So this is a quick summary of May. May has done slightly better than the most of April with $2723.10 ($2590.29 in April). Despite the drop between March and April, the trend still looks like a positive growth.

I decided to compare the graph below, and although there seem to be a strong affiliate (amazon) increase, we can see that the adsense increase seems to have plateau since September of 09. This make sense since most of our new sites have targeted affiliate programs rather than adsense-based websites.

Overall, the month was sparsed with many high days, and many very low days. Not sure what is going on with google, but the rankings of the websites have seemed to be dancing around, something being pushed as far as 2nd or 3rd page before coming back to the first page. We have also lost a few first positions for some keywords that had looked strong in 1st position. We did not change anything… Google change in algorithm?? Difficult to say… Anyway all we can do now is keep pushing the websites and the keywords and hope that we can rank for more keywords and get our first places back.

So this is May and time for an April recap.

Unfortunately, this month did not meet our growing expectations. We made a total of $2590.29 for the month of April, which is not bad, but certainly not as good as our previous record month.

Interestingly, we are seeing an overall increase in traffic on our websites as seen on those analytics charts below. So the reasons in drop in income does not lie behind a decrease in traffic, but rather a decrease in sells and adsense revenue. So people have not been buying as much – affiliate income have dropped by 20% (tax season? summer coming up?) and we assume that for similar reasons people haven’t been tempted by the ads or adsense ads were just really crappy – adsense income have dropped by 34% (tax season? bad economy? summer season?). We are trying new affiliate programs other than adsense (clickbank), and are excited to see how this will turn out for us. In April for have earned only 6$ in other affiliates :P, but we are working in increasing this number.

These are the trends for a few of our main sites. As you can see, there is a general growing trend in increase traffic.

We are hoping that sells will pick up for the months of May, and that the new affiliate programs will help increase the revenue so I can finally quit my full-time job and travel the world :P.

The month of March follows our somewhat linear trend with a total revenue of $3421.06!

This is our record month, and throughout the month, we have finally reached the goal of the challenge that inspired us to start making website… the “100 bucks challenge”, where Steve Crooks challenged himself to make 100$ a day in 3 months using 1 website and only adsense. Well we did it in 12 months using 46 websites, adsense and other affiliate programs ;) (but anyway, long story short, he did not succeed to make 100$ a day in 3 months using only adsense and 1 website).

And this morning, we woke up with an awesome surprise… A lot of the websites that were ranking low are suddenly moving to the top !! We started adding more content to some of the older websites, and apparently, Google liked it…

Easter weekend is coming up, we would not be surprised if this weekend would see low days of income, due to people probably gathering with their families and friends.

Nat

As of March 27th 2010, we now have 46 growing websites. Of which, only about 11-12 of them have consistently been making money.

As we can see, the graph above shows an almost linear growth curve for the amount of money generated by the websites.

This is pretty exciting and amazing to see that the amount of money generated does correlate with the amount of effort put into the websites over time, and that they add up.

The month of March is following this trend and is on track for another record month, going for an over 3000$ month.

With all the money generated, we decided to incorporate a company, which will allow us to receive a tax break on this extra income generated on top of our regular income.

Our company became effective as of Mar 26th 2010 and we are very excited to read and learn more about running our very own company!

Goal : We are expecting to hit a 4000′ish $ month by the month of June. In order to do so, we need to bring more websites/keywords to the first-second-third positions of Google/Bing to increase the number of visitors.

Nat

In November, for the first time, we experienced “holidays” revenues weeks, which are scary low. Thanksgiving week was far our worst week in several months. A week with extremely low number of people coming through the sites, therefore low revenue.  We figured people probably spend quality time away or with their family ;)

Nevertheless, we are, once more, reaching a new high with a big total of 2109.10. This is very encouraging.

This month, for the first time, we made more in affiliate-based revenue than in adsense-based revenue.

Table of progress

And on thanksgiving, we had a taste of what the new google will be like… We were really excited when we realized that many of our websites are showing on the first page or near the first page with google caffeine! However, Google decided to postpone to the new year the full release of caffeine because they did not want to risk messing up their servers and people’s site before the holidays… SIGH.

I’ve never posted here, so I thought I might try my hand at it. While Nat usually handles the creation of the websites, I often handle some of the other aspects of creating websites. Usually that involves research, trying out various tools, and doing SEO. Mostly boring stuff. I might write some posts on different SEO techniques I’ve tried, or the tools we use.

Last month we hit a high of $1810.94, and as of yesterday, we’ve surpassed that. The last few days of the month are all record setting now, and we’re averaging about $60/day at the moment so hopefully we can come in $200-300 over last month’s high. Cross your fingers.

With Christmas approaching, we’ve registered an additional 4 Amazon based sites. We’re hoping to fill them with content and being ranking them before Xmas hits. This is a bit of a rush job, but I think it’s doable. One of the sites has already crawled its’ way into the top 10 on Google, the others don’t appear at all for their keywords yet.

This month has sure not looked as great as September in terms of growth. I have been averaging 40-60$ per day, with a low of 23$ and a high of 91$. Too many of my websites are still not showing on the first page for the main keyword yet. Also, I noticed a decrease in the number of sales. Maybe September back-to-school had something to do with increase spending and purchase through amazon.com. While we are still working on bringing the remaining websites to the first page (to the top 2 preferably), I created 2 new websites, and hope to have them ready for Christmas! I intend of creating another 2 websites over the weekend, all amazon affiliate sites. I am particularly interested in Amazon for the upcoming months because I know that the number of searches/purchases surge exponentially for the holidays.

