t really go into detail on my eHow earnings but I used to provide some relatively detailed statistics every month here on this blog. Suffice to say that I have 77 articles published on eHow which were primarily published before I knew very much about what I was doing and yet I still make roughly $250 per month over there.

If you are an eHow nut you may want to check out my main eHow Earnings page here on this site.

InfoBarrel Earnings
Soon after writing for eHow I started writing for InfoBarrel – see my InfoBarrel Review here for the lowdown on this site – where I initially wrote the majority of my backlink articles at. I used InfoBarrel initially for a backlink source to my first blog and to my eHow articles and only later on did I realize how much money I could make by actually focusing on using InfoBarrel as a “money site”.

Of all the sites I write for InfoBarrel is the one site where I consistently publish my full income reports on a monthly basis actually on the Infobarrel site. Currently I am making a little over $600 per month on InfoBarrel through a combination of Adsense, Chitika, and Amazon earnings on the heels of a bit more than 300 published articles.

You can read my main InfoBarrel Earnings report (off site) here or click through to each individual monthly report below:


InfoBarrel Income - October 2010
InfoBarrel Income - November 2010
InfoBarrel Income - December 2010
InfoBarrel Income - January 2011
InfoBarrel Income - February 2011

I’ve found that many people have many different opinions about InfoBarrel. A lot of people don’t like the site and a lot of people love the site. Interestingly I get the impression that experienced internet marketers, SEO folk, and knowledgeable content publishers value InfoBarrel for what it is and are able to make good money there either directly or indirectly by promoting their money sites - I do a bit of both.

Conversely, it seems that the newer writers, the “newbies” of this online enterprise, or the really low volume writers who do not think of this as a business but more of a hobby don’t like InfoBarrel. I think this is because they simply don’t know what they are doing wrong or are unwilling to work hard and treat their publications like a business.

In any event I make a lot of money on InfoBarrel as you can see from the above reports and I recommend you signup there and use the site to your advantage. I don’t sell anything so I’d invite you to at least use my referral link if you do signup.

Other Sites I Make Money From
In addition to he aforementioned sites I also make money on a number of supporting websites which I also use for backlinks to my other “main” publishing sites. I utilize Hubpages, Xomba, SheToldMe, InfoPirate, Posturown, Snipsly, and Squidoo which are all revenue sharing sites.

I don’t ever go into detail on how much I make overall on these sites nor do I pretend to have single accounts at them either – all combined I’ve got a handful of accounts some which are monetized and some which aren’t and I use them all to make some side money while I promote my main “money articles” as well as important or interesting pages of others online.

Of all these HubPages is a site much like Infobarrel that could be used to make a huge revenue stream all by itself but the others in my opinion are merely good support sites. Infobarrel offers a minimum 75 percent adshare which is better than the rest (Snipsly & Posturown excluded) so it gets my vote as best place to focus on… if however you were to choose HubPages you would be doing just fine as well. Again, if you signup please use my referral link. Thanks.

For me these sites make a significant stream of revenue that I would miss if it were to go away. Let’s leave it at that.

Blogs & Niche Sites
Lastly like many other bloggers, content writers, affiliate marketers, and site builders I have a small collection of web properties that I have built over the last couple years on top of this blog and my longevity blog. One such site is my Diabetic Shoes site which is my project as part of Pat & Tyrone’s Niche Site Duel.

This is a classic niche website which is designed to provide tons of valid and helpful information to people you have diabetes and need information of diabetic shoes and foot care. Because diabetes attacks the lower limbs so significantly in diabetics there are large swaths of people who could use this information in an organized way and I intend on delivering it to them.

As of this writing I do not sell anything on the website – I merely provide information and provide affiliate links in conjunction with contextual advertising to compensate me for my efforts. In the future as the site continues to develop I may change my tactics but for now this method is low maintenance and passive which is ideal.

I also have a other web properties which are similar to my Diabetic shoes website but those sites are part of my anon collection of web properties and as such I don’t disclose what they are or how much I am making on them.

As for my diabetic shoes site however, I have created the framework of the site, built some strong information filled pages and lightly promoted the site over the past two months and am regularly reporting on this site here on this blog. The site directly has earned me $37.86 over the past 10 weeks and indirectly it has earned me an additional $24.21. In the future I will begin providing monthly updates on this site specifically.

Edit: As of month ending March 2011 this site is making me roughly $100 per month.

As I previously said these sites are monetized either contextually or via various forms of affiliate sales. Some sites are monetized via a combination of the two and they all perform as well as can be expected given the amount of effort I have put into them and every month my earnings seem to increase in aggregate.

Other Affiliate Earnings & The Chezfat “Brand”
Talk in this niche has been dominated these days by the concept of brand so I will consider myself a brand – why not? This site really isn’t monetized other than the few things I link to with affiliate codes like account signup links to InfoBarrel, HubPages, etc. and more predominately with my affiliate promotion of The Keyword Academy (TKA). I don’t publish how much I get from these promotions because some of the links can’t be parsed out of my aggregate earnings from the sites in question.

The main money I make in this neighborhood is through my promotion of The Keyword Academy’s membership continuity program. This is one affiliate program I believe in to the bottom of my heart and deeply suggest you signup for. As you will see at the bottom of this post my overall income online took off when I became a member of The Keyword Academy and assuming you are capable of doing work and treating this like a business then I’m secure in believing the same is possible for you too.

