Author: Sean McGoldrick
How I earned $700 online in 15 weeks
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 @ 11:20 am
No, this isn’t the title of some ‘program’ which offers to teach you how to make money online. There aren’t a limited number of places and I’m not trying to scam you. This is simply me telling you how I made $700 in 15 weeks ($685.09 to be exact). It’s not hard but it does take time.
I started blogging for money in September last. Since this is a new year I thought it would be a good idea to start off my first post of the new year with a run-down on how I’ve done so far. I’ll start by listing where the money came from:
PayPerPost $301.00
PayU2Blog $132.50
Sponsored Reviews $58.50
Smorty $49.20
Adsense $30.94
ReviewMe $27.50
WidgetBucks $25.01
Commission Junction $23.38
Irish Opinions $22.01
Amazon $5.59
Posting Direct $5.50
Helium $3.96
Straight away there is an obvious pattern here: The vast majority - $568.70 - of the money came from writing sponsored posts. This is a combination of earnings from PayPerPost, PayU2Blog, Sponsored Reviews, Smorty and ReviewMe. I have my blogs signed up with all of these services and check each site at least once a day to see what, if any job opportunities are available for me. In the case of PayPerPost, which is responsible for 44% of my earnings, I check it several times a day.
The criteria for most sponsored post sites are pretty similar. If your blog is at least three months old and you write at least one or two posts a week you’ve met the main requirements.
You should also note that the higher your PageRank the more you’ll get paid for writing sponsored posts but you should also be aware that Google frowns on most sponsored posts because they believe, not without some reason, that advertisers use them as a way to increase their search engine rankings. It could be argued that all advertising is a way of increasing your own position versus that of your competitor, and I frequently do, but nonetheless you should bare in mind that writing sponsored posts can affect your PageRank if Google decides to penalize you. But on the other hand . . . $568.70 . . . your choice. 
If it wasn’t for sponsored posts my earnings would be pretty meagre. Without them my best earner is Adsense, where my current balance stands at $30.94. Considering that the level of traffic to my blogs is still pretty low this isn’t bad.
I signed up for WidgetBucks when it was launched several months ago. Until recently I hadn’t run its ads on any of my blogs simply because I didn’t have any blogs that were suitable for its ads, which are concentrated on technology and entertainment media. The $25.01 I have earned from WidgetBucks is a combination of the $25 sign-up bonus and the combined earnings of 1c that my referrals have earned between them! I’m still hoping that someone with a popular blog about digital cameras with a lot of US traffic with sign up for WidgetBucks under me!
I now have a blog which has content suitable for WidgetBucks ads and so I’ve started to run them so I’ll know soon enough how well it works.
My earnings of $23.38 from Commission Junction are incredibly disappointing. This is a case where I feel as if I have done everything right and my affiliate has let me down by either not converting my traffic to sales or by not passing the commission on to me. I feel disappointed because I have a CTR of around 2% every day from ads displayed on my site to my affiliate. The people who visit my niche gardening blog are looking for exactly the type of product that my affiliate is selling and I still have only earned less than $25. In the coming days I will be contacting my affiliate directly to see what is going wrong.
Irish Opinions, which carries out online market research surveys has so far earned me $22.01. I used to work in a market research call centre phoning up people at random and asking them how often they bought soup so I’m quite happy to take part in online surveys. I’ve found Irish Opinions to be a good one for me living in Ireland but look around and you’ll find a decent one in your own country. In the case of Irish Opinions the payment comes in the form of vouchers for stores like Amazon or Tesco but that’s as good as money to me.
While I’m unhappy with my Commission Junction affiliate I just don’t know what to say about Amazon. I have earned a grand total of $5.59 from Amazon which I find so difficult to accept. According to Amazon’s statistics hardly anybody even clicks on my ads to Amazon whereas my Commission Junction affiliate, which sells the same products has a high CTR. The result with both is the same: Sweet FA in commission. I’ll have to get to grips with how to make money from affiliates in 2008. I feel as if a lot of money is slipping through my fingers by not getting this straight.
Recently I signed up for PostingDirect.com which pays you to post comments on forums. The idea behind this is quite simple: When you start up a new forum, you will have the initial problem that you will little to no registered users, therefore little to no posts and therefore little reason for people to register and become active in your forum.
I have started visiting forums on a regular basis in order to increase visitors to my blogs. Putting links to your blogs in forum signatures is a good way of getting new visitors and SEO for your sites. Since I’m visiting a lot of forums anyway, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to get paid for them. The $5.50 I’ve earned to date includes a $5 sign up bonus. Payout is at $25.
Helium is a revenue-sharing site where you post articles on it and they share earnings with you. Payout is at $25 and as they currently stand at $3.96 and I usually get around 15c per week from it I still have quite a way to go. Nevertheless it is a nice site and I like it for other reasons.
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