2008 Stats, Earnings, & More

Closing Out 2008

It’s almost time to say good-bye to 2008 and welcome in a shiny New Year! As I was closing out my year and taking stock of what I’ve done and where I want to go, I realized that the earnings and traffic stats I was analyzing would be VERY beneficial to others who want to know the truth about making money online. I don’t mean to phrase it that way to be “hypey” – I say it that way to be honest. So let’s take a look at my 2008 stats, talk about my earnings, and take a look back at the year as a whole. While I am NOT one to go boasting about stats and earnings, I figure if this will help even ONE person get a clear understanding about how all this really works, I will feel this post was worth it.

This is most likely my longest post EVER. Not only have I had too much time to think and not enough time to post lately, I also have a lot to share with you. In 2009, we are going to ROLL, but we first need to get our perspective and our expectations straight.

Making Money Online – A Visual

Before I get to rambling, I want to show you a graph. This is a traffic graph of my blog here at PotPieGirl.com. It shows my traffic stats from the first day I received any traffic (8-2-2007).

That image speaks volumes to me. I can take one glance at that graph and tell you – SHOW you – why people quit trying to make money online.

Now, I know this is just a graph of traffic here to PotPieGirl.com, but as I looked at it I realized that graph totally represents the path we take when we go from learning how to make money online to the other side and actually DOING IT consistently.

Yes, in the beginning it is hard. It’s rare to see results and when you DO see results (ie, SALES), they seem to come inconsistently. BUT, if you keep moving forward, all your work snowballs and it all comes together.

Why I Started Making Money Online

I began my whole “I’m going to make money online” adventure in February 2007. I had turned 40 on February 13, 2007 and as many of you know, that turning 40 thing can really motivate you to make changes. I was tired of things in my life and I was dead-set to change them.

• ** I was tired of trying to find ways to trade a lot of my time for a little bit of money from someone else – while my time made that someone else a lot more money than I ever would receive.




• ** I was tired of believing that the only way to make more money was to give up MORE of my TIME. There had to be a way my time spent working eventually worked for ME and involved LESS time working on my part.




• ** I was tired of relying on child support that came sporadically at best. In fact, I was plain tired of relying on someone else for financial things or to just make ends meet.




• ** I was tired of trading all my time for money and then barely being able to pay the bills with nothing left over.




• ** I was tired of believing that I needed someone ELSE to sign a paycheck to me or that someone ELSE got to determine how much I was worth.




• ** I was tired of the “survival mode” mentality that plagued me for so many years. (Any of you that are or have been a single mom or single dad may TOTALLY understand that statement). I was no longer content to just get by day to day.

Above all, I was blessed with a second chance in my personal life relationship-wise and I ended up with a wonderful spouse who brought two awesome kids into my kids and my life. I wanted a bright shiny future for the 6 of us – not a two-career household with parents that were always gone and were living paycheck to paycheck.

On my 40th birthday I realized that if there was anyone who could change things for me – it was ME. If I wanted financial freedom, I was gonna have to go GET IT and MAKE IT happen for myself.

So, I did.

Learning How To Change My Financial Future

From February 2007 until August 2007, I learned how to turn my efforts and my time on my computer into money. During that time I mainly followed the same thing I teach in One Week Marketing tho I was also tweaking it as I went along.

As I saw things working for me I became more and more passionate about telling others and SHOWING others how to do what I was doing. I’ll admit that I wanted to start a blog long before August 2007, but I was intimidated. What the heck would *I* have to say? Heck, I was new, too – what good advice did *I* have to share? Who the heck would READ it anyway? So I kept putting it off even though I was exploding inside from wanting to tell EVERYONE that if they have a computer and an internet connection, they can change their financial future.

In August of 2007 I started a free Blogger/Blogspot blog. It was bad….really really bad. I botched that thing all up trying to learn how to blog, how to change themes, how to tweak it….and how the heck to get people to read it! haha!

Needless to say, the blog struggled and I about gave up on the whole idea. Then one day early in January 2008 I got a wild hair and moved PotPieGirl.com from Blogger to my own hosting and started using WordPress. I also went back to the original intent of this blog and focused on helping others learn what I was learning.

If you look at that graph, you can see the Jan 5 marker and you can see that things went up from there. So did my earnings =) I started making niche sites in late 2007 and those earnings combined with all my One Week Marketing campaigns were all starting to come together. My earnings became consistent. In fact, that is when I started making as much as I probably would have made if I went out and got another JOB working for someone else. At that time I would say that I was making about $100 a day, give or take, and that was a big improvement from earning $50 a day online.

$100 a day was my target number. I knew if I earned that amount on average per day that I would be able to continue doing this whole make money online thing.

What That Graph Represents To Me

Let’s look at that traffic graph again. As I said, the graph is actually of traffic to this blog, but it really represents how making money online progresses and snowballs if you keep moving forward.

As you can see, I added some graphics to the graph this time. These lines I added are to show you something you need to know. If you are looking to build an online income with affiliate marketing or any form of internet marketing, this is what you need to be prepared for.

That red line? That red line represents the earnings I needed for my online business to be my sole source of income. As you can see, there are a solid 6 months where I was not earning that target amount. During that time I could have easily just gone out and got a JOB and be making that amount every day. If I just went and got a job, my earnings line would be flat. I would have been earning that amount from the “git-go” and it would’ve flat-lined all the way across as I earned the same amount every day.