I recently wrote a detailed article on InfoBarrel on using Niche Refinery (the keyword identification tool for TKA members) and previously wrote a long review of how TKA members easily obtain guestposting opportunities through Post Runner which is also only available to Keyword Academy members.  Lastly you can read this recent post on how you can use PostRunner to get free content for your blogs.

I myself am a paying member of The Keyword Academy and I deeply encourage you to do so as well. This is part of my monthly income (TKA affiliate commissions) so I would hope you would signup for their free trial month with my affiliate link and help me pay the bills while you learn to do the same.

In addition to my TKA affiliate earnings I have been expanding into affiliate sales on some of my other anon blogs.  I have made some money on some of the more popular affiliate networks like Clickbank, Amazon, Shareasale, and Commission Junction - you can be sure that this is an area I look forward to expanding into for more diversification.

My Online Income In Summary
On the whole I started out in this enterprise in the Spring of 2009. I was green but I was willing to learn and work hard. In April of 2010 I joined The Keyword Academy and ever since my earnings have increased quite dramatically across the board.

A long time ago I set a long term goal to replace my day job income 100 percent and although you don’t know how much I make in my traditional field you should know that 100 percent on this scale is my actual salary when I started this blog 18 months ago. I have yet to achieve my long term goal of duplicating my income but I am getting closer and improving my earnings faster with each passing month. Here is where I stand through February 2011.

So as you can see it’s been a long journey, I'm been improving by leaps and bounds lately, but I’ve still got a ways to go. I am confident however that in time I will be exactly where I want to be… and I hope you can get to where you want to be too.

Check back later for continual updates to this post as the months pass and my income situation changes and please make sure to get involved in the comments. Thanks.

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Guest Post With PostRunner At The Keyword Academy

As I promised over on the IB Community forums earlier today I said I would write up a bit of info regarding PostRunner a blog guest posting service made available to members of The Keyword Academy (aff).

I am a member at The Keyword Academy and have been so since March and love it. As I've told others the membership is worth it for the PostRunenr service alone in my opinion however the membership also offers plenty of additional perks especially for the people who are new to internet marketing and content/blog creation.

What Is PostRunner?

PostRunner is a guestposting service that is one of many benefits of being a member of The Keyword Academy. There are a number of benefits like coaching for beginners, and niche selection/keyword tools, videos on how to setup a moneymaking blog/content site, tracking tools to keep organized with your backlinking, and plenty of very experienced members who make a lot of money running blogs and content sites that can answer your questions. These are not the same people you'll find in A-list blogging membership sites; these are mareters rather than bloggers for the most part.

Each of these benefits are amazing on their own right but the bread and butter of The Keyword Academy membership in my opinion is the PostRunner service.

PostRunner is about 1000+ different wordpress blogs owned and maintained by the members of the Keyword Academy - as far as I can tell there are a few thousand Keyword Academy members and rouhgly 1000 blogs hooked into the PostRunner system. I personally have one blog in the system and am contemplating adding a second, other members have none in the system, and other members have multiples. Each blog is owned by the members (like me) and each blog is hosted on seperate hosting accounts - some are monetized and others are not (mine is not monetized).

What Are The PostRunner Rules?

The rule for members is that anyone can post a guest post to any blog in the system and the site owner has the discretion of approving or declining the submission based on the quality of the post and their own persoanl discretion. There are post quality requirements on the system level to guest post as well as post length requirements and maximum link requirements.

The system rules require 100 percent unique content of high quality. No spun or auto-generated content is allowed nor are blog owners allowed to change the link text or add nofollow attributes to the links that guest posters include in their submissions. The guest posting system is designed to be as usefull to the blog owners as it is for the guest bloggers. And because the owners of these blogs use the system for their guest blogging all the sites are high quality and cared for and quality on all posts is generally high.

Most guestposts get accepted on the first attempt. I've posted more than 300 guest posts through the system and I've never had a guest post denied by a blog owner more than once. Keep the quality up and everybody wins. Post Runner really top notch and it makes creating backlink diversity a breeze.

The Keyword Academy (aff) is as white hat as one could possibly be - if anyone is suspected of breaking the rules with their posts or with their blogs they are cut off from the system and since each site is essentially owned and maintained by a different owner on a different hosting plan this doesn't get into trouble as a big blog network in the eyes of the Search Engines. Following Google's rules is critical and the system values these rules more than anything with their passion for quality sites and quality content.

Right now you can only use PostRunner if you are a member of TKA and it is a recurring monthly fee of $33. It is well worth it in my book. First month membership fee is $1 and you can cancel at any time. You can even use postrunner in your first month to try it out and see if it is valuable for you.

If you want to give it a shot I'd love to hear your opinion of the program - My referal link is on my blog in the upper right hand corner of each page or you can click the links to The Keyword Academy in this post.

Currently I use PostRunner to send backlinks to my moneymaking articles over on IB and it's making a hige difference. I've been enjoying my time at IB and am pleased to help out fellow InfoBarrel members.

Also of Note
Many of the people that use Postrunner (outside of the newbies) are big time moneymakers online - many of them are making many thousands of dollars a month posting keyword focused articles to blogs and sites like HubPages and InfoBarrel using the sites on Postrunner to build backlinks and authority to their personal blogs and content articles. This method works and is the reason why so many big time money-makers are mebers. Many are making 2000-5000 a month and PostRunenr is amjor part of their process.

If you want to give PostRunenr a try I'd love to refer you in. Remember the first month is $1 and every month after that is $33 payable by PayPal subscription.

You can check it out for yourself here and please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

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