2008 Stats, Earnings, & More

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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.

potpiegirls deskIn 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!

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