As you may have remembered, my last update was less than a month ago and was for the months of August, September and October 2010. Once again I haven't done any work to expand my online income, other than writing this aforementioned blog entry and responding to comments on my Hubpages/Infobarrel/blog articles and so my income is once again practically passive. It will be interesting to see whether my earnings will continue to improve.
Hubpages: $182.74 (6% increase over October 2010)
Infobarrel: $0.17 (94% decrease)
Shetoldme: $0.21 (80% decrease)
Xomba: $0.34 (57% decrease)
Webanswers: $76.65 (10% increase)
As can be seen, in November, whilst more individual streams fell than increased, overall my online income grew due to great growth from Webanswers and Hubpages which are my two highest earning sources. Considering I haven't spent any time trying to increase my online income since August, for my month on month online income to still be increasing is very good news for me. Hopefully I will be able to carry this forward, although I imagine that my increase is partly due to the season and so come the new year my income will drop because of this - but we shall see......
Monthly Updates - August, September and October 2010
You may have noticed that I haven't updated this blog in a long time (3 months in fact!). This is because I haven't had any time to dedicate to online money making activities. In fact, I did absolutely no work on these activities since August (at the time of writing it is almost the end of November) and so I feel this will give a good overview of the possibilities for true a true passive income. I deliberated whether to bunch my earnings reports for August, September and October together, but have decided that whilst I will have just one blog post, it will have the earnings reports for the three months separate. The only exception to this will be Redgage, where I have been unable to break down my earnings by month.
So firstly, my earnings for August:
Hubpages: $97.16 (21% decrease over July 2010)
Infobarrel: $0.36 (100% increase)
Shetoldme: $0.01 (98% decrease)
Xomba: $1.17 (No earnings last month)
Webanswers: $72.84 (No earnings last month)
As can be seen there was a decrease in Hubpages earnings during this month, but this was more than made up for with Webanswers earnings. In my July 2010 earnings update I aimed to get earnings of over $150, which thanks to Webanswers I managed.
Now on to my earnings for September:
Hubpages: $154.34 (59% increase over August 2010)
Infobarrel: $1.17 (225% increase)
Shetoldme: $0.32 (3100% increase)
Xomba: $0.06 (95% decrease)
Webanswers: $74.64 (2% increase)
As can be seen, in September my earnings increased yet again. My Webanswers earnings stayed broadly similar to the previous month, which shows that this wasn't a one off (but is it a two off?). Also I was pleased to see my Hubpages earnings rebound to where they were a few months previously. Remember, that I did no work during September and so this is purely residual income.
Now my October 2010 online earnings:
Hubpages: $172.80 (12% increase over September 2010)
Infobarrel: $3.01 (157% increase)
Shetoldme: $1.06 (231.25% increase)
Xomba: $0.79 (1217% increase)
Webanswers: $69.5 (7% decrease)
Yousaytoo: $0.99 (No earnings last month)
As can be seen my earnings continued to rise in September 2010. Whilst my webanswers earnings fell, this was more than made up through earnings increases from Hubpages and other sources. Again it is worth noting that I did absolutely no work cultivating my online income in most of August and all of September and October and so this is purely passive income - which still increased! For this reason I am very happy and hopefully I can continue these earnings in November and December 2010 to make 2010 a massive year and beat my 2009 earnings.
So firstly, my earnings for August:
Hubpages: $97.16 (21% decrease over July 2010)
Infobarrel: $0.36 (100% increase)
Shetoldme: $0.01 (98% decrease)
Xomba: $1.17 (No earnings last month)
Webanswers: $72.84 (No earnings last month)
As can be seen there was a decrease in Hubpages earnings during this month, but this was more than made up for with Webanswers earnings. In my July 2010 earnings update I aimed to get earnings of over $150, which thanks to Webanswers I managed.
Now on to my earnings for September:
Hubpages: $154.34 (59% increase over August 2010)
Infobarrel: $1.17 (225% increase)
Shetoldme: $0.32 (3100% increase)
Xomba: $0.06 (95% decrease)
Webanswers: $74.64 (2% increase)
As can be seen, in September my earnings increased yet again. My Webanswers earnings stayed broadly similar to the previous month, which shows that this wasn't a one off (but is it a two off?). Also I was pleased to see my Hubpages earnings rebound to where they were a few months previously. Remember, that I did no work during September and so this is purely residual income.
Now my October 2010 online earnings:
Hubpages: $172.80 (12% increase over September 2010)
Infobarrel: $3.01 (157% increase)
Shetoldme: $1.06 (231.25% increase)
Xomba: $0.79 (1217% increase)
Webanswers: $69.5 (7% decrease)
Yousaytoo: $0.99 (No earnings last month)
As can be seen my earnings continued to rise in September 2010. Whilst my webanswers earnings fell, this was more than made up through earnings increases from Hubpages and other sources. Again it is worth noting that I did absolutely no work cultivating my online income in most of August and all of September and October and so this is purely passive income - which still increased! For this reason I am very happy and hopefully I can continue these earnings in November and December 2010 to make 2010 a massive year and beat my 2009 earnings.
Monthly update - July 2010
Time for my latest update on what I have earned in July 2010. I can't believe it is that soon already, but it is.
This month was another month in which I created very little new material, and also I did very little in the way of backlinking and so my earnings this month can once again be pretty much classed as residual. I did a very small amount of backlinking but that was it. So here are my earnings and as usual only those sites which earned me something are included.
Hubpages: $122.61 (8% decrease over June 2010)
Infobarrel: $0.18 (69% decrease)
Redgage: $0.11 (57% increase)
Shetoldme: $0.53 (No earnings last month)
As can be seen from the above, I had a decrease in earnings, with some sources of income such as Webanswers and Xomba having exactly no earnings during July. This was disappointing, but hopefully the numbers will increase over the coming months. I am hoping that due to the small amount of traffic that I get this is just a statistical swing. I also have a long standing aim now that my earnings are increasing to have a month where every day my Adsense earnings exceed $1 - this month was the closest I have come yet with the only day when I earned less than $1 from Adsense was 31st July where I only earned $0.97!
You may remember my targets from my June 2010 earnings update - well as you can see I didn't reach $150 combined and neither did I reach $5 from Xomba - in fact I was as far aware as I could possibly be. This is disappointing, but considering I did no work in July 2010 to still manage to keep my decrease in earnings to under 10% is uplifting and I feel this shows the true potential of residual income. I hope to be able to do more work during August and so I hope to reach earnings of $150 and also keep daily Adsense earnings above $1 every day! I am also getting very close to having lifetime Hubpages earnings of $1000 and so I hope to hit this amount during August 2010.
Were your July 2010 earnings more successful than mine? Have any tips on how I am going wrong? As always use the comment box below!
This month was another month in which I created very little new material, and also I did very little in the way of backlinking and so my earnings this month can once again be pretty much classed as residual. I did a very small amount of backlinking but that was it. So here are my earnings and as usual only those sites which earned me something are included.
Hubpages: $122.61 (8% decrease over June 2010)
Infobarrel: $0.18 (69% decrease)
Redgage: $0.11 (57% increase)
Shetoldme: $0.53 (No earnings last month)
As can be seen from the above, I had a decrease in earnings, with some sources of income such as Webanswers and Xomba having exactly no earnings during July. This was disappointing, but hopefully the numbers will increase over the coming months. I am hoping that due to the small amount of traffic that I get this is just a statistical swing. I also have a long standing aim now that my earnings are increasing to have a month where every day my Adsense earnings exceed $1 - this month was the closest I have come yet with the only day when I earned less than $1 from Adsense was 31st July where I only earned $0.97!
You may remember my targets from my June 2010 earnings update - well as you can see I didn't reach $150 combined and neither did I reach $5 from Xomba - in fact I was as far aware as I could possibly be. This is disappointing, but considering I did no work in July 2010 to still manage to keep my decrease in earnings to under 10% is uplifting and I feel this shows the true potential of residual income. I hope to be able to do more work during August and so I hope to reach earnings of $150 and also keep daily Adsense earnings above $1 every day! I am also getting very close to having lifetime Hubpages earnings of $1000 and so I hope to hit this amount during August 2010.