Make sense?

Ok, now, the orange line is the time period when I hit my target amount consistently. It took those 6 months to get there (and yes, we could say it actually took a year to get there since I was working online before those stats start. I could’ve shaved a good bit of that time off by joining Wealthy Affiliate when I was trying to learn all this mumbo-jumbo, but I was too darn stubborn and thought it was smart to not spend ANY money on my new business plans. That was dumb on my part – that time I spent was worth WAY more than a measly $1 a day. Oh well, live and learn….lol).

Ever heard me say,

“If you’re willing to do for a year what others WON’T,

you can spend a life time doing what others CAN’T”?

Well kids, I am walking, talking proof of that. I practice what I preach…lol!

The blue line? Yes, that blue line represents the “spend a life time doing what others CAN’T” part.

If I didn’t work my butt off during the “purple phase”, I never would have hit the “orange phase”. It took all of the purple and the orange time to hit this magical blue phase.

And I like the blue phase!!!!

The Phases Of Making Money Online

If I had quit and given up on all this in the purple phase just so I could hit that red line, I would never be here in the blue phase way ABOVE the red line, would I?

What I am trying to get across is this – in the purple phase, you are the work horse. You work and you work and you see very little for your efforts.

In the orange phase, you become a race horse. You develop skill and power…..and it finally clicks as you turn it all into high-performing campaigns. You start to win races (finally).

In the blue phase, I guess you are the race track owner and you have ALL those work horses and race horses working for YOU. You’ve got winners in a LOT of races!

But if you quit in the purple phase, or try to take short-cuts to avoid the purple phase, you lose.

If you MUST have that red line coming in, get a job or freelance your work to make that number, BUT still work on your purple phase – you must go through it.

If you spend all day online looking for the magical answer to buy a short cut to the orange phase OR the blue phase, you lose. Odds are strong that you must spend your time below the red line before you can put it all together and get way ABOVE the red line.

Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING will do it FOR you.

When you get frustrated – remember that silly graph of mine with the colored lines and keep moving forward.

PotPieGirl Stats – 2007 vs 2008

Ok, most of you know I am not a big “Look at me and look how much money I make” type blogger. I don’t make money online by telling others how much money I make online. I make money online by WORKING to set up campaigns that provide passive income streams back to me. I also make money online by sharing what I know with others that WANT to do what I do.

However, I know numbers and stats can be inspiring for others and I am all about inspiring others to make money online! So, I am going to share some of my 2008 earnings in comparison to last year (2007) just to give you an idea of what it’s like getting to the blue phase.

PotPieGirl Earnings and Stats For 2008

AdSense Earnings – +712 % from 2007

Amazon Earnings – +209 % from 2007

Clickbank Earnings – +2214 % from 2007

Commission Junction Earnings - +6069 % from 2007

eBay Affiliate Earnings - +2045 % from 2007

Squidoo Earnings – +166 % from 2007

I have also added quite a few private affiliate programs in 2008 that I didn’t have in 2007. These private programs alone earned in 2008 what I earned in ALL of 2007.

PotPieGirl.com Blog Stats

Blog Page Views – +1214 % from comparable time frame in 2007 (blog was not active all of 2007 to compare a full year)

Blog Unique Visitors – +1130 % from comparable time frame in 2007

Alexa Rank – This one tickles me a little =) When I moved this blog to my own hosting and WordPress in January 2008 (almost a year ago), I had an Alexa Rank of 3 millions something. Now, in case you are not familiar, Alexa ranks all the websites in the world. #1 is the best Alexa Rank for a website meaning it is the most popular website in the WORLD (according to Alexa).

As I said, a year ago this blog had an Alexa rank of 3 MILLION something. Today, this blog has an Alexa Rank of 62,837. When I stop for a second and think of all the websites in the WORLD and that my blog is in the top 100,000 of all the websites in the WORLD – well, that makes me giggle a little….lol That’s like a 5000% increase in a year. Pretty nifty.

In fact, in February 2007, there was not a single instance of PotPieGirl when you searched for it 0n Google. Nothing…nada….zilcho. Today? 437,000. Four-hundred and thirty-seven THOUSAND. Crazy, isn’t it? Better yet, Google doesn’t think PotPieGirl is a typo anymore! WooHoo for THAT little victory!

And to think – this all started in the purple area with that simple stuff I teach in One Week Marketing. And that “purple time” fed into and built up on the “orange time” when I added WordPress niche sites (like I teach at 6StepNicheSites.com)….and then this wonderful “blue time” when it all comes together.

Want some more inspiration?

Ok, listen to this:

In 2008, we….

Always had money left over after paying all our bills (AND we have money in savings)

Took a 10 day beach vacation with all our kids AND my oldest two each brought a friend. All paid for – nothing on credit card.

Hubby and I took another vacation in November. We went to a casino resort and yes, we gambled. ALL paid for – nothing on credit card.

Christmas? Not a dime on credit card and it was a WAY better Christmas than we’ve had in a long time.

Remember those nasty gas prices not too long ago? Not a problem for me – I work at home. In fact, we bought a Ford Expedition during that time (heck, the market was GREAT for those gas guzzlers and I LOVE a big SUV…. it also TAKES a big SUV to get the pack of us around in one vehicle…lol)

On January 5, 2008, my 17-year old daughter starts her college classes (yes, she’s young….but she’s determined, like her mama! haha!)

