Newsbites

For small bits of news, quotations, odd videos, and flimflam.

2009 Annual Results

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Well, I am surprised.

For many companies and individuals worldwide, 2009 was a difficult year. I am surprised that even now my online income has only decreased a little in 2009 vs. 2008. Most of the income came as the result of advertising to my small network of blogs, some from my broker, a little from personal interest.

The grand total for adding up my extra income (not salary) was in fact, $5,386.51. Like always, this is the gross figure, not including expenses, and taxes. My only disappointment is that at this time, I am just not in a position to earn enough on a monthly basis to justify setting up a company or paying myself a decent salary.

I’m slowly getting to my target of $1500 per month, but without additional income streams, it’s difficult to get the most out of my existing streams.

Plans for 2010.

So, in 2010, I’m building a couple of new sites with SBI, to enhance my income stream. It’s my first real experiment with affiliate marketing despite dipping my toes twice this year already with EeeBlogger and TESOLTeachers, neither of which did much business other than pay for their own domains.

I’ve done some rough figures and for my first SBI site, I think it should be able to pay for itself in about 12-18 months because I’m going into a more saturated market, even though my keywords have less competition. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that the payouts are a little less, so profits are likely to be less.

However, if I can even reach levels seen on this site or my other main site, that’d be a blessing! Why? I love creating content, but creating static quality content is a whole new field for me. I think, for the time being, I will ease up on the regular blogging to concentrate on creating real niche sites. 2010 should be really interesting!

BuzzBlog: Great Coffee Beans

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I’ve been pretty busy the past few weeks building a new site for my online business. It’s called Great Coffee Beans, and though it’s still early days, I’ve quite progressed along the track of building this site.

Why is it different? Well, it’s different because it’s my first site to focus on the SBI site building ideas, so it’s going to be a fully featured site with approx. 100 pages about Coffee Beans and making Great Coffee.

I haven’t set traffic or financial targets because it’s too early to really see what will happen.

Great Coffee Beans

The whole SBI process has been quite an opener in terms of the required keyword research and detailed article writing. I’ve also taken the unusual step of buying a lot of photographs and touching them up for the site. I’m hoping to mix my own photos in with the commercial ones.

There’s really not much else to say about the site, but I am working hard on refining the Look and feel of the site by adding lots more images to the site. I’ve still to revise two more articles, then I’ll be adding upto 35 more articles over the coming weeks to finalize stage one.

Traffic levels are still low, as I redesign and rewrite the site… but I’m hoping that traffic reaches 300 unique visitors within about three months. Do check it out and let me know what you think of the site!

Should I sell my blog?

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One recent forum, I came across this sad letter. Why? Read the letter first to find out the problem:

I have worked hard and have done pretty well in my site I believe, traffic is building to around 150 visitors per day. … But I am currently deeply involved in a book writing project for (way off my wedding site subject). It will take most of my time and thoughts, and I honestly don’t have the motivation or focus for wedding writing at this point. If my site was earning me a good living, I may reconsider, though it would still need updating often.

I am not sure how far off I am from truly monetizing. Sometimes I think I need to just add a few things to potentially earn more. I’ve had some earnings with Adsense, but nothing high enough for my bank account to see. I’m not sure how much extra work is involved to truly see income come in, but right now all I’m doing is paying out — with the added time and effort of my other important project I’m doing.

Any advice out there? Any thoughts on who or how to sell my site to, if I do and how to figure in the price of it?

Thanks, D.

Ok. Now time for my reply.

Just one question: what happens when the book is done? Will you regret selling your site or not?

I took a quick look at your site (sorry no URL!), and I’m seriously impressed by the design, the organization and time you took to create the site. And with your traffic levels, it should be relatively easy to add a few products (think: Amazon, Clickbank books, Advertising links, …) to pay for your site, at least.

Since you have such traffic levels in your niche, it seems best to pause the content creation, look at increasing income (should be achievable!) and let the site run on auto-pilot for a while. I would make a lot of suggestions about creating money streams for your site:

  • sell e-books (yours or others)
  • sell advertising (not just Adsense – a lousy pittance, imho)
  • sell affiliate products like shoes, dresses, etc. for the bride and groom… just a couple of affiliate companies will be a good place to start.

In fact, it’s perfect: it will take a couple of weeks or a month to know what sells and what doesn’t. So every month, just check the stats; tweak, add or drop the stuff you need to. And forget about it, till next month.

If after 3 months, you still haven’t sold any additional items, then reconsider (but I’m guessing you’ll find it enough to warrant simple tweaking).

It would, IMHO, be a real shame to come so far with your site, and fall at the final hurdle… just because something else comes up that needs your attention.

Many SBI-ers report the same problem: and run their site on auto-pilot for 3-6 months without any serious impact. In fact, it improved their search engine rankings just having the extra time.

So I would suggest: reconsider before someone else makes an offer, and you find yourself without all your hard work, and a few dollars in the bank only.

Kenneth

My additional thoughts: too often, we start something with a lot of gusto, but just as we are nearing the finishing line, we fall down in the middle of the track. And we get up, our pride injured and walk off the track (or are carried off to save our ego). But in building a website like this, there is no finishing line order. Picking yourself up, and completing this race will simply mean that you have achieved something considerable. So, go ahead … monetize the site. See what you can do on that front. Then let it rest.

What would you do in this situation?