Were your July 2010 earnings more successful than mine? Have any tips on how I am going wrong? As always use the comment box below!
Groupon UK - save serious amounts of dosh
This post is about a website which helps you save money, not earn money and so it is a bit different from many articles I have on the site but I hope it still proves to be useful (however there is the potential to earn money as a Groupon affiliate - see more information below).
Groupon, also known as Group On is a company which specialises in bulk buying to bring cheaper deals for consumers. This is a brief overview of how the website works, a quick review and information on whether Groupon is actually a big scam. These deals can be anything from spa treatment sessions through to meals through to bowling; but they have one thing in common - they offer massive percentages off (over 90% in many cases) but what is unique is each deal lasts a maximum of a day.
For example, recently Groupon have offered tickets to the cinema for £1 instead of £12, £20 instead of £90 for an hour long massage and manicure and £12.50 instead of £66 for access to the Streetcar fleet (as an aside it is possible to get 10% cashback on all Groupon purchases by using TopCashBack, further increasing earnings!).
How do they manage to get such good deals. The company line is they manage to get discounts through bulk buying - which must be true up to a point but I think there are other reasons as well. Many companies probably see it as a good way of getting advertising and new clients - think of it as them offering a discount now in the hope of getting repeat business at the normal price. Also I think that the Groupon business must also make money from no shows due the unusual way in which the scheme works.
There are a large number of websites which promise discount vouchers. However, Groupon is slightly different. Instead of giving you a voucher to print off it asks you to pay the price upfront and then book an appointment or whatever later. Often there can be limits on when vouchers can be used etc so I would imagine that many people forget and so don't take advantage of what they have purchased.
When signing up, you are asked for details on where you live - this is for administration purposes and to make sure you are shown the correct deals as most deals are location specific. As such there are many Groupon sites available, including large cities like London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow but also smaller places like Falkirk, Oldham and Telford and one can only imagine that the scope of these will increase.
Having said all of this, I believe Groupon is a great idea. It has been around in the USA for a while and has recently launched in the UK to great acclaim. Already many people are using the site and I can only imagine this will increase further as people discover the excellent deals on offer. I can only provide my own personal experiences in my own review and I have found Groupon to be excellent.
There is also the potential to earn credit for use on purchasing items by using referral links to encourage other people to sign up for Groupon. At the time of writing, for every person who signs up to Groupon, the referrer gets £6 into their account and for this reason all of the links above on this website are affiliates (meaning i earn £6 for every sign up). However if you don't want to use this affiliate link click here to go straight to the Groupon website.
If you are interested in Groupon sign up here.
Have you used Groupon? What were your experiences of it? Use the section below to give a review - and don't be afraid to call it a scam if you think that is what it is (although I certainly don't think it is!).
Groupon, also known as Group On is a company which specialises in bulk buying to bring cheaper deals for consumers. This is a brief overview of how the website works, a quick review and information on whether Groupon is actually a big scam. These deals can be anything from spa treatment sessions through to meals through to bowling; but they have one thing in common - they offer massive percentages off (over 90% in many cases) but what is unique is each deal lasts a maximum of a day.
For example, recently Groupon have offered tickets to the cinema for £1 instead of £12, £20 instead of £90 for an hour long massage and manicure and £12.50 instead of £66 for access to the Streetcar fleet (as an aside it is possible to get 10% cashback on all Groupon purchases by using TopCashBack, further increasing earnings!).
How do they manage to get such good deals. The company line is they manage to get discounts through bulk buying - which must be true up to a point but I think there are other reasons as well. Many companies probably see it as a good way of getting advertising and new clients - think of it as them offering a discount now in the hope of getting repeat business at the normal price. Also I think that the Groupon business must also make money from no shows due the unusual way in which the scheme works.
There are a large number of websites which promise discount vouchers. However, Groupon is slightly different. Instead of giving you a voucher to print off it asks you to pay the price upfront and then book an appointment or whatever later. Often there can be limits on when vouchers can be used etc so I would imagine that many people forget and so don't take advantage of what they have purchased.
When signing up, you are asked for details on where you live - this is for administration purposes and to make sure you are shown the correct deals as most deals are location specific. As such there are many Groupon sites available, including large cities like London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow but also smaller places like Falkirk, Oldham and Telford and one can only imagine that the scope of these will increase.
Having said all of this, I believe Groupon is a great idea. It has been around in the USA for a while and has recently launched in the UK to great acclaim. Already many people are using the site and I can only imagine this will increase further as people discover the excellent deals on offer. I can only provide my own personal experiences in my own review and I have found Groupon to be excellent.
There is also the potential to earn credit for use on purchasing items by using referral links to encourage other people to sign up for Groupon. At the time of writing, for every person who signs up to Groupon, the referrer gets £6 into their account and for this reason all of the links above on this website are affiliates (meaning i earn £6 for every sign up). However if you don't want to use this affiliate link click here to go straight to the Groupon website.
If you are interested in Groupon sign up here.
Have you used Groupon? What were your experiences of it? Use the section below to give a review - and don't be afraid to call it a scam if you think that is what it is (although I certainly don't think it is!).
Increasing the Alexa ranking
This is an idea for a topic for an article I have had in my mind for quite a while (over a month in fact) and have just got around to writing it! The initial idea came from a blog post by Kidgas, in which he explained about his aim to get into the top 500,000 websites as listed by the company Alexa.
For those of you who are unaware of Alexa, they are a company which measure the usage of webpages to see what people are looking at and provide metrics for each webpage. Unlike other such services, such as Google Analytics, with Alexa it is possible to get an overview of any webpage worldwide, without the need to be an admin, albeit it in much less detail. As such it is very popular tool to be used when people compare webpages - for example it is possible to find out that visits to Facebook.com exceed visits to Yahoo.com and that Facebook.com is the second most popular webpage worldwide. One key thing is the Alexa ranking - put simply the lower the ranking the more traffic a website receives with Google being at position 1.
Many people with websites, Kidgas included, use this the Alexa ranking as a useful target to see how their webpage compares with other webpages. This can be a good thing, and in fact it is something I have done myself.
The reason I question the use of Alexa ranking when trying to measure achievements in making money online is it gives very little information and so it is important it is used wisely as a target setting tool. Some people check daily and becomes a sort of obsession - this can result in time being wasted. Many people become disheartened when they fail to rise quickly - it can take time to rise in the Alexa rankings!
Perhaps the biggest problem with Alexa rankings though for small sites is the statistical problems. Since it only samples a percentage of web traffic and then extrapolates there are many chances for errors to occur. For websites with large traffic sampling errors are mitigated by the massive number of samples taken, however with smaller webpages such as mine sampling errors can be major. Over the last month Alexa shows the traffic to A Little Extra Money UK as being up 300%, yet using the true figures from Google Analytics the growth has only been about 50%. As such there is a discrepancy of 250% which is a massive amount (a swing of 250% the other way would have shown my traffic falling by 200% month on month!).
Along with inaccuracies, another problem with Alexa is it doesn't give information which is as broken down as that created by Google Analytics, for example. With Google Analytics it is possible to see daily/weekly/monthly/yearly traffic sources, bounce rates etc and it is even possible to find out where abouts on the website earnings occur.
These are some of the reasons why I think it can be foolish to closely examine Alexa rankings and getting too hung up on them. Still, if used, as I do and Kidgas does, to set longer term aims Alexa rankings can be a useful motivational tool for an online income seeker!
Do any of you use Alexa rankings to assist you in making money online? How? As always if you have comments use the box below!
For those of you who are unaware of Alexa, they are a company which measure the usage of webpages to see what people are looking at and provide metrics for each webpage. Unlike other such services, such as Google Analytics, with Alexa it is possible to get an overview of any webpage worldwide, without the need to be an admin, albeit it in much less detail. As such it is very popular tool to be used when people compare webpages - for example it is possible to find out that visits to Facebook.com exceed visits to Yahoo.com and that Facebook.com is the second most popular webpage worldwide. One key thing is the Alexa ranking - put simply the lower the ranking the more traffic a website receives with Google being at position 1.
