My Highest Residual Income Day

Last November, I set a record for residual income earned on one day -- a personal record, that is. There are, obviously, plenty of freelance writers and internet marketers who regularly do far better. This was quite a day, though, hundreds of dollars above my previous best day and something I likely won't beat for quite some time.

The majority came from sales through a certain merchant I link to via the commission junction (cj.com) affiliate network. While the sales were in the same general niche, they came from two avenues: an eHow article I'd written, and a niche website that was only a few months old at the time.

Here's the breakdown:

(cj.com sale commissions via eHow article:  $164.44
cj.com sale commissions via family/home niche website: $575.47)

cj.com total: $739.91
eHow: $104.55
Adsense: $20.15
Amazon $4.47

Total one-day earnings: $869.07

Just to make that number seem even crazier, a year of those earnings every. single. day. would mean a $317,000+ annual income! Wow.

Ironically, I'm earning less than $1,500 now per month, as my September earnings demonstrate, but having this crazy-high earnings day to look back on reminds me of what's possible, as well as how much potential there is in my home/family niche blog.(By the way, I got the inspiration for that blog during my first month in the Wealthy Affiliate online training program).

The thing about residual income is that it can be fickle, and follow a feast/ famine trajectory at times. But when I look at earnings over a time frame of weeks and months, it evens out to a more predictable pattern. The key is not to expect single-day highs but to work strategically for long-term growth and income. And that's what I'm doing now.


Do you have a earnings mark or other indicator that you look back on as a reminder that you're doing something right? I'd love to hear about it!

Affiliate Marketing Programs: Target Your Niche Audiences to Increase Income

Since joining Wealthy Affiliate nearly a year ago, I've put much more of an emphasis on affiliate marketing across my niche sites and have seen my income rise.  Instead of just relying on ads or a few obscure Amazon affiliate links, I now search for and link to specific products people reading my sites need in order to solve their problems or improve their lives. it not only improves the reader's experience, but affiliate sales are typically much better for the bottom line than ad clicks.

Sometimes, the right solution is obvious: on a recipe/ menu planning site I own, I market both a Clickbank ebook on menu planning and hard copy cookbooks from Amazon. But sometimes the it's not that simple to find the right product. My pets niche site caters to a budget-conscious audience that buys most of their pet supplies form farm and garden stores. I do suggest an ebook that will meet some of my visitors' needs, but most are already past the stage in which that book is helpful.

With my website on a home & family topic, I've had better luck. I found an excellent match with a vendor through cj.com, and have earned thousands of dollars in commissions from that one niche.  My most recent payment from them was over $1,000. Without a perfect match, there's not much I could have sold that particular audience.

For your websites and blogs, make sure the products you link to are quality items or resources that are precisely targeted to your visitors. To find the right items, look across a variety of affiliate marketing programs. These are single-stop sites that support a great variety of individual companies, or vendors, whose products you can promote once approved for the network and for each site individually where required. Here are the ones I use and suggest that you explore:

• Commission Junction
• Google Affiliate Network
• Amazon Associates
• Share A Sale
• Clickbank

Sometimes, searching the available vendors through these programs doesn't reveal exactly what you're looking for to promote. Their search tools are often inadequate and even when they have the vendor you need you may not be able to find it through their site. One work-around that I use fairly often is to first find the vendor (often it's one I've used myself and thus can recommend from personal experiences)  and then explore their site, or contact customer service, to find out if they have an affiliate program and how it's run.

Sometimes, the company doesn't belong to one of the large networks, but manages its own private affiliate program. I actively promote about four vendors through their own designated affiliate programs. For example, Wealthy Affiliate University has its own on-site affiliate program in which members can build links and track their sales.

When looking for products to link to from your site, put yourself in your visitor's place. Ask yourself these three questions about your reader, for each article or page you publish:

1. Why is he reading your article? 
2. What information is he looking for? 
3. What does he need?
4. What products, either physical goods or electronic information products, will provide a solution?

Once you place yourself in your own audience, you'll be thinking like a successful marketer.

Are affiliate sales commissions part of your business model? Which affiliate marketing programs do you use?

Niche Website Profit Report

Profitable Pets?

My pets-themed niche website, which I started just over two years ago, is doing very well so far. It always picks up in the spring and summer months and slows down considerably in the winter. March earnings are outpacing last month, so I'll be sure to report on it again in April. But I thought I would share my income sources for the site in case it would be helpful to anyone working on niche sites for residual income.

Pets Niche Site Earnings in February 2011

• Google Adsense:                                                            $373.11
• Clickbank ebook sales commissions                               $60.09
• Amazon book & product sales commissions                   $20.10

Total                                                                                         $453.30

When I say "pets theme," I'm being intentionally vague as to the exact niche. It's a site on a specific type or breed of pet, and my url is a three-word well-searched keyword phrase in that niche. Currently, I have 22 content pages (articles with unique urls) published on the site.