In May 2009, my son will be getting MARRIED!

Other than feeling older than dirt, I have not stressed over these two major life events (ok, I haven’t stressed about the FINANCIAL aspect of those two major life events….lol!!)

In all honesty, the worst “stress” I have now about this whole make money online thing is when I wake up after having this odd dream I have now and then. I dream that the internet is gone. Yes, POOF, gone – never to return. Now THAT stresses me out when I have THAT dream! haha!

Other than that, no real stress to speak of. I spent my purple and orange time putting my eggs in LOTS of different baskets. If one egg breaks, there are plenty of others to compensate while I regroup.

In 2009, I plan to create a lot more NEW eggs on the internet in new online “baskets” – I hope YOU plan to do the same thing. I’ve been quietly testing many things from my humble office here in Atlanta and I hope to share some neat strategies with you as we ring in 2009. (That picture is of my new desk/monitor set up here… dual monitors ROCK! The third is my laptop)

Summing Things Up

Yes, FINALLY I am going to shut up…lol!

Look, if you’re in the “purple” phase, don’t give up. In fact, don’t even waste your time getting frustrated. Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine YOUR future graph. See that red line you want to hit….then see your stats way ABOVE that red line. Then, get back to work and make sure your purple time is PRODUCTIVE time. When I say “productive”, I mean this – get campaigns, articles, blog posts, etc OUT there on the internet.

Reading about doing it will not get you to the orange phase. Talking about doing it will not get you to the orange phase. Complaining about it won’t help either.

Worst of all, beating yourself up because you’re not already IN the orange phase won’t do a damn bit of good. Only productive efforts will get you there.

Remember, 95% of us quit and only about 5% of us make it thru the purple phase and start making REAL money online. If it was easy, EVERYBODY would be doing it, but the reality is, only the tough survive.

I can’t wait to see who the 5% are that at this time next year! 2009 will be great!

I look forward to spending more time doing what I love to do – testing new ideas and sharing them with my awesome readers.

Happy New Year!

How I Started Making $50 a Day Online

I wish I kept a journal of my time learning online marketing. So many folks want me to share my history… my story… and how I learned how to make money online. I have a lot of it written down as I spent serious time reflecting on it all, but I have hesitated sharing how I went from $0 a day with online marketing, to a serious turning point of $50 a day online. Why would I hesitate sharing that information? Let’s talk about it… and let’s finally talk about how I got to making $50 a day.

First Off, I Am Not a Guru

Odd thing for me to say, isn’t it? I am NOT a ‘guru’. I do not want to be someone that others blindly follow or someone that causes others to buy a product or service simply because *I* said so. I want to assist others to learn their own way, and to form their own opinions. While I am proud to have so many wonderful ‘fans’ of my blog and sites, I do not want to generate a flock of followers. You all are now entrepreneurs… you are business owners. I would be doing a huge disservice to each of you if I spent my time teaching you to be a follower.

I want to be the person that makes the speed bumps and sharp curves on this internet marketing highway a bit easier to navigate and tolerate. I want to be a real person… not a hero or someone that claims to have the ONLY way to online success. I definitely do NOT want to be the person who answers all your questions and solves all your problems with yet another miracle IM product (for only $69.97…lol).

I learned to make money online the hard way. The speed bumps and sharp curves just about kicked my butt. I am not an internet genius or an IT brainiac. I am simply a woman/ mom/ wife from outside Atlanta, Georgia who was determined to find a way to stay home and earn money online.

I did not have the luxury of endless time and resources. I had given myself a few months to see things come together. If they didn’t, I would get a ‘real job’. Life is expensive… that is reality.

I did go through my own feelings of desperation and fear – just like many of you are right this very minute. I also worked my tail off. I literally was at this computer for hours on end. I slept little.

I knew what I had to do and I knew I only had a certain amount of time to get it going.

I would like to share some of my beginnings with online internet marketing with you, but please – remember this is *my* story. It is not a system, nor is it “the way”. It is simply how I got here.

From $0 a Day – To $50 a Day

To me, getting to $50 a day was a turning point. The learning curve had lessened and I knew that once I could make $50 a day, there was NO telling how much I could make after that crucial landmark was achieved.

Learning is the hard part. Duplication is MUCH easier!!

The first thing I did was decide that I was going to make a website. It is so funny to me now, that this was my first thought to make money online. I knew NOTHING about coding or FTP or any of that stuff. I knew NOTHING about keywords or how to get traffic TO my site…. hysterical that I thought this was ‘the answer’. However, I did it anyway.

I signed up for a Yahoo domain/hosting package and was met by a big, blank, white screen. I remember that feeling, “Now what the he** do I do???”

But, somehow, I managed to actually make a webpage…then another…then another. Then I learned how to link them together.

It was a God-awful website – but to me, it was awesome. It was MINE! And *I* made it!

The first night my new little site was online, I couldn’t sleep. For some unknown reason, I thought that just making my site live online was enough to get hordes of people rushing to it to buy my goods.

Needless to say, that did NOT happen. Go figure!

Then, a few days later, a little miracle happened. Someone, someHOW, stumbled across my little cruddy site and BOUGHT something that put a whopping $7 into my PayPal account.

Folks, I was HOOKED after that!