Many people with websites, Kidgas included, use this the Alexa ranking as a useful target to see how their webpage compares with other webpages. This can be a good thing, and in fact it is something I have done myself.
The reason I question the use of Alexa ranking when trying to measure achievements in making money online is it gives very little information and so it is important it is used wisely as a target setting tool. Some people check daily and becomes a sort of obsession - this can result in time being wasted. Many people become disheartened when they fail to rise quickly - it can take time to rise in the Alexa rankings!
Perhaps the biggest problem with Alexa rankings though for small sites is the statistical problems. Since it only samples a percentage of web traffic and then extrapolates there are many chances for errors to occur. For websites with large traffic sampling errors are mitigated by the massive number of samples taken, however with smaller webpages such as mine sampling errors can be major. Over the last month Alexa shows the traffic to A Little Extra Money UK as being up 300%, yet using the true figures from Google Analytics the growth has only been about 50%. As such there is a discrepancy of 250% which is a massive amount (a swing of 250% the other way would have shown my traffic falling by 200% month on month!).
Along with inaccuracies, another problem with Alexa is it doesn't give information which is as broken down as that created by Google Analytics, for example. With Google Analytics it is possible to see daily/weekly/monthly/yearly traffic sources, bounce rates etc and it is even possible to find out where abouts on the website earnings occur.
These are some of the reasons why I think it can be foolish to closely examine Alexa rankings and getting too hung up on them. Still, if used, as I do and Kidgas does, to set longer term aims Alexa rankings can be a useful motivational tool for an online income seeker!
Do any of you use Alexa rankings to assist you in making money online? How? As always if you have comments use the box below!
Top Cash Back Review - The best cashback site?
Top Cash Back (aka TopCashBack or Top Cashback) is an online paid cashback site which I have used very successfully and so this is my own personal review of UK Top Cash Back. The amount I have earned from Top Cash Back is shown to the right, along with my earnings from some other online money making/saving schemes which you may want to try out.
Feel free to add you own comments on Top Cash Back at the bottom of this review in the comments section and hopefully it will be similar to my opinions, including if you have experience of the US version of this site.
Top Cash Back is a cashback site many others, such as Mutual Points which I have reviewed previously. I will eventually compare the pros and cons of each, but before then I shall give an overview of what cashback sites are and how they work.
Cashback sites, as the name suggest, are websites which allow you to earn cashback on purchases made online. Imagine there are two online companies: Company A which sells shoes online and Company B which is a fashion trends website. Company B may choose to place links to the website of Company A and in return Company A will pay Company B a percentage of the income earned from selling shoes to customers who came from the fashion trends website. Cashback sites take advantage of the commission which is paid by many online retailers, such as Tesco, Play.com, Phones4U, eBay etc and hand on a portion of it to the customer. Cashback sites can come in many shapes and sizes, but at their most basic they are just a site full of links to retailers. Now a description of Top Cash Back has been provided, let's get on with the review along with pros and cons of Top Cash Back.
Top Cash Back is a very easy website to use. Make sure you complete the registration process for Top Cash Back when first starting out on Top Cash Back. Once registered, find the merchant which you want to purchase from either by browsing by category or by using the handy search box. On the page of the merchant there will be various information. One is the cash back amount. On Top Cash Back this can either be a fixed amount regardless of amount spent, or a percentage of the total cost of the product. Top Cash Back also add some information which explains how much certainty there is of getting the cash back and the time frame for this, along with reviews from others who have used this merchant through Top Cash Back. Many Cash Back offers require a purchase to be made, but some just require an action to be done for example visiting a certain website and signing up for a newsletter.
On Top Cash Back the payment is made by PayPal, cheque or BACS after a certain period of time has elapsed. This delay in payment is to ensure that you don't return the goods prior to payment etc which could potentially leave the retailer out of pocket.
Most of these actions mentioned above can be carried out on many cash back websites, so what sets Top Cash Back apart from the competition. Put simply, the rates on offer. Most cash back websites make their money by taking a fee out of the commission offered by the retailer - Top Cash Back does not. As a result the cash back is always at least 100%. I say at least because it is possible to get a multiplier effect on Top Cash Back, up to 110%, depending on the cash back received in the previous month. Top Cash Back makes money from advertisements, not cash back, and so this ensures that the company offers the best rates. What's more, if you do somehow manage to find better rates on another cash back website Top Cash Back promise to match these - which is more good news!
To make this review slightly easier to read here are some bullet points of the pros and cons.
Pros:
Update: Since writing this review Top Cash Back has launched in the US using the address topcashback.com. Obviously, being in the UK I am unable to use this American version of the site. However, it looks identical to the UK site and so I should imagine it works in the same way. I would welcome feedback if you are in America and have used this USA version of the site (http://www.topcashback.com/ref/Bristolboy) or if you are going to join this site from in the US based on this review.
Feel free to add you own comments on Top Cash Back at the bottom of this review in the comments section and hopefully it will be similar to my opinions, including if you have experience of the US version of this site.
Top Cash Back is a cashback site many others, such as Mutual Points which I have reviewed previously. I will eventually compare the pros and cons of each, but before then I shall give an overview of what cashback sites are and how they work.
Cashback sites, as the name suggest, are websites which allow you to earn cashback on purchases made online. Imagine there are two online companies: Company A which sells shoes online and Company B which is a fashion trends website. Company B may choose to place links to the website of Company A and in return Company A will pay Company B a percentage of the income earned from selling shoes to customers who came from the fashion trends website. Cashback sites take advantage of the commission which is paid by many online retailers, such as Tesco, Play.com, Phones4U, eBay etc and hand on a portion of it to the customer. Cashback sites can come in many shapes and sizes, but at their most basic they are just a site full of links to retailers. Now a description of Top Cash Back has been provided, let's get on with the review along with pros and cons of Top Cash Back.
Top Cash Back is a very easy website to use. Make sure you complete the registration process for Top Cash Back when first starting out on Top Cash Back. Once registered, find the merchant which you want to purchase from either by browsing by category or by using the handy search box. On the page of the merchant there will be various information. One is the cash back amount. On Top Cash Back this can either be a fixed amount regardless of amount spent, or a percentage of the total cost of the product. Top Cash Back also add some information which explains how much certainty there is of getting the cash back and the time frame for this, along with reviews from others who have used this merchant through Top Cash Back. Many Cash Back offers require a purchase to be made, but some just require an action to be done for example visiting a certain website and signing up for a newsletter.
On Top Cash Back the payment is made by PayPal, cheque or BACS after a certain period of time has elapsed. This delay in payment is to ensure that you don't return the goods prior to payment etc which could potentially leave the retailer out of pocket.
Most of these actions mentioned above can be carried out on many cash back websites, so what sets Top Cash Back apart from the competition. Put simply, the rates on offer. Most cash back websites make their money by taking a fee out of the commission offered by the retailer - Top Cash Back does not. As a result the cash back is always at least 100%. I say at least because it is possible to get a multiplier effect on Top Cash Back, up to 110%, depending on the cash back received in the previous month. Top Cash Back makes money from advertisements, not cash back, and so this ensures that the company offers the best rates. What's more, if you do somehow manage to find better rates on another cash back website Top Cash Back promise to match these - which is more good news!
To make this review slightly easier to read here are some bullet points of the pros and cons.
Pros:
- Highest cash back available
- Range of options for being paid
- Top ups can increase cash back to 110%
- Easy to set up and manage
- Over 2000 retailers and counting
- Can take a while to get paid
- Some companies do not take part in such schemes eg at the time of writing Amazon
- Can be confusing to work out the best deal especially when there are different cashback amount across a range of merchants
Update: Since writing this review Top Cash Back has launched in the US using the address topcashback.com. Obviously, being in the UK I am unable to use this American version of the site. However, it looks identical to the UK site and so I should imagine it works in the same way. I would welcome feedback if you are in America and have used this USA version of the site (http://www.topcashback.com/ref/Bristolboy) or if you are going to join this site from in the US based on this review.