Encouraged by my pet site's success thus far, I've made it one of my top priorities for this spring. I'd love to have it earning $1,000 a month this time next year. To that end, I have some work to do.

Niche Site Plans and Goals

• Site redesign: I built this site on a free template back when I was brand new to website creation. Seriously, the site is not pretty, and its template is a bit bulky and problematic to work with. Whether I buy a quality template or hire a designer to create me something practical and attractive, this is one of my top priorities for the site. 
• More content: Its earnings are impressive for having a couple dozen pages, so adding more content both to improve my readers' experience and to add income possibilities is a no-brainier.
• Forum posting: I have a profile on a niche-specific forum and need to increase my posting there to drive traffic and create backlinks to my site.
• Social media interaction: Adding a Facebook Like button is one thing I'm hoping to implement and currently researching. 

Are you building residual income through niche sites, or planning to start? What are you working on this week?

New Niche Site in Progress

I'm working on getting a new niche website online, inspired in part by the progress of a pets-themed niche site I started last December. You can read my niche site profit report about that site; in short, I have about a dozen content pages online and it earns around $65 a month. I've added a couple more pages to it recently and monthly earning should increase as those pages are indexed and start to show up in searches.

But anyway, the site I am working on today is on a personal finance topic with a narrow focus. The keyword phrase I use for the URL gets about 176 searches a day and there isn't much competition. I bought the domain and host the site through Hostgator. My strategy has been to go for small niches and win with those. I expect I could get the #1 Google placement for that specific search, as well as several others closely related, within a few months (or maybe less).

The site is built on an HTML static site template, which I broke down and bought for $62 from this template site -- one of the best I've found. The template came with an index page and five versions of secondary pages, and works great in my free html editor (Kompozer). I've bought some very frustrating, hard-to-customize templates in the past from a "bargain" site and I really wasted my money. I also don't like using free templates anymore (my pets site is built on one) because the quality has not been as good and they have links to the template creators which can not be removed.

In addition to Google Adsense, I will include niche affiliate marketing of products on the site. Inspired by the One-Week Marketing course I bought (and blogged about here), I'm including a Clickbank product as part of that monetization model.

Since this personal-finance-related topic gets more searches and ads pay better than the ones for my pets site, I think it will soon earn more per month than the pets site. One of my goals is to get 10 mini niche content sites earning $100 each a month, to add another $1,000 a month to my long-term residual income.

And I should reach that goal by this time next year, while also keeping up with eHow and my blogs ... not to mention the kids ... here's hoping!

Have you had success with a niche content site? I'd love to hear about it!

Niche Affiliate Marketing

I've increased my online residual income with niche affiliate marketing. Affiliate sales can be a great way to diversify income streams online, and while they are not my largest money maker, they do add up.

Affiliate success takes time, but it is well worth the effort to add affiliate links to articles, resource sections and forum signatures. The most important thing is to target your affiliate links to your specific audience. It almost goes without saying, but since it is important for success, I always reiterate the necessity to have well-targeted products that will appeal to your audience in any particular article, forum or blog.

It's very important to promote good affiliate products, and to know what you're promoting. For example, I would never promote a web hosting service I haven't tried and could answer readers questions about if they arise. That's why I only promote Site Build It and HostGator -- I have websites with both and can truly stand behind my recommendations. Other web hosting companies have great affiliate progrmas, but I haven't tried them and don't know first hand if they are reccomendable.

Make your text links interesting, without being too much like an advertisement. FOr example, when creating a link to an Amazon health product I included the basic description but left out "Buy 6 get one FREE." It looked to ad-y to me.

While it is not always the most lucrative, Amazon's affiliate program is one of the easiest affiliate programs to join and generate decent conversions.

This is a screen shot of my November Amazon affiliate income, which you can actually see if you click on it:

With a down economy to contend with (experts say the worst since the Great Depression) and lower sales accross the board, I was happy with November. It's all residuals, though I did add a few new links to articles I wrote in November.

December is on track to beat November's Amazon affiliate income, as I have already sold 47 items during the first week. Some were inexpensive books, but one was a pricey water filter that netted me $10. I put the link to the water filter in one of my articles some time ago, and it took less than a minute to copy and paste the code. This is residual income at its best: being paid $10 for a minute's work done months ago.

Previously, December has always been my best month and I am expecting great things in the days to come.

Take away:

• Target the products you recommend to the audience who is likely to read your articles, online profile or other material.
  
• Only promote affiliate products you truly believe in. You'll lose your audience if you promote non-quality items just to make a buck.
  
• Create interesting text links for your affiliate products to pique readers' interest and increase their likelihood of clicking you link.
  

Do you include affiliate advertisements on your blogs, websites or articles? Are you pleased with the results?