I started reading more about getting traffic to a website and naturally, I read all the crap as opposed to the good advice. I tried traffic exchanges (you surf sites for credits, and then your sites get surfed in return… what a joke)… I also tried some service that let me email “thousands of hungry buyers”. Again, crapola. Turns out it was all people like me sending AND reading those emails. Chalk THAT up to a painful lesson EVENTUALLY learned!

However, it didn’t take too long for me to totally trash my new little website. I am one of those people that if a product says “unbreakable” – I will break it. If it is a “mess-free process”, I will make one heck of a mess using it. If the product claims that ‘even an idiot can do this’….. I would screw it up. It’s just how I am (bless my heart). So, in the process of adding to or editing my website, I erased the entire thing. I laugh now… but buddy, I was mad as you-know-what when it happened! That first website is potpieworld.com – it is now just an article from an article directory and stuff. Go ahead an look around… I’m telling you, it is AWFUL (but its MINE).

So after the unfortunate loss of potpieworld.com, I decided to go another route I had been reading about. I learned about article marketing from Bum Marketing and the whole concept made incredible sense to me. I also had learned about Squidoo, but on my first try, I really didn’t know what I was trying to accomplish. Once I learned how to use Squidoo, I applied the article marketing concept to it and started making lenses.

I had two goals in mind at this time. I wanted to create as many of those little one-page websites on Squidoo as I possible could, and I wanted to offer things that paid my commissions to my PayPal account NOW (ie, instantly). I did not want to wait the 30 days or 60 days that many affiliate programs required to get my money. I wanted it NOW.

So, I started promoting products from 7DollarOffers.com…. and it worked. Then I learned about using Associated Content to make money promoting my Squidoo lenses. They also paid a few times a week straight to my PayPal account. Hot diggity, I was getting somewhere!

I also had read 7 Dollar Secrets somewhere along the line, and that whole concept made great sense to me. It also worked perfectly with my ‘give me money NOW’ plan because it helped you sell small reports that you sold for small amounts of money – all deposited instantly into your PayPal account. I like to write so I made a few reports and learned how to install the script that made it all work on auto-pilot. Just for the record, this knowledge was PRICELESS to my internet marketing education, but it was a real booger to learn. I wanted my first report to be listed on the 7DollarOffers site, and the dang thing got rejected FIVE times before it was finally accepted and listed.

I’m telling you, I am persistent!

At this point I was making about $20 a day. While I felt ‘good’ about earning any money online at all, there is certainly no arguing that no one can live off $20 a day.

I then decided to follow the advice and knowledge of Amy Bass and learned to use GPT (ie, Get Paid To) sites to earn revenue from the internet. She was making over $1400 a month from these sites and it seemed very logical to me( read her story here). These GPT sites offered two forms of earnings – direct earnings from your own activities on the sites, and indirect earnings from the activities of those you recruited to the site. While not all of these sites would pay to my PayPal account, they all fit the need for online work that worked FOR me after the work was done.

I made, and still make, some good money from these sites, and I don’t do a single offer anymore. If you want to learn how all this works, read How To START Making Money Online. I believe these GPT-type sites are the perfect place for many to start with online marketing.

So, I continued building lenses, I continued writing articles, and I started building a downline for my GPT sites. It was working well, but it still wasn’t enough to warrant NOT getting a ‘real job’.

Getting to $50 a Day From Online Marketing

I had been reading about niche sites and niche blogging and I was intrigued. Thing is, owning your own sites takes money and in my opinion, I wasn’t making enough to warrant investing into my online business. I found a less expensive option by purchasing a domain name and letting Blogger host it for free.

Once I got through THAT painful learning curve of getting a niche blog up and running, I added two more revenue streams to my online business portfolio – Clickbank and AdSense.

Both of these revenue streams took a god bit of time to see results (ok, to see a CHECK). Clickbank offers phenomenal commissions on their products – but it can take a long time to reach the requirements for a first check to be sent to you. Clickbank requires a first check to be over $100 in commissions. There must be at least 5 sales, and there must be one Mastercard sale and one Visa sale within the 5 sales to satisfy the criteria to be mailed a check. It seems like it took FOREVER to get that ONE Mastercard sale to get that first check for well over $100 mailed to me. But, finally it happened, and now I get a check from Clickbank every two weeks like clock-work. I believe my first check from Clickbank was for a bit over $200 and I was SO proud of that check that I could barely stand myself! Little did I know that $200 was just the beginning of a deep love for Clickbank =)

At this point I was making anywhere from $0 a day to $40 a day. It was SO frustrating to have days when NO ONE bought ANYTHING, but then there would be days when I would sell a lot (or what *I* thought was ‘a lot’).

Putting It All Together

I had learned about making lenses that made money. I had learned about writing articles that made money. I had also learned about making niche sites that made money. It was time to fit all the pieces together. And that is exactly what I did.

The final turning point that pushed my to my first goal of $50 a day is the exact system I teach for free at 6StepNicheSites.com. Seriously. Once I learned how to put it all together and I got OFF my high horse about NOT spending any money to MAKE money online (AND I got over my fear of having my own hosting and websites…haha), I put the whole process together to where each complemented the other…. and it all came together. It was the perfect, duplicable system that worked so well for me. I become an eBay affiliate and added that income stream to my growing list as well as other Commission Junction companies and between that, AdSense, Squidoo, Clickbank, and my GPT sites I got to $50 a day quite quickly. And then, well, it just sort of took off from there.