Monthly Update - June 2010
Is it really already that time of the month again? It only seems like a week ago that I did my last monthly update. Time really does fly when you are watching every game of the World Cup, even when your team plays absolutely awfully! No point in making excuses about dodgy linesmen etc - all of the performances were rubbish. Anyway enough of the footie - I am sure most of you only care about the figures (if you want to know about the World Cup find yourself a different blog!).
During the last month I have done very little in the way of trying to increase my online income beyond a quick little bit of backlinking using the sites mentioned in previous months (Redgage, Xomba, SheToldMe etc) but even this was in very small amounts. I did however receive money in my bank account from TopCashBack - over £230 which is in excess of US$350 which is not too bad considering I was going to take out that exact mobile phone contract anyway!
You may remember that my target set in my May 2010 Monthly Update was to try and keep my earnings above $100, and if possible push on to $150 (although this was dependent on time and the World Cup took up the majority of my time during June 2010). So here are my earnings for June 2010, again with an indication of whether it was an increase or decrease.
Hubpages: $133.75 (6% increase over June 2010)
Infobarrel: $0.58 (16% decrease)
Xomba: $2.55 (50% increase)
Webanswers: $0.33 (65% increase)
Redgage: $0.07 (63% decrease)
This month I actually managed to increase my total earnings slightly, with an increase in Webanswers, Xomba and most importantly Hubpages more than making up for a decrease in Redgage and Infobarrel income. This meant I exceeded my conservative target of earning $100 from residual income sources and actually was less than $15 within my target of $150 which is impressive considering I did little to nothing this month with my online activities so this can truly be called residual income.
My targets for July 2010 are to increase my earnings further - I would like to make a minimum of $150 from all sources combined and try and get Xomba over $5 if possible (although this will require a near doubling of income from this source).
I also hope to manage to make a few more posts on this site to see if it results in more traffic (I am driven by the excellent traffic to My Money Making Experiment, Residuals and Royalties and My Online Income By Kidags to name just a few blogs which also do monthly online money making updates and if I could achieve just a fraction of their traffic I would be very happy).
During the last month I have done very little in the way of trying to increase my online income beyond a quick little bit of backlinking using the sites mentioned in previous months (Redgage, Xomba, SheToldMe etc) but even this was in very small amounts. I did however receive money in my bank account from TopCashBack - over £230 which is in excess of US$350 which is not too bad considering I was going to take out that exact mobile phone contract anyway!
You may remember that my target set in my May 2010 Monthly Update was to try and keep my earnings above $100, and if possible push on to $150 (although this was dependent on time and the World Cup took up the majority of my time during June 2010). So here are my earnings for June 2010, again with an indication of whether it was an increase or decrease.
Hubpages: $133.75 (6% increase over June 2010)
Infobarrel: $0.58 (16% decrease)
Xomba: $2.55 (50% increase)
Webanswers: $0.33 (65% increase)
Redgage: $0.07 (63% decrease)
This month I actually managed to increase my total earnings slightly, with an increase in Webanswers, Xomba and most importantly Hubpages more than making up for a decrease in Redgage and Infobarrel income. This meant I exceeded my conservative target of earning $100 from residual income sources and actually was less than $15 within my target of $150 which is impressive considering I did little to nothing this month with my online activities so this can truly be called residual income.
My targets for July 2010 are to increase my earnings further - I would like to make a minimum of $150 from all sources combined and try and get Xomba over $5 if possible (although this will require a near doubling of income from this source).
I also hope to manage to make a few more posts on this site to see if it results in more traffic (I am driven by the excellent traffic to My Money Making Experiment, Residuals and Royalties and My Online Income By Kidags to name just a few blogs which also do monthly online money making updates and if I could achieve just a fraction of their traffic I would be very happy).
Monthly Update - May 2010
I wrote a few articles over the past month for Hubpages, Xomba etc and continued with my backlinking using sites such as Xomba, SheToldMe etc. I also set up a few more free blogger blogs to try out new ideas.
Another large income source for me this month was TopCashBack (I earned in excess of £200!). I intend to write a full blog post on this in the next few days but basically it is the most generous cashback scheme in the UK. However, since this isn't strictly a source of residual income it isn't included below. In addition, if you sign up through the link provided here before mid June then you will get a bonus of £2.50 when you reach £5 in your account.
If you remember from my April 2010 update my aim was to hit $75 with Hubpages and $5 with all the other sources combined, with an ambitious target of $100 in total. Without further ado here are my online residual income earnings for May 2010:
Hubpages: $125.81 (62% increase over April 2010)
Infobarrel: $0.69 (78% decrease over)
Xomba: $1.70 (133% increase)
Webanswers: $0.20 (25% increase)
Redgage: $0.19 (94% decrease)
SheToldMe: $3.33 (New this month)
As can be seen from this I easily exceeded all my targets. Hubpages, which makes up the bulk of my earnings, had a massive increase and by itself took me over the magical $100 level. The best news about this was that teh increase was due to increases in traffic to most of my Hubpages.
Infobarrel unfortunately fell quite sharply and was passed by SheToldMe and Xomba which is probably a result of all the work I have spent on these sites with backlinking articles etc.
Redage had a sharp fall, but this just reflected the fact I didn't use the site as much in April and I didn't get a $3 bonus like I did in March.
My targets for June 2010 are quite modest, mainly due to me being pre-occupied with the World Cup in South Africa. As a minimum I would like to keep my online income above $100 although I will be aiming to push on to $150 if I get the time.
Another large income source for me this month was TopCashBack (I earned in excess of £200!). I intend to write a full blog post on this in the next few days but basically it is the most generous cashback scheme in the UK. However, since this isn't strictly a source of residual income it isn't included below. In addition, if you sign up through the link provided here before mid June then you will get a bonus of £2.50 when you reach £5 in your account.
If you remember from my April 2010 update my aim was to hit $75 with Hubpages and $5 with all the other sources combined, with an ambitious target of $100 in total. Without further ado here are my online residual income earnings for May 2010:
Hubpages: $125.81 (62% increase over April 2010)
Infobarrel: $0.69 (78% decrease over)
Xomba: $1.70 (133% increase)
Webanswers: $0.20 (25% increase)
Redgage: $0.19 (94% decrease)
SheToldMe: $3.33 (New this month)
As can be seen from this I easily exceeded all my targets. Hubpages, which makes up the bulk of my earnings, had a massive increase and by itself took me over the magical $100 level. The best news about this was that teh increase was due to increases in traffic to most of my Hubpages.
Infobarrel unfortunately fell quite sharply and was passed by SheToldMe and Xomba which is probably a result of all the work I have spent on these sites with backlinking articles etc.
Redage had a sharp fall, but this just reflected the fact I didn't use the site as much in April and I didn't get a $3 bonus like I did in March.
My targets for June 2010 are quite modest, mainly due to me being pre-occupied with the World Cup in South Africa. As a minimum I would like to keep my online income above $100 although I will be aiming to push on to $150 if I get the time.
Adverts on Hubpages Mobile
Hubpages is an online revenue sharing website which earns money partly through adverts at the time of writing does not show adverts on page views from cell phones.
I have recently purchased a brand new phone, the amazing HTC Desire and so I decided to read a hub my someone I follow. One thing I noticed straight away was there was no adverts shown. I did a bit more research and it turns out no hubs have adverts on them, although where there are eBay and Amazon referral links these DO show up. As a result, from mobile impressions eBay and Amazon are the only sources of income at the present stage.
This issue only occurs on sites such as Hubpages where there are mobile versions of pages. Other sites such as Infobarrel and Xomba do not appear to have mobile sites as such and so when viewing these sites through mobile devices the normal desktop version is displayed and so there is still the potential to earn through Adsense clicks.
I did a bit of research using Google Analytics and discovered impressions on my hubs from mobile sources amounted to about 1000. As a result, I could possibly earn more if adverts were shown on Hubpages when accessed through a mobile device such as the iPhone, Blackberry or Android device such as the Motorola Droid or HTC Droid Incredible.