I hope that for my end-of-month update, some of my websites will have moved to the first spot, or at least first page!

Over the last 2-3 weeks, I have noticed several abnormalities with Google. I have been on warrior forum and other people seemed to have noticed similar inconsistencies with Google.

First, I noticed that the website rankings have been moving up and down very quickly. Especially for some of the newer one. They seem to be jumping from page 1 to page 13, then seem to disappear even further back and suddenly pops back into 2nd page then back to first page. Several of my newer websites have been doing that a lot. When they finally seem to have stabilized to an X spot in first page for a few days, it starts all over again. Am not sure what’s happening. And it’s a Google thing for sure, as the websites seem to be very stable on Bing.

Second, some of my older websites which are normally in 1st or 2nd position have suddenly lost several positions, going down to the 8th-9th position. They seem to drop down a few positions, and seem to slowly come back towards their original position and suddenly drop even further down? At first, I thought that the websites were losing SEO backlinks… but after reading many threads on warriorforum and other forums, I am starting to think that it has something to do with Google working on something…

There are a lot of speculations… One of the most popular seem to be that Google is preparing to launch Google caffeine, which would require a lot of updates, leading to some instability.

This Google oddity has made me lost many good spots (show at their right spot, disappear and reappear within a few days) and I am hoping that it stabilizes soon or that, if that if it is the case, Google launches caffeine soon.

I also wishes more people would use Bing rather than Google… Simply because I rank so much better! I guess their algorithm is less complex and with great content I can much more easily hit first page.

So far, the month of October has been going okay, but nowhere as close as the first week I had in September, and this is partially due, I believe, to the fact that I have lost 1st-2nd position for some of my most important websites. But hey, I hope it’s just a matter of time before I get all my positions back.

My goal is to create residual income and passive income streams through and being able to be financially independent by age 31. .

Websites Types

So obviously, I have been focusing on developing money making websites. I have close to 30 websites, all making various amount of money. Lots of my websites are Amazon-based websites, but at least 25% of them are Adsense-based. Over the last few months, I have purchases quite a few software to help us. And I have to say that they seem to be wise investment, as our income has constantly been increasing over the months. . Notes on my websites I want to point out that not all of my websites are making any money. Less than half of the websites are making steady income right now, as I haven’t filled them all out with content yet nor have been working on promoting them yet. .

Revenue Growth

In June, I (we were) excited if I saw a 20$ day… In July, I saw my first 50$ day! My all time day high seemed to plateau between 20$-$50 in July and August, although the overall monthly revenue did increase. I also noticed a decrease in traffic but assumed that my sudden decrease in traffic in July and August were due to people vacationing and going away on holidays. I was probably right because as soon as September hit… it hit hard!! I suddenly saw a huge increase in traffic, therefore in increase in revenue. In September I saw my first 70$ day… Then my first 80$ day… Then my first 100$ day… Then my first 120$ day! In one month, I made $1810.94! So in the following table, you can see my strong increase in revenue in September, but also the overall increase in revenues over the months since May 2009.

Growth in revenue per month, May 2009-September 2009

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Amazon vs Adsense

I am undecided as whether I prefer Amazon or Adsense. While most of my websites are Amazon-based ones, I find that Adsense do give me a more steady income.  However, I do feel that Amazon has the potential of making more money when it hits. I seem to understand the Adsense spirit better. I have been able to optimize my websites in order to increase my click-through rate As for Amazon… I am still way under the average number of purchases vs number of clicks. I am unsure why, and have been following other people in the hope that I could get a hint at how they manage to increase the number of purchases. So far, it hasn’t been that successful, my Amazon rate seems to be fairly random, I can be selling a huge number of products one day and none the next following days. .

Mini-Conclusion for September 2009

I realized, after writing this post that, hey, I am actually not doing too bad. Putting those numbers together is giving me a better sense of where I am going. And I like where I am going so far!! .

Short Term Goal

1) I need to put content on lots of my website, increase the content, or simply complete them! 30 is a large number, sometimes difficult to manage. I will admit it, I do spend a fair bit of time trying to make my content and website look good. On many forums, people say not to spend too much time on the look or even content, but I am finding difficult to spread “crap” content all over the web =) 2) I also need to work harder on bringing my website keywords to the top. Several of my websites are on page 1 for they keyword, but not in the top 5. I know, from previous experience that being #2 or #8 will change your traffic by about 90%! .

Long Term Goal

1) Create more websites!! 2)I am aiming to be making a steady 2000$/month by Christmas!

Okay it’s been a while since I posted… A lot has happened since them… For personal reasons I had to change the domain on which I used to host this blog. And I’ve added Hatch to the blog, since we are pursuing this freedom 31 together. I guess I will remain the main writer for the blog for now, unless Hatch decides to add his own section or comments =)

Over the next few posts, I will do a big recap of what I (we) have been working on over the last few months and how the websites (I have many many of them right now!) have been doing. Your comments and advices are welcome, as always!

p.s. Hatch wanted me to give him credit for inspiring me to create this blog