All those little sites and projects I created back then are still earning me money today. I don’t do anything to them… they just are. They also are the core of my business – in other words, these little projects from long ago pay the minimal bills for my online business NOW.

All of the things I have described happened between February of 2007 when I first put potpieworld.com live, to about October (maybe sooner) of the same year. By the end of 2007, I had far surpassed my $50 a day goal and when the first of the year came, I knew this was it. I started this blog and decided to help others get to where I am so they could enjoy the incredible blessings I have been enjoying, too… and maybe with just a little less stress than I had =)

People are SO busy looking for recession-proof jobs nowadays… and sadly, nothing is recession-proof. As long as someone else signs your check and someone else determines your employment status, you are not in a secure place. Will the recession effect internet marketing? Of course it will, but as long as there IS an internet, I will be right here – determining my OWN destiny, and creating my OWN recession proof job. I will not be paying these outlandish gas prices just to GET to a job… and my work will go where ever *I* go thanks to my trusty laptop ( a little gift I bought myself right after the first of this year ).

I also know that nothing about our life now is ‘financed’ by a credit card. Christmas last year was all cash… this long and VERY nice vacation we just took is all paid for… not a single credit card company will benefit from us. I also know there is a new car sitting right out there in our driveway. I am not saying ANY of this to brag – that is TOTALLY not my style – I am saying this because not but 19 months ago, I didn’t know a cotton-picking thing about internet marketing. I was a managing golf pro for years – I was then the Director of Operations for a very succesful tavern poker league here in the Atlanta area (no, not gambling…these are those Texas Hold ‘Em freeroll events where players accumulate points and play for free at local sports bars). Yes, I am professionally trained Texas Hold Em dealer and tournament director =) (Bet ya didn’t know THAT about ol’ PotPieGirl, did you?). It was also during my time with The Atlanta Poker Club that the name ‘PotPieGirl’ came to life (thanks to a dear friend of ours who used to tease me to DEATH).

I have a management/event organizer background….and I have always been a customer service FREAK. ( I once got told by a previous boss that my customer service skills were ‘too good’. Not sure how that is an insult, but somehow he turned it into one. Go figure. )

My point is that my background has NOTHING to do with the internet…and I made it work.

You can, too.

No Website? No Money? How To Fund Your Online Business

Being able to earn money online when you don’t HAVE money to invest is one of my favorite topics. Why? Because it is my specialty – been there, done THAT! Reality is, it doesn’t TAKE money to MAKE money online, BUT, it will eventually TAKE money to GROW money and grow your online business. If you are new to the making money online arena and you’re wondering how someone like me managed to make money online WITHOUT investing money, read on….

When I first got my little pea brain around the whole concept of making some money from my computer, there were two definite things I wanted to accomplish with my first efforts.

1) I wanted to start making money – and GETTING that money – as soon as possible.

2) I wanted to create things online that would continue to bring money in each month long after I was done working on them.

Basically, I wanted to have a little cash in hand as soon as I could get it and I also wanted to know that for years to come, there would be a certain amount of money coming to me each month that I could count on. THAT money would become my ’seed money’ that I would use to grow my online business. While I am a huge fan of free online marketing tools and strategies (like Squidoo and article marketing), it didn’t take me long to realize that the true power and potential for internet earnings would come from owning my own sites. However, in order to own my own websites, I would need….. MONEY. I would need money for a hosting account, I would need money to buy domain names, I would need money for an autoresponder…and I WANTED money for some cool tools that make my life SO much easier.

So, my dilemma was -

What Can I Do NOW That Will Keep Making Me Money Online Month After Month?

Oh, And It Has To Be FREE!

I went ’round the internet checking out free methods of making money online and then rated them on their ability to generate income for me month after month long after I was done even thinking about it, let alone working on it.

I chose: Squidoo, Associated Content, and GPT Programs. I also chose AdSense tho it took some time for that to generate enough income that I actually got paid every month.

Squidoo -

Squidoo allowed me to make little one-page mini niche sites that not only would generate income for me long-term from the monthly payouts Squidoo pays me, but they also generate more income for me via affiliate sales made on the lenses and traffic that I generate. For the sake of this article, I will simply focus on the monthly pay I get from Squidoo.

If I stopped working on Squidoo right now – literally never did another thing – I would still get a monthly payment from my work that has already been done on the Squidoo site.

Associated Content -

To me, Associated Content is a great little program. You write articles of 500 words or more and sell them to AC. If Associated Content is interested in buying your article, they will make you an offer (usually between $4 and $10) to buy your article from you. If you accept the offer, they pay you via Paypal within a few days. This part of Associated Content was great for the ‘I want money NOW’ part of my thinking.

The other part of Associated Content that fit in with my “KEEP sending me money” plan was this – Associated Content will pay you every month based on page views of your articles. AC articles tend to rank well on the search engines and whenever someone clicks thru to YOUR article, you make a little money. It’s not much at all, but it is a little extra income that comes in month after month that helps pay for the growth of my online business.

GPT Programs -

GPT, or “Get Paid To” programs, were another thing I did some work on. GPT sites are sites that pay it’s users to take surveys and fill out offers. They also pay you based on the earnings of those that you recruit to join the site under you (via your affiliate link). I spent some time promoting GPT sites a little over a year ago, mainly CashCrate (my favorite), and now each month, I get a little check from these companies. Nothing to quit your day job over – tho there are some folks making serious income from these programs.