Hopefully in the future adverts will be shown on hubs when displayed upon a mobile device. A main reason for me hoping this will happen is Google Adsense are hoping to take over the major mobile ad network, Admob and if this happens Admob would be incorporated into the Adsense system.
I have recently purchased a brand new phone, the amazing HTC Desire and so I decided to read a hub my someone I follow. One thing I noticed straight away was there was no adverts shown. I did a bit more research and it turns out no hubs have adverts on them, although where there are eBay and Amazon referral links these DO show up. As a result, from mobile impressions eBay and Amazon are the only sources of income at the present stage.
This issue only occurs on sites such as Hubpages where there are mobile versions of pages. Other sites such as Infobarrel and Xomba do not appear to have mobile sites as such and so when viewing these sites through mobile devices the normal desktop version is displayed and so there is still the potential to earn through Adsense clicks.
I did a bit of research using Google Analytics and discovered impressions on my hubs from mobile sources amounted to about 1000. As a result, I could possibly earn more if adverts were shown on Hubpages when accessed through a mobile device such as the iPhone, Blackberry or Android device such as the Motorola Droid or HTC Droid Incredible.
Hopefully in the future adverts will be shown on hubs when displayed upon a mobile device. A main reason for me hoping this will happen is Google Adsense are hoping to take over the major mobile ad network, Admob and if this happens Admob would be incorporated into the Adsense system.
Monthly Update - April 2010
So it's that time again when I publish my earnings for the previous month. Over the last month I haven't written many articles. What I have done, however, is do a lot of work creating backlinks, especially using Redgage and She Told Me. In total I wrote four new hubs. The first was a little experiment I intended to run and so was entitled Hubpages Login. I then decided that I had too many earnings from Adsense on Hubpages and so I wanted to diversify my portfolio to include more Amazon sales. I have recently purchased a new mobile phone and so I decided I would concentrate on pages specialising in cell phone accessories (as I had to do lots of the research myself). As such I chose to write an article on HTC Droid Incredible Screen Protectors, HTC Droid Incredible Chargers and LG Ally Screen Protectors. I had previously written an article on Motorola Droid Screen Protectors which saw moderate success so hopefully these will follow in the footsteps. I do see one problem with this though - there is likely to be a big surge in traffic when the phone first comes out and will slowly decline until after a year or two there will be nothing (even if I manage to rank top in the SERPS).
Aside from these four Hubpages I didn't write anything else on Xomba, Infobarrel or any other websites (but these continued to earn). Once again I managed to earn from Webanswers and also for the first time I have included my earnings from Redgage. You may recall that my aim from the March 2010 earnings update was to exceed $60 from Hubpages and earn $5 from all the other sites combined.
Hubpages: $77.40 (26% over March 2010)
Infobarrel: $3.09 (124% increase over March 2010)
Xomba: $0.73 (135% increase)
Webanswers: $0.16 (64% decrease over March 2010)
Redgage: $3.20 (new for this month)
As can be seen I got very good earnings this month. There was an increase on all of the article writing websites (Hubpages, Infobarrel and Xomba). What is important to note is that this increase was due to an increase in the number of people visiting existing sites, which I would put at least partly down to the backlinking which I had done over the month. In fact, I had written only four new articles for Hubpages which contributed little and no new articles for Xomba or Infobarrel so all in all it wasn't a bad return. Webanswers probably dropped to inactivity by myself on the website during April 2010. I also earned quite a lot from Redgage, however this was partly due to getting a bonus $3 for my one of my pictures being featured.
These results mean I exceeded my target of $60 from Hubpages (in fact I earned over $75) and also exceeded my target for $5 from all other websites after earning $7.18 although $3 of this was a Redgage bonus for being featured and when this is removed I earned only $4.18 which is disappointing.
For May 2010 I hope to be able to keep Hubpages above $75 and the other websites above $5 (without bonuses!) and who knows, if I am lucky I may even be able to break through the magic $100 barrier!
Aside from these four Hubpages I didn't write anything else on Xomba, Infobarrel or any other websites (but these continued to earn). Once again I managed to earn from Webanswers and also for the first time I have included my earnings from Redgage. You may recall that my aim from the March 2010 earnings update was to exceed $60 from Hubpages and earn $5 from all the other sites combined.
Hubpages: $77.40 (26% over March 2010)
Infobarrel: $3.09 (124% increase over March 2010)
Xomba: $0.73 (135% increase)
Webanswers: $0.16 (64% decrease over March 2010)
Redgage: $3.20 (new for this month)
As can be seen I got very good earnings this month. There was an increase on all of the article writing websites (Hubpages, Infobarrel and Xomba). What is important to note is that this increase was due to an increase in the number of people visiting existing sites, which I would put at least partly down to the backlinking which I had done over the month. In fact, I had written only four new articles for Hubpages which contributed little and no new articles for Xomba or Infobarrel so all in all it wasn't a bad return. Webanswers probably dropped to inactivity by myself on the website during April 2010. I also earned quite a lot from Redgage, however this was partly due to getting a bonus $3 for my one of my pictures being featured.
These results mean I exceeded my target of $60 from Hubpages (in fact I earned over $75) and also exceeded my target for $5 from all other websites after earning $7.18 although $3 of this was a Redgage bonus for being featured and when this is removed I earned only $4.18 which is disappointing.
For May 2010 I hope to be able to keep Hubpages above $75 and the other websites above $5 (without bonuses!) and who knows, if I am lucky I may even be able to break through the magic $100 barrier!
Paid Online Survey Income and the UK Election
Apologies for those readers from outside the UK and those who don't take part in paid surveys - this article deals specifically with the UK election and it's effect on my survey income (although for those of you outside the UK it may still be relevant if you have elections where you live).
As you probably already know, I am a user of online paid surveys and have even written reviews on online paid surveys to assist others.
You may (or may not) also realise that, at the time of writing, there is an upcoming election in the UK. This is the first election since 1997 when at such a late stage there is still uncertainty over which party will win the election, or indeed if there is a need for a coalition government. As a result, it seems that every day every major national paper releases another opinion poll which gives an idea of the voting intention for the UK. One such poll company, Yougov, releases at least one poll every day of which over 1000 people are polled in each which results in over 7000 survey responses per week. Assuming that a number of people don't respond to survey invitation for whatever reason we could almost assume that Yougov sends out over 10,000 survey invitations a week just related to the upcoming general election. And this is just one polling company - there are a many active so since the election had been called I wouldn't be surprised if each and every week there are over 50,000-100,000 online paid survey invitations which are linked to the UK general election.
I myself have taken part in several such surveys - some which are directly asking which party I would vote for and others asking other questions which are nonetheless linked to the election eg Would I feel more or less financially secure if the result of the election was a hung parliament?
Considering all the facts, I would estimate that the election has increased the amount of online paid survey invitations by at least 20-30% which would be a fair amount if I filled in every survey I was invited to (due to time constraints I tend to pick and choose my surveys). I would estimate I receive enough survey invitations to earn £30-£40 a week and so the election would be responsible for about £5 per week.
I am assuming this is a national trend for those who complete online paid surveys although I do live in an unusual area in so much as anyone of the three main parties potentially have a reasonable chance of winning in this seat and so this may have resulted in me being more significant in the eyes of the polling companies. Whatever the reason I don't mind as it means I should manage to earn a little bit extra over the next few weeks from online paid surveys.
As you probably already know, I am a user of online paid surveys and have even written reviews on online paid surveys to assist others.
You may (or may not) also realise that, at the time of writing, there is an upcoming election in the UK. This is the first election since 1997 when at such a late stage there is still uncertainty over which party will win the election, or indeed if there is a need for a coalition government. As a result, it seems that every day every major national paper releases another opinion poll which gives an idea of the voting intention for the UK. One such poll company, Yougov, releases at least one poll every day of which over 1000 people are polled in each which results in over 7000 survey responses per week. Assuming that a number of people don't respond to survey invitation for whatever reason we could almost assume that Yougov sends out over 10,000 survey invitations a week just related to the upcoming general election. And this is just one polling company - there are a many active so since the election had been called I wouldn't be surprised if each and every week there are over 50,000-100,000 online paid survey invitations which are linked to the UK general election.
