Moonlighting On The Internet
Posted by Dan on October 10, 2009 in The Voyage
A long time ago I stuck some Adsense ads on my site to see what happened, not much. In fact ever since I opened my account I still haven’t broken the $20 mark in the three years I’ve held it.
By now it’s clear all I need to start my nomad lifestyle is a measly $30 a day online income. I’ve mentioned it in my plan to move to South East Asia post and more in my $30 a day post. As an internet marketer there is any number of ways to earn this, to date my focus has been on affiliate marketing and text link sales. Text links are easy; affiliates sales require a bit more work. I’m getting better at both, but now I want to take another look at Adsense.
Adsense has suddenly become appealing to me again because my goal is so modest, Adsense pays modestly and after coming across this site the other day and seeing what he has done in just a month it has motivated me to add Adsense back into my marketing repertoire. I’m reviving an old domain and have purchased a pack of well written articles in the debt niche; I’m going to start building backlinks and traffic to them and see how things go. While the debt niche is massive, in this economic climate it’s not a bad choice and I only need my small share. I’ve also created another travel related site to do the same with. It is my goal to have 4 sites up by the end of the month.
The other thing about this Adsense method is that it is very easily replicated, I don’t need one site to make that $30, although it would be nice, 5-10 sites making a few dollars each will also work and may even be easier. I joined TKA and am following the method laid out there. I’ve also noticed a few familiar faces in the forum and I know it’s working for them so I’m feeling pretty confident. I’ve noticed I’m working on this very differently too because I am actually working on it and it feels like work.
September has been my best month yet for affiliate and text link earnings so that has also been a motivating factor, I’m not sure that I can expect the same success this month but it is confidence building none the less. In September my online income tripled, I would only need to triple it again to reach my goal.
One thing that is often a deal breaker when I evaluate internet marketing opportunities is if the income is evergreen, How long will it last? I plan on being nomadic for a pretty long while so rebuilding an income source every year or two isn’t appealing to me at all, if I can automate it it’s not so bad but until then I prefer long term earners, text ads and Adsense fit that bill.
I’m not planning to put Adsense on this site I don’t want to, I don’t think you would appreciate it and I don’t think it would work anyway. So I’ll stick to making a couple of new sites for now and putting it there. I’m excited see where I’m at by the end of the month, I don’t expect anything much but I do expect to see progress. I’ll give an update then.
Tiny URL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/2338uxc
But will you finally be able to travel instead of making content for all that sites? 4 sites requires a lot of work, and also, you will need to mantain the hosting, and the SEO. Is possible to mantain all this and still travel and enjoying a place?
Yeah, so how much more work are you creating for yourself? Will it be a lot of work upfront and then ease of or will it be constantly a lot of work wit the new sites too?
I have just put Adsense up on my blog and only earnted27cents for the week. Will try it for a while and see what happens.
All the best.
Good luck with this…I share the skepticism of Adsense, but there are people still making money from it, so there’s a chance you can make that $30/day and keep it evergreen (the worst would be making that for a while and then having it disappear, only to tally everything up and find that you could have made the same or more all at once by doing a website for a client instead of 4 for yourself…something to think about!).
Keep us updated on how this goes! The more details the better, too!
Hey Dan,
Looks like your a man with a plan, and that’s good. I’m not a huge fan of Adsense myself, as I think there are much better income sources for a website, such as affiliate products. But with that being said, there are people who make HUGE amounts of money with Adsense, so go for it! Maybe outsource some of your writing once you start earning a decent amount to lessen the workload on you.
Great piece and I love that your goal is $30 – I really think that is doable and I am interested in your future updates on how it goes on your other sites. Also wondering though if you are just creating a mountain of work for yourself building and maintaining the other sites – keep us posted!
@Colin & @nate: Yeah I’m still skeptical but I’m going to give it a try. I think Adsense is also a good test of how successful affiliate products would be on the site too. Most of the TKA members seem to end up running affiliate programs alongside or in place of Adsense. The thing is doing your keyword research and finding keywords with the best chances of success. Kirsty Henderson and Working Nomad are two people I know who make a good chunk with Adsese. I don’t plan on making it my main earner, I’ll continue to spread myself across advertising and affiliates as well.
As far as the work I’m making for myself, yeah initially it will be a lot but we can apply 80/20 here and at some point I will employ some assistance. I don’t want to get ahead of myself though.
Looking forward to hearing more about your experiences here. I’ve only heard positive things about The Keyword Academy.
As an experiment in passive income, I’ll be setting up two keyword-generated niche sites of my own over the next few months. I may be looking to you for advice
I felt discouraged using adsense. Still, I will learn more about it.
Hey Man, I know how it feels, Adsense is terrible for a small blog. I am still waiting to break the $100 mark to get my first check. I have had it just over a year and sitting around the $80 mark. (Had a forex site that brings in some clicks of $1 each sometimes).
I have read of people making $1000 a day and more JUST from Adsense, of course they have massive sites with insane amounts of traffic.
It’s possible, but not easy. I’m still working on making $500 a week. Currently Im sitting between $200 and $400 a month from online. It’s definitely possible, I think it just takes hard work, time and lots of experimenting.
Keep it up man!
Cheers
Diggy
Hey Dan,
I’ve got a pile of AdSense material here that has been totally underutilized. I know that at some point I’ll bust it out and do my best to use it.
Think long term and you totally are. Be willing to do what others don’t want to and what’s hard now and do what others want to, but can’t for the rest of your life.
Cheers
Dan,
Interesting–and thanks for sharing the info on TKA. I hadn’t heard of them and I’m always looking for new information on the subject. Appreciate it!
Take Care,
Jill
Jill’s recent post:
Your Lips Are Moving But….
hey dan.
interesting post. reminds me of where i was at a couple of months ago. and have been way too fvcken many times before in similar fields.
here’s a quick question: why are you only aiming at $30 per day?
because here’s the funny thing – if you only aim for $30, you’ll only consider methods that bring you $30. also, as an upper limit, you prolly will always get less than that because of latent “meeting my goals” issues.
so why $30? and why adsense?
why not just create proper value and promote solid ebooks or write your own. or build up this blog to magic heights by doing loads of guestposts and then recommending affiliate products that you truly believe in.
$30 is cool but how’s about $1000 or $1million?
you’ve got an awwwsome site here. all round. make it happen proper.
keep well and in touch mate
alex – unleash reality
Thanks for the question Alex. It’s something I have considered but probably not as much as I should. $30 is not so much a goal as it is a threshold, at that point I can make the major changes I want, so it’s not an upper limit but actually a base one.
Adsense is just one method I intend to use, currently it makes 0% of my income, advertising and affiliate sales make up the rest but I think about 30% coming from each of these methods is just a good way to avoid losing all my income if I have everything in one basket.
I think my ultimate goal is $100 a day, I do have a quiet goal of $100,000 in savings/investments by 2020. I don’t want to go to the other extreme where the goal is so big that you never actually put any real effort into because of that feeling you have that it is not really a likely achievement.