Adsense -

This was the last strategy I added to my arsenal. It can take a while to make $100 with AdSense so you can get your first payment from them, but once you do, it takes on a life of its own. I started making niche sites with free Blogger blogs last year and added the AdSense ads to each site. These free little blogs still account for a good deal of my monthly AdSense earnings, and I rarely do anything to them. That work was done longggggg ago – BUT it all still makes me some money each month.

I am a big fan of what I call my ‘autopilot money websites‘, so not long after I learned how to use Blogspot blogs to do this, I realized the power of the niche blogging platform and went to a more powerful platform to create them. (That is where 6StepNicheSites.com came from )

How Much Do You Earn From These Free Programs?

Squidoo pays me anywhere from $75 a month and up…. Associated Content brings about $25-$35 bucks a month… GPT programs bring in about $40-$100 bucks a month…and the AdSense earnings from my free Blogger blogs bring in over $100 a month. I can safely count on at least $250 a month coming from these sources….and I don’t do ANYTHING to earn that money now. The work needed to earn that money was all done over a year ago =)

That $250 covers all my business expenses and then some… and then some more =)

If you look at each strategy separately, they don’t look like much money. However, all of these resources combined make a decent nest egg that I use to grow my online business. Best part is, operating a successful and profitable online business does NOT take a lot of money at all – so, the four methods above MORE than cover the necessities of my business AND my ‘wants’ for my business.

Is That ALL The Money You Make Online Each Month?

Uh, no…hardly. The sources listed above are the sources I created quite some time ago to generate cash flow so I could grow. Those sources are what I tag as ‘For The Business’. The other sources of my monthly online earnings are tagged as “For ME”. Those are the earnings I receive from my money making websites from sources like ClickBank, Commission Junction, eBay, Amazon, PayDotCom, individual affiliate programs, my own products, custom Squidoo lenses, and my SEO clients – and THAT amount is a whole ‘nother story =)

Bottom line is – it took me taking the time and doing the work to create those four resources of income above in order for me to move forward and start making money online from the “For ME” streams of revenue.

In a recent post, I talked about how true internet newbies don’t have a plan – they aren’t supposed to have a plan, either. How in the world can you have a plan when you don’t even know what you are planning? However, once you decide that online marketing is something you want to do, and you want to move forward with an online business, make a plan to generate the income to invest in your online business. While it may seem ‘pointless’ right now to work hard to generate $35 a month, remember – each $35 a month resource you create NOW will still be sending you $35 a month (or more) for years to come. That is like free money since the work will be long done.

Make a plan to generate revenue for your online business. Do for a year what others WON’T and then at this time NEXT year, you just might be able to live a life that others CAN’T.

If *I* can do it, anyone can!

Squidoo Earnings – January 2008 Payment – Part 2

Earlier today I recapped my payment from Squidoo that I received last night. My payment from Squidoo (for November earnings) was $43.90. That amount reflects Squidoo’s co-op payout and had no reflection of how much I earned from sources OTHER than Squidoo. I have since received a couple emails asking how much I made in the month of November as a direct result of having pages on Squidoo.

Excellent question and definitely a Squidoo question that has kept me busy here for a little bit as I attempted to figure it all out. You folks got me to dig out my November spreadsheets and take a good hard look at what earnings I made as a direct result of a Squidoo lens.

PotPieGirl – November on Squidoo

So lets start with my number of lenses. Currently, according to SquidUtils, I have 70 lenses. Only 62 of them were active for the November earnings calculations. After a brief review, I see that I have about a dozen lenses that were created expressly to earn revenue. Thats only about 19% of my lenses…. does that sound low?

Thing is, I create lenses for many reasons. Sometimes I create a lens purely to drive traffic to a niche site. Other times, I create a lens just because I feel like it. Yes, I have lenses that are about things that matter to me (such as conserving home energy or recycling cell phones) and things I am a fan of (such as Tim McGraw and Alabama Crimson Tide Football – Roll Tide!). Yes, these fun lenses have been monetized with earnings modules, but I didn’t create them solely for that purpose. Every once in a blue moon, I see those lenses make some extra money, but not often at all.

Now, one more thing. The amounts I list out below for money made with Squidoo in November are earnings that are a direct result of activity ON that Squidoo lens. I didn’t count traffic that went from a lens to a niche site and made a purchase. Solely earnings from the lens. Clear?

Ok – let’s see how I really did.

Money Made from Squidoo – November 2007

Payment from Squidoo – $43.90

Commission Junction - $35.00 (I just started really working on cj in mid November so thats not too bad)

Amazon – $77.74 (earnings from my Amazon affiliate link on Squidoo pages)

ClickBank – $ 257.07 ( ‘Tis NOT the season for digital products! Yuck! Usually MUCH better than this)

eBooks – $269.85 (Other digital products not thru ClickBank)

Total Squidoo Earnings November – $683.56

Squidoo Earnings Review

So, since I have 12 of what I consider “money-maker” lenses, they were each worth about $57 a month to me (if all things were equal). Obviously, some lenses are worth much more to me than others, but all-in-all, that is a good rough estimate/average.

I’m sure some folks are wondering, “Gee, why not make ALL your Squidoo lenses as “money makers”? Think how much you could make!”