I myself have taken part in several such surveys - some which are directly asking which party I would vote for and others asking other questions which are nonetheless linked to the election eg Would I feel more or less financially secure if the result of the election was a hung parliament?
Considering all the facts, I would estimate that the election has increased the amount of online paid survey invitations by at least 20-30% which would be a fair amount if I filled in every survey I was invited to (due to time constraints I tend to pick and choose my surveys). I would estimate I receive enough survey invitations to earn £30-£40 a week and so the election would be responsible for about £5 per week.
I am assuming this is a national trend for those who complete online paid surveys although I do live in an unusual area in so much as anyone of the three main parties potentially have a reasonable chance of winning in this seat and so this may have resulted in me being more significant in the eyes of the polling companies. Whatever the reason I don't mind as it means I should manage to earn a little bit extra over the next few weeks from online paid surveys.
Backlinking using Redgage
As I am sure you are all aware the only way to earn from an online website depends on getting traffic. The earning potential of this traffic can vary but possibly the best way to earn a residual income online is by getting good quality search engine traffic. To improve search engine rankings backlinks are required. I have previously mentioned several such websites including backlinking using She Told Me.
I have recently discovered a new website called Redgage. This is another website where it is possible to create backlinks and earn at the same time. Unlike She Told Me though earnings aren't done through Adsense revenue share. Earnings are instead accumulated through views to posted content on the site and it is this which earns the money. Payment is made using a pre-paid Visa card and happens once the accumulated amount reaches $25. Unusually Redgage posts how much every user has earned and some people have earned hundreds and I think I saw someone with lifetime earnings in the thousands.
Many different things can be posted to Redgage, but for the purposes of backlinking we are primarily interested in links, which are fortunately dofollow. However, I have experimented with submitting photos, which whilst not necessarily the best have still earned a couple of cents in the couple of days they have been on the site (one of the Honda Balloon at the Chateau d'Oex Balloon Fiesta and another of me on Astakos Beach).
In terms of submitting backlinks it is very quick. There is no need for long descriptions and I reckon the entire backlink could be done in under 30 seconds. I think it is even possible to set up automatic backlinks using RSS readers etc but I haven't done this myself. The best bit is there is earnings are made from these backlinks which is double earning potential (not only does it hopefully increase earnings on the linked to site it makes earnings on Redgage). Whilst so far I have only earned a few cents from my links I have only posted about 6 links and hopefully over time they will earn more (links posted so far include what time does evening begin?, Amazing Dance Party Songs and Cribbs Causeway).
Another way of earning money is by getting paid bonus amounts for submitting good content. Whilst the bonus amounts are often only a couple of dollars, it all adds up!
So far I have only begun to scratch the surface of Redgage but I have found it to be a very comprehensive site which has the potential to contribute to my (and your!) online income.
Have you used Redgage? What are your experiences of it? If you are a member feel free to add Bristolboy (me) as a friend.
I have recently discovered a new website called Redgage. This is another website where it is possible to create backlinks and earn at the same time. Unlike She Told Me though earnings aren't done through Adsense revenue share. Earnings are instead accumulated through views to posted content on the site and it is this which earns the money. Payment is made using a pre-paid Visa card and happens once the accumulated amount reaches $25. Unusually Redgage posts how much every user has earned and some people have earned hundreds and I think I saw someone with lifetime earnings in the thousands.
Many different things can be posted to Redgage, but for the purposes of backlinking we are primarily interested in links, which are fortunately dofollow. However, I have experimented with submitting photos, which whilst not necessarily the best have still earned a couple of cents in the couple of days they have been on the site (one of the Honda Balloon at the Chateau d'Oex Balloon Fiesta and another of me on Astakos Beach).
In terms of submitting backlinks it is very quick. There is no need for long descriptions and I reckon the entire backlink could be done in under 30 seconds. I think it is even possible to set up automatic backlinks using RSS readers etc but I haven't done this myself. The best bit is there is earnings are made from these backlinks which is double earning potential (not only does it hopefully increase earnings on the linked to site it makes earnings on Redgage). Whilst so far I have only earned a few cents from my links I have only posted about 6 links and hopefully over time they will earn more (links posted so far include what time does evening begin?, Amazing Dance Party Songs and Cribbs Causeway).
Another way of earning money is by getting paid bonus amounts for submitting good content. Whilst the bonus amounts are often only a couple of dollars, it all adds up!
So far I have only begun to scratch the surface of Redgage but I have found it to be a very comprehensive site which has the potential to contribute to my (and your!) online income.
Have you used Redgage? What are your experiences of it? If you are a member feel free to add Bristolboy (me) as a friend.
The importance of adding trackers to all Hubpages links
Hubpages is my primary online revenue source at the moment. Hubpages is an online revenue sharing site - you post articles on whatever you want and in return your adverts are shown 60% of the time (giving you a chance of earning 60%) of the total profits. Hubpages also run a scheme where it is possible to earn money from referral trackers and this is what this blog post is concerning.
As has been said 60% of adverts are attributed to the writer of the article, with the remaining 40% going to Hubpages. However, it is possible to get you adverts shown by setting up trackers, which are small pieces of code which can be set up in links to any pages on Hubpages, whether they be the web addresses for individual hubs or the Hubpages homepage. The earning comes in two ways:
1) If you signup a new member to Hubpages your Adsense, Amazon etc code is shown 10% of the time on all of their pages automatically.
2) If you link to an individual page your code for Amazon, Adsense etc is shown either 12% or 9% of the time. It is automatically 12%, but if the hub author signed up through a code and is therefore subject to 1) it becomes 9%.
In both of these cases the person who wrote the hub continues to get 60%, the 12%/10%/9% comes out of Hubpages share of the earnings!
I have been adding trackers to all of my links on Hubpages, and up until now I have sort of ignored the earnings from trackers. However, using Adsense I track every individual hub URL and recently noticed that the sum of all of these individual hub URLs was only 95% of my total Adsense earnings from Hubpages. There are two areas where this remaining 5+% could have come from. Firstly it could have come from slideshow views (since I don't bother setting up individual trackers for each image in the slideshow this could be the case). However, I investigated further using Analytics (I have linked both accounts) and it appears that slideshow views only account for about 2% of my total hubpages earnings - which means that 3% has come from trackers. Whilst this may not seem like much at all, when you consider my total earnings, it is a not insignificant figure.
In addition, I am continuing to get people to click through using one of my trackers and so I am still getting the chance of earning from one of the two ways mentioned above. I decided to look at the traffic going to hubs of the people I have signed up to Hubpages, and over the last three days it has averaged out at approximately 70 page impressions per day allocated to me. If this trend were to be continued this will lead to just over 2000 page impressions a month, so with $1eCPM I would earn $2 per month, a $2eCPM I would earn $4 a month etc. This may seem like small change, but this is truly income for practically no work - other than inserting a small tracker (which takes literally five seconds) in every link I did nothing. For this reason I would definitely recommend everyone else uses trackers wherever possible.
Does anyone else use trackers on Hubpages? Noticed any serious traffic/earnings?
More information on Hubpages trackers and how to set them up
As has been said 60% of adverts are attributed to the writer of the article, with the remaining 40% going to Hubpages. However, it is possible to get you adverts shown by setting up trackers, which are small pieces of code which can be set up in links to any pages on Hubpages, whether they be the web addresses for individual hubs or the Hubpages homepage. The earning comes in two ways:
1) If you signup a new member to Hubpages your Adsense, Amazon etc code is shown 10% of the time on all of their pages automatically.
2) If you link to an individual page your code for Amazon, Adsense etc is shown either 12% or 9% of the time. It is automatically 12%, but if the hub author signed up through a code and is therefore subject to 1) it becomes 9%.
In both of these cases the person who wrote the hub continues to get 60%, the 12%/10%/9% comes out of Hubpages share of the earnings!
