Wham or Scam

Well, another year has come and gone, and another is fast approaching. 2011 marks the three year anniversaryof me joining Wealthy Affiliate (in March 2011). The past years have not been as successful as I had hoped in terms of earning money, but do you know what, it doesn’t matter. The past two years alone have bought goals that I never would have thought possible.

Highlights of 2010:-

• January to March 2010:- The best ever period of commissions. For the first three months of 2010 I grossed £502.00 in commissions, averaging around £160 per month. This was from one of my holiday sites, so I am assuming that sales and traffic to these sites are very much seasonal. Hell, during some months where search volume for specific keywords are low my sites drop of the face of google’s earth, only to spring to life when people start searching again. They have been known to dissappear for weeks.

• My first ever AdSense payment:- Since I started AdSense in 2005 I quickly gave up because I was expecting big money quickly, like you do when you are sold get rich quick schemes. I have since learned that AdSense is a lot more successful if you have good quality content on your site. I decided to give it another go, and in August 2010 I received my first AdSense payment into my bank account. Six months on I am already half way there for the next payment. I have also learned that AdSense is slow around this time of year, not many people on computers and searching the net, spending time with their families, as it should be.

• Beat off the Amazon three year rule:- Amazon’s affiliate program has this rule that if you don’t manage to sell anything in three years you’re out. I set up a website that sells Amazon.co.uk products and reached the deadline with just hours to spare. I have the US Amazon covered.

• October 2010:- October saw the first sale from my Kenya holiday website. It was a long time coming…

• First AffiliateFuture sale:-A sale of £51.00 was made through my Cape Verde holiday site. I haven’t been paid yet, but I need to get that organized, it’s next on my to do list.

• Overall Gross Commissions this year:-  £863.75 which works out at an avarage of £70.00 per month gross. This is remarkable considering where I was just 12 months ago. Unfortunately this is a gross amount, I have to take into account the expenses of running a number of websites and of purchasing software and affiliate stuff that maybe I shouldn’t have purchased. The end of year accounts will tell a full story in April.

Where next for 2011? Just carrying on with the same. I have probably too many websites to manage effectively at the moment. I really need to sit down and number crunch the statistics for each site and see what sites are making a profit and which sites are not. What I will do with the non-proft ones I don’t know, I may need to sell them and concentrate my efforts on the ones that are making money or have the potential to. I need to ask for some advice on that one. I also need to consider whether to cancel my autoresponder account for the time being, it hasn’t been as successful as I had hoped.

That’s all for now. I am signing off for a few days to enjoy some family time. Have a great new year and i’ll see you on the other side.

P.S. Just because it looks good on the eye, here is a screenshot of those first three months of 2010. If you just try you never know what might happen…