That is a valid point. 62 lenses each earning me an average of $57 a month would be pretty sweet.. well over $3500 a month. I just don’t “do Squidoo” that way. However, if one wanted to make some serious money on Squidoo, it totally can be done, can’t it? Perhaps I need to re-read my Squidoo Profit System and get back on the ball!

Thing is, Squidoo only accounts for about 1/4 of my monthly online earnings. It is one stream of income that I took the time to learn and develop to enjoy rewards now. All of my work on Squidoo is on auto-pilot now. Yes, I still create a 2-3 lenses a month, and yes, I go in and ‘freshen’ my lenses from time to time. But all-in-all, my Squidoo lenses work for ME now while I am actively working on other projects.

Try Squidoo. Put a few weeks effort into a healthy Squidoo dashboard and see how it goes.

Try it— you’ll like it!

Associated Content Payout – Page View Bonus January 2008

I started writing for Associated Content in late May of 2007.  I really like it.  Write an article, get paid for that article directly into your PayPal account… AND get paid a monthly page view bonus for each view of each article you have.  Not a bad deal!

Unfortunately, I haven’t been about to sell an article to Associated Content since early October.  In October, I only submitted one  article – the rest go back to August.  I’ve been so busy with other projects and clients that I just haven’t had the time.  Good news is that even tho I haven’t sold articles to AC lately, I am still enjoying residual income from the Page View Bonus at Associated Content each month.

For those familiar with Associated Content, I am currently a clout level of 8 (out of 10) and have 112,905 page views to my articles.  As a guess-timite, I think I have about 50 articles in my Associated Content Producer portfolio.

Not only did Squidoo payout last night, but so did the Associated Content Page View bonus.  It is really nice how both sites are now structured to pay out monthly and at about the same time.  My online business has very low over-head, and these two payments keep me well-covered each month with room to grow my business, too.

Last months page view bonus was better for me.  I was paid $41.62.  Not bad considering it takes 1000 page views to earn $1.50.  That means I had 27k+ page views in November.  Heck, thats “free money” from work I did months and months ago – I’ll take it!

This months page view bonus for me was a bit lower.  I’m guess the holiday season throughout December put a hit on web traffic.  I received $32.00  for my December page views on Associated Content.  Thats about 21k page views to my articles.  Still not bad… and like I just said, I did that work months ago.

Back in September and October, I was barely clearing $20 a month in page view bonus.   It wasn’t until I really learned how to do effective keyword research and learn how to write good content, that I started submitting articles that get a LARGE bulk of my page views.  I have an article I submitted at the very end of August that already has over 41k page views on it’s own!

Bottom line, if you are a US resident, I highly recommend spending some time selling content to Associated Content.  Make $5+ per article right away… and then enjoy residual page view bonus payouts for your work.

Squidoo Earnings – January 2008 Payment

It’s payday at Squidoo again. Over-night, Squidoo sent some money into my Paypal account! WooHoo! I love when I ‘make money while I sleep’!

To continue with the current upward trend of Squidoo earnings, this months top-tier payment was even better than last months.

Just a quick refresher -

• Squidoo earnings that were paid in January are actually for earnings in November. With Squidoo, it is “earn it one month”, “wait a month”, then “get paid the next month”

• Squidoo pays it’s AdSense/co-op earnings out based on a three-tiered system. The top third of lenses (by lensrank) are paid the top-tiered amount, the middle third the second-tier amount, and the bottom third get the third-tier amount.

• These amounts do NOT reflect individual module earnings, nor do they reflect any direct earnings I may have received due to traffic to my lenses clicking thru to an affiliate product, etc. This is simply a break-down of Squidoo co-op payouts.

Squidoo Pay-Out Chart

Paid in——–Month Earned——-1st Tier——2nd Tier—-3rd Tier

July————–May—————–$3.80——–$.65——– $.05
August———-June—————–$5.99——–$1.03——–$.06
September——July——————$4.12———$.73——–$.04
October——-August—————–$3.32———$.56——–$.03
November—September————–$4.67———-$.79——–$.06
December — October —————–$6.05——–$1.03——–$.05

January —-November ——-$6.23—–$1.06——$.05

As you can see, the top-tiered lens payout is even better yet than the previous month. Very nice! Thank you, Squidoo!

How to Make Top-Paying Lenses on Squidoo

I keep getting asked, “HOW do you make lenses and KEEP lenses in the top third of all Squidoo lenses to ensure best earnings from Squidoo?”

If you are not already familiar with and enjoying success with Squidoo, I (of course) recommend the Squidoo Profit System.

If you simply need a refresher or a free Squidoo course, read here in my blog.

Posts that can help you:

Making a Squidoo Lens – Step by Step

How to SEO Optimize a Squidoo Lens

Keyword Research for Squidoo

Can you Really Make Money with Squidoo?

How Much can you earn from a Squidoo Lens?

How to Make Money Promoting your Squidoo Lens

Squidoo Earnings vs Associated Content Earnings

Today was payday – both for Squidoo AND for Associated Content. I love paydays!!! Oddly, since I saw both payment notifications in my email at the same time, it got me to thinking about time spent vs revenue earned.

So – let’s discuss it!

Squidoo Earnings -October

Squidoo is still continuing to increase it’s payouts each month. Needless to say, traffic is improving, the Google-love is back… PR is up. It’s all good.