I have been adding trackers to all of my links on Hubpages, and up until now I have sort of ignored the earnings from trackers. However, using Adsense I track every individual hub URL and recently noticed that the sum of all of these individual hub URLs was only 95% of my total Adsense earnings from Hubpages. There are two areas where this remaining 5+% could have come from. Firstly it could have come from slideshow views (since I don't bother setting up individual trackers for each image in the slideshow this could be the case). However, I investigated further using Analytics (I have linked both accounts) and it appears that slideshow views only account for about 2% of my total hubpages earnings - which means that 3% has come from trackers. Whilst this may not seem like much at all, when you consider my total earnings, it is a not insignificant figure.
In addition, I am continuing to get people to click through using one of my trackers and so I am still getting the chance of earning from one of the two ways mentioned above. I decided to look at the traffic going to hubs of the people I have signed up to Hubpages, and over the last three days it has averaged out at approximately 70 page impressions per day allocated to me. If this trend were to be continued this will lead to just over 2000 page impressions a month, so with $1eCPM I would earn $2 per month, a $2eCPM I would earn $4 a month etc. This may seem like small change, but this is truly income for practically no work - other than inserting a small tracker (which takes literally five seconds) in every link I did nothing. For this reason I would definitely recommend everyone else uses trackers wherever possible.
Does anyone else use trackers on Hubpages? Noticed any serious traffic/earnings?
More information on Hubpages trackers and how to set them up
Monthly Update - March 2010
During March I continued the work which I started in february with regards to backlinking my articles using sites like SheToldMe. I was unable to write as much as I would have liked, but still managed to write one article on Infobarrel on the UK transport company First Great Western, an article on Hubpages also on First Great Western and a further article on Hubpages on The English Defence League (EDL).
I also discovered a couple of new online money making websites. The first is called Webanswers which works in a similar way to Yahoo answers, but those who answer get finanically rewarded for answers in the form of revenue share. The second website I have discovered is Top Cashback which claims to be officially the most generous cashback site in the UK. I reckon I am likely to earn quite a bit from this.
Here are my earnings for March 2010, for Hubpages, Infobarrel and Xomba as well as the new revenue source: Webanswers.
Hubpages - $61.35 (24% increase over January 2010)
Infobarrel - $1.38 (7% increase over March 2010)
Xomba - $0.31 (78% decrease over February 2010)
Webanswers - $0.44 (New this month)
I expected to see a slide in Xomba earnings since last month I was relatively active on Xomba, especially compared with this month when my activity on Xomba has been zero. There has been a modest increase in earnings from Infobarrel and a larger (both in percentage and amount) increase from Hubpages. This may be due to my backlinking. However, a large part of the Hubpages increase is due to getting lucky with the selling of items using the Amazon affiliate scheme - hopefully my first payment will be coming up soon.
I did hit my targets which I set in my February 2010 monthly update, which was to earn $50 from all sites and if possible earn $50 from just Hubpages and I have achieved both of these goals. For thc coming month I would like to keep my earnings from Hubpages above $60 and get the combined earnings from all other sites combined above $5. Whilst this may seem ambitious, I hope I can do it.
I also discovered a couple of new online money making websites. The first is called Webanswers which works in a similar way to Yahoo answers, but those who answer get finanically rewarded for answers in the form of revenue share. The second website I have discovered is Top Cashback which claims to be officially the most generous cashback site in the UK. I reckon I am likely to earn quite a bit from this.
Here are my earnings for March 2010, for Hubpages, Infobarrel and Xomba as well as the new revenue source: Webanswers.
Hubpages - $61.35 (24% increase over January 2010)
Infobarrel - $1.38 (7% increase over March 2010)
Xomba - $0.31 (78% decrease over February 2010)
Webanswers - $0.44 (New this month)
I expected to see a slide in Xomba earnings since last month I was relatively active on Xomba, especially compared with this month when my activity on Xomba has been zero. There has been a modest increase in earnings from Infobarrel and a larger (both in percentage and amount) increase from Hubpages. This may be due to my backlinking. However, a large part of the Hubpages increase is due to getting lucky with the selling of items using the Amazon affiliate scheme - hopefully my first payment will be coming up soon.
I did hit my targets which I set in my February 2010 monthly update, which was to earn $50 from all sites and if possible earn $50 from just Hubpages and I have achieved both of these goals. For thc coming month I would like to keep my earnings from Hubpages above $60 and get the combined earnings from all other sites combined above $5. Whilst this may seem ambitious, I hope I can do it.
Hubpages versus Infobarrel - Comparison number 1
In my February 2010 monthly update I mentioned that I would do a comparison of Hubpages, Infobarrel and Xomba. I created an article for Infobarrel and an article for Hubpages on the same subject but was unable to get enough information to create a third article which was on the same subject but still slightly different (but not too different) and as a result I decided to just leave it at an Infobarrel article and a Hubpages article. The article in question is very UK based and so I felt this would give a good comparison of how the respective websites coped in a foreign search engine (I believe both Hubpages and Infobarrel are based outside the UK).
These were both published about a week ago now, and so this is a quick update on how the Hubpages article has rated against Infobarrel. To start off with the Infobarrel article was published slightly ahead of the Hubpages article, but they appeared to both appear in Google results at the same sort of time (certainly it wasn't large enough to make a difference unless the article in question is a breaking news story). Neither got very high in the Google SERPs and in fact both articles were struggling to stay in the top 200 places, although the Hubpages article was positioned slightly higher. I placed a single link to each site on She Told Me (a great backlinking site) and this improved the search engine rankings. Again the Hubpages article is much better - in Google it is higher than the Infobarrel article for the chosen keyword. In addition, this difference is even more pronounced when using the British version of Google - with Hubpages far outranking Infobarrel. For both Hubpages and Infobarrel though the articles rank higher in the Google US than Google UK. The difference between the two sites in Yahoo is even more interesting. On the US Yahoo the Infobarrel article ranks 50% higher for the chosen keyword than the Hub. When using the UK version of Yahoo this is repeated - only the Hubpages article is even further behind the Infobarrel article.
So far this has been interesting - Infobarrel appears to rank higher in Yahoo and Hubpages higher in Google. At the moment this would suggest Hubpages is the better choice since Google is used more than Yahoo - particularly in the UK where Google accounts for about 95% of the total search engine usage!
Over the next few weeks I hope to increase the number of backlinks which I have to each article to see whether I can increase the point at which each article sits in the search results to a level where I can get decent traffic. From this, I hope to be able to do a comparison to see whether there is any vast difference in earnings (eCPM) and click through rate between Hubpages and Infobbarel - although obviously as per Google Adsense TOS I will have to be very vague!
These were both published about a week ago now, and so this is a quick update on how the Hubpages article has rated against Infobarrel. To start off with the Infobarrel article was published slightly ahead of the Hubpages article, but they appeared to both appear in Google results at the same sort of time (certainly it wasn't large enough to make a difference unless the article in question is a breaking news story). Neither got very high in the Google SERPs and in fact both articles were struggling to stay in the top 200 places, although the Hubpages article was positioned slightly higher. I placed a single link to each site on She Told Me (a great backlinking site) and this improved the search engine rankings. Again the Hubpages article is much better - in Google it is higher than the Infobarrel article for the chosen keyword. In addition, this difference is even more pronounced when using the British version of Google - with Hubpages far outranking Infobarrel. For both Hubpages and Infobarrel though the articles rank higher in the Google US than Google UK. The difference between the two sites in Yahoo is even more interesting. On the US Yahoo the Infobarrel article ranks 50% higher for the chosen keyword than the Hub. When using the UK version of Yahoo this is repeated - only the Hubpages article is even further behind the Infobarrel article.
So far this has been interesting - Infobarrel appears to rank higher in Yahoo and Hubpages higher in Google. At the moment this would suggest Hubpages is the better choice since Google is used more than Yahoo - particularly in the UK where Google accounts for about 95% of the total search engine usage!
Over the next few weeks I hope to increase the number of backlinks which I have to each article to see whether I can increase the point at which each article sits in the search results to a level where I can get decent traffic. From this, I hope to be able to do a comparison to see whether there is any vast difference in earnings (eCPM) and click through rate between Hubpages and Infobbarel - although obviously as per Google Adsense TOS I will have to be very vague!
Monthly Update - February 2010
During February I did a lot of work to try and assist me making more money online. I published two new hubs, one on The Helford River in Cornwall and another on buying Motorola Droid Screen Protectors Online. In addition I joined Xomba - which is a site which allows both bookmarking of existing sites and new articles to be written. As a result I wrote five articles on Xomba - We7 Music, Work from the beach with Google Adsense, Amazon, eBay and Hubpages, Get A Hotel in Falmouth, Cornwall, What time does evening start? and Valued Opinions. As you will notice several of these articles are linked to articles I already have in Hubpages and Infobarrel etc and so it was a chance for me to see how well Xomba compares in terms of the search engine rankings which will be something I shall do more and more in the future so keep checking back to this page to see how I get on.
Hubpages - $49.62 (70% increase over January 2010)
Infobarrel - $1.29 (2% decrease over January 2010)
Xomba - $1.41 (New this month)
As can be seen, I did sort of hit my targets from the January 2010 update. I managed to stop the slide in total earnings and in fact posted a large increase. However, this was mainly due to excellent performance from Hubpages and there was still a slight fall in earnings from Infobbarel which is worrying. I was also pleased with the earnings from Xomba, especially as I only started using Xomba during February 2010 and only wrote five articles.
In March 2010 I hope to keep my total earnings from all sites over $50 and hopefully manage to push the earnings from Hubpages alone over $50 and with that I shall round up my monthly earnings report for February 2010.
Hubpages - $49.62 (70% increase over January 2010)
Infobarrel - $1.29 (2% decrease over January 2010)
Xomba - $1.41 (New this month)
As can be seen, I did sort of hit my targets from the January 2010 update. I managed to stop the slide in total earnings and in fact posted a large increase. However, this was mainly due to excellent performance from Hubpages and there was still a slight fall in earnings from Infobbarel which is worrying. I was also pleased with the earnings from Xomba, especially as I only started using Xomba during February 2010 and only wrote five articles.
In March 2010 I hope to keep my total earnings from all sites over $50 and hopefully manage to push the earnings from Hubpages alone over $50 and with that I shall round up my monthly earnings report for February 2010.
Monthly Update - Janury 2010
In January 2010 I did very little work on my online sites etc and so it would be expected that I would have a similar income to last month. I still felt I should be able to meet my targets from December 2009 for my income.
Hubpages: $29.24 (6% decrease)
Infobarrel: $1.32 (6% decrease)
Once again I have had a fall in my earnings. However, it is no-where as big as the fall in December 2009 and so hopefully I have reached the bottom and it will start to increase. As such my target for February 2010 is to at the very least avoid my earnings from Hubpages and Infobarrel falling any further.
Hubpages: $29.24 (6% decrease)
Infobarrel: $1.32 (6% decrease)
Once again I have had a fall in my earnings. However, it is no-where as big as the fall in December 2009 and so hopefully I have reached the bottom and it will start to increase. As such my target for February 2010 is to at the very least avoid my earnings from Hubpages and Infobarrel falling any further.
Annual Earnings Update - 2009
So it is the end of the year and I guess it is time for me to look at my earnings for the whole of 2009. At the beginning of the year my only experience of making money online was through paid survey sites and the like, but now I have much more experience and have moved on to much more profitable things like Hubpages (and hopefully in the future other similar schemes).
It appears that creating websites, or articles for websites is a good way of making money and if the right keywords are selected it is possible to earn a lot of money. However, there is some hard work and quite a bit of a learning curve to understand how to earn the money. Even after a year I am in no way an expert, in fact I would say I am not even moderate, yet I have still managed to earn quite a bit from Hubpages (and latterly Infobarrel) using only 34 Hubpages and 6 Infobarrels. So without further ado here are my annual earnings:
Hubpages: $303.00
Infobarrel: $11.95
As can be seen, despite not spending much time etc it has still been possible to earn a bit of money. Even without work (surely the true definition of passive income) it should increase in 2010, since I didn't write many of these hubs/infobarrels until mid 2009. However, it is my intention to write many more hubs and infobarrels during 2010 as well as looking at other ways of making money. As such my 2010 target for earnings from Hubpages is $600, $50 from Infobarrel and $50 from as yet unidentified online sources.
It appears that creating websites, or articles for websites is a good way of making money and if the right keywords are selected it is possible to earn a lot of money. However, there is some hard work and quite a bit of a learning curve to understand how to earn the money. Even after a year I am in no way an expert, in fact I would say I am not even moderate, yet I have still managed to earn quite a bit from Hubpages (and latterly Infobarrel) using only 34 Hubpages and 6 Infobarrels. So without further ado here are my annual earnings:
Hubpages: $303.00
Infobarrel: $11.95
As can be seen, despite not spending much time etc it has still been possible to earn a bit of money. Even without work (surely the true definition of passive income) it should increase in 2010, since I didn't write many of these hubs/infobarrels until mid 2009. However, it is my intention to write many more hubs and infobarrels during 2010 as well as looking at other ways of making money. As such my 2010 target for earnings from Hubpages is $600, $50 from Infobarrel and $50 from as yet unidentified online sources.
Monthly Update - December 2009
I did no work on either creating new online articles or backlinking in December 2009. In November 2009 I had a target to earn $5 from Infobarrel and $30 from Hubpages so here are my results.
Hubpages: $31.14 (33% decrease)
Infobarrel: $1.40 (100% increase)
As can be seen there was quite a considerable decrease in Hubpages earnings - this despite my page views staying quite similar to November 2009. However from research I know that my page views are coming from different hubs in December to November and these happen to be ones with lower earnings per impression.
In January 2010 (a new year already!) I hope to halt this slide in Hubpages earnings. I also hope to create an annual review soon.
Hubpages: $31.14 (33% decrease)
Infobarrel: $1.40 (100% increase)
As can be seen there was quite a considerable decrease in Hubpages earnings - this despite my page views staying quite similar to November 2009. However from research I know that my page views are coming from different hubs in December to November and these happen to be ones with lower earnings per impression.
In January 2010 (a new year already!) I hope to halt this slide in Hubpages earnings. I also hope to create an annual review soon.
Monthly Update - November 2009
Once again this month I did not create any additional content. In fact, other than replying to a few comments on hubs etc I did no work at all.
Earnings for November 2009.
Hubpages: $46.65 (11% decrease)
Infobarrel: $0.70 (18% decrease)
Needless to say I am disappointed with this decrease but it is not unexpected considering how little work I have done on my online work this month. However, it does show that income from Hubpages and Infobarrel truly is passive, that is to say an income is made even with little (or in my case no) work.
For the coming month I shall have the same targets as I set out in my October 2009 monthly update due to lack of work being carried out in the November.
Earnings for November 2009.
Hubpages: $46.65 (11% decrease)
Infobarrel: $0.70 (18% decrease)
Needless to say I am disappointed with this decrease but it is not unexpected considering how little work I have done on my online work this month. However, it does show that income from Hubpages and Infobarrel truly is passive, that is to say an income is made even with little (or in my case no) work.
For the coming month I shall have the same targets as I set out in my October 2009 monthly update due to lack of work being carried out in the November.
Monthly Update - October 2009
During October I was unable to produce any new hubs or infobarrels due to new work commitments. However I did some work on creating backlinks to improve the rankings of my hubs in the search engines (particularly Google).
Earnings for October 2009:
Hubpages: $51.31 (94% increase on September 2009).
Infobarrel: $0.85 (86% decrease)
Compared with my targets set in my September Monthly Update, I have easily met my Hubpages target, but missed out on my Infobarrel target. Since I have not created any new hubs, I don't plan to increase my targets for my November earnings so they shall remain $30 from Hubpages and $5 from Infobarrel.
Earnings for October 2009:
Hubpages: $51.31 (94% increase on September 2009).
Infobarrel: $0.85 (86% decrease)
Compared with my targets set in my September Monthly Update, I have easily met my Hubpages target, but missed out on my Infobarrel target. Since I have not created any new hubs, I don't plan to increase my targets for my November earnings so they shall remain $30 from Hubpages and $5 from Infobarrel.
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