Last month’s payout on Squidoo, the highest paying tier earned $4.67 each (remember, this is the co-op shared earnings that is split amongst lensmasters based on lensrank. This is not earnings from affiliate modules).

The payout we received from Squidoo this month paid out $6.05 for each top-tiered lens! Way to go Squidoo. Thats the best Squidoo payout yet!

Lets take a look at Squidoo earnings of past:

Squidoo Earnings – Past Payout Schedules

Paid in——–Month Earned——-1st Tier——2nd Tier—-3rd Tier

July————–May—————–$3.80——–$.65——– $.05
August———-June—————–$5.99——–$1.03——–$.06
September——July——————$4.12———$.73——–$.04
October——-August—————–$3.32———$.56——–$.03
November—September————–$4.67———-$.79——–$.06
December — October —————–$6.05——–$1.03——–$.05

Very nice!!! Squidoo earnings keep getting better and better!

After careful examination, mathematical evaluation, and a calculator – it looks like I earned $28.64 just from the adsense share of this Squidoo payout.

Not bad – Thank you, Squidoo!

Associated Content Earnings

I also received my November page view bonus from Associated Content today. Associated Content awards a bonus payout to their content producers based on a fixed amount per so many views of each article you have published.

I’ve had a couple of articles do really well on AC lately. I started writing for them around the first part of June and I am already just about at 100,000 page views. =)

My page view bonus for the month of November on Associated Content was $41.62.

And a big thank you to Associated Content, too!

Associated Content vs Squidoo – which do YOU do?
Personally, I love both sites and I use both sites. With Squidoo, while the monthly shared payout is somewhat low, the earnings and traffic I see thru-out the month are fabulous. Plus, Squidoo is fun!

On Associated Content, I get paid upfront for my article (usually between $5-$10) and then continue to receive earnings from each article from the page view bonus.

I like ‘em both – so I’m not choosing!

Sadly, I haven’t had much time for either site lately – been busy building my own sites! But I’ll go in and freshen up a lens or two – maybe create a couple each month… and they still seem to do ok. Not as well as constantly tending to them – but they do “ok”.

I haven’t written for Associated Content in what feels like forever – but the articles I already have there continue to bring me some revenue that I use to buy more domains =)

I made over $70 today from those 2 sites for work I did long ago… know how many domains I can buy with $70? Enough to keep me busy this month! =)

Thank you Squidoo and Associated Content for giving me the opportunity to grow my business!

Hey, one last thing….

If you are looking for unique content/ articles for your blog, website, OR your Squidoo lenses… check out UniqueArticleDirectory.com. You can get a unique version of any article you find on that site… for free!

Brand New to Internet Marketing? Read my four-part blog series – How to START Making Money Online

Make Money Online with PotPieGirl – August Earnings Update

Finally! The last bit of information I needed from my online marketing efforts came available and I was able to update my earnings for the month of August. I did pretty well – in fact, I made $600 more than my July online earnings of $1609.08.

My Clickbank sales weren’t as good (but they will be WAY better for September!), but my adsense earnings were up a healthy amount.

The big thing that happened in August is that I have freelanced my services out to a online marketing group. I spend about 15-20 hours per week working for them. What do I do? THAT is the beauty of it! I do the same things for them as I do for myself – plus, I get to learn so much from their years of experience from internet marketing. It’s been really great and I have to admit, I am enjoying it tremendously.

However, my time spent on these other projects shows in my lower earnings from Associate Content. I just haven’t had the time to submit as many articles as I used to. However, I have 2 articles on AC that are really kicking butt with page views – and I LIKE that!

All in all, August was a good month. I know September earnings will be even better. I discovered a little thing called niche blogging – and honey, niche blogging is the where it’s at!

I have found some super little niche keywords and clickbank products to go with them. Using free Blogger blogs, I am making some good money. My Clickbank earnings so far for September are already more than all of August combined. Makes me laugh when I realize I spent a whopping $4.97 for a niche blogging system that was magic!

What really tickles me (that is a Southern expression, sorry), is that before mid-February of this year, I had no clue what Internet Marketing was, what anchor text was, what Clickbank was…heck, I didn’t even know a thing about keyword research. I knew NOTHING. (Ok, I did know how to send and receive email…you caught me. ha!) And today, I get to report to the world that I made over $2200 online last month.

It’s a damn good feeling.

Yes, I worked my butt off. Yes, I crammed every teeny tiny morsel of information into my brain til I thought I would explode….but it is really happening.

I’ve had some dis-believers say – “Sure you made $2200 online – but how much did it COST you to make that????”

I will list out my monthly expenses…ready?

I pay about $12 a month for a website…and $19.95 a month for an aweber auto responder account.

I need a website to sell my Squidoo Profit System and other ebooks – and there is no way I would make a single web page online without building a list. Aweber autoresponder is AWESOME, and I wouldn’t work online without it.

Whew – that was a long list, huh? Now, I also spend maybe $50 a month on other products to review or for my own education so I guess we can safely say I have about $100 a month in over-head.

Tell me one other way to earn a living that costs that little? Even a “real job” requires more than that in gas each month! Let alone clothes, lunches, etc.

Yup, it’s been hard work – but I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

You can view the breakdown of my August earnings over there —-> to the right in my blog sidebar.

Have a great day!

Brand New to Internet Marketing? Read my four-part blog series – How to START Making Money Online