I was checking my personal finances this past evening when I noticed that my total income since last August 26th had reached $5,000! While some people make more than that in one month, I was pleased because that amount was despite quite a difficult year in my business, and despite the time constraints placed on my involvement in this blogging endeavor.

Ok, how does the amount breakdown. Well, my blog generated a total of $2,501 through links, posts, and other deals that were offered; my stocks brought in about $1,031 again during a difficult year; hosting brought in approximately $530 from clients; my bank account generated about $187 in interest payments (in a low interest environment averaging 2%); and my business generated several sources of income – interest on an outstanding loan, and profits for last year, which totaled $751.

Overall, this income was generated from five different sources, though I’m well away from my goal of earning $1500 (approx. 27% of my target!), and increasing the number of sources of income (only 50% of the total!). It’s a tremendous achievement in its own way, but as things stand, there are a considerable number of avenues to explore.

Though I have done this much, I wonder what is ahead. Where can I go from here? Options that I am exploring are:

• Linkworth’s system of advertising for the blog, as a supplement or even replacement for my other text link sales;
• I no longer use Blogitive, Blogvertiser or Smorty. I’ve considered giving up on Payperpost and on Sponsored Reviews, too. Mostly because payments are low, and getting lower, while opps are getting much more demanding. It’s not that I’m afraid to do demanding opps. It’s just I’d rather write a great post for myself than for $5. So I’m considering going solo soon, but we’ll see;
• I’m also looking at expanding my blogs and creating a mini-network. It will require much more time and effort to maintain these, but there is good potential for extra income;
• and I’m looking at offline opportunities, too, after being considerably inspired by GeniusTypes’ blog and success with candy machines.

There are always going to be opportunities out there for observant and wily entrepreneurial types to make some additional or even residual income; the challenge is finding the opportunities. Often the opportunities are hardly labeled as such. Often on the Internet, you’ll come across great and wonderful websites promising you the earth and the heavens, too, if you buy their system. Too often it’s pie in the sky. Great opportunities are more likely covered in crap: the English have a saying “Where there’s muck (dirt), there’s brass.”

Perhaps this blogging adventure has been as much about increasing my own awareness of being ‘entrepreneurial’ as it was about creating/finding entrepreneurial opportunities. Some of the money I made this year was from seeds planted much longer ago than last August. Let’s see what I can plant or harvest in the second year of blogging.

Lulu’s reminding us that Calendar Giving Season is almost upon us. Lulu.com is a wonderful website that enables authors and publishers to put together their own publications.

What is Lulu.com? Their Blurb (not mine!)

Lulu is the web’s premier independent publishing marketplace for digital do-it-yourselfers. It’s the only place on the web where you can publish, sell and buy any and all things digital — books, music, comics, photographs, movies and well, you get the idea. We simply provide the tools that leave control of content in the hands of the people who created the content.

Last year, I made and ordered one copy of a wonderful calendar that still hangs on my wall at the office. The quality of the paper and reproduction of the photos begs me to cut out the images and use them as actual pictures in frames on my walls. I was absolutely thrilled by the quality.

In 2007, Lulu was voted #1 in its category in the 2007 Web 2.0 awards.

Anyway, here’s the reminder letter.

It’s almost 2008. Do you know where your calendar is?
It probably seems like just yesterday you were basking in the glow of your snazzy, new, custom-made 2007 calendar.

Time sure flies, because it’s already about that time to make a new one for 2008!

Good thing we make it so easy.

Make your day – go create a calendar.

And this time around, you can create a whole set of professional-looking calendars to sell or share, for all sorts of occasions:

• Holiday gifts
• School events
• Fundraisers
• Corporate promotions
• Family reunions
• …what will you think of next?

It’s always a great day to make a calendar . So what are you waiting for? There’s no time like the present.

Have a great week,

Lulu

So whatever you create, enjoy the process, create some great stuff! And I hope you’ll discover a whole new income stream!

This is an interesting story about how Google is trying to handle Click Fraud. I’ve included a good quotation or two from the story below. Naturally, I’m pleased that Google is trying to crack click fraud.

PC World – Google Opens Click-Fraud Site

Google Inc. has unveiled a Web site “resource center” focused on the thorny issue of click fraud, which many consider a potential threat to the company’s main source of revenue: pay-per-click advertising.Google developed the new Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center primarily to give its advertisers a single place to find Google’s information about click fraud, said Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety at Google, on Friday.

You can visit Google’s Click Fraud Center here.

However, some of the implications here are quite startling (emphasis mine)

“At a basic level, we protect advertisers against click fraud by not charging for suspicious clicks. The intent of a click is difficult to determine with a high degree of scientific accuracy. We therefore create a high false positive rate by marking a much larger number of clicks as invalid compared to the number of clicks we believe to be generated with bad intent.”

“Undoubtedly, there will be some instances of click fraud which will go undetected by our proactive systems and processes. By casting the net of invalid clicks wide enough, however, we are able to effectively minimize that proportion.”

So we have to ask: Could Google be screwing its legitimate publishers?

There are likely a number of ways that this could be the case:

• False positives mean exactly – the clicks were genuine but because of Google’s algorhithms they were in fact identified as fraudulent. Naturally, the advertisers benefit because they get visitors to their websites for free.

• The number of legitimate websites and blogs now accused of click fraud is getting longer and longer: including Kumiko Suzuki’s blog, LegalAndrew (reinstated), etc.

• The lack of external assessment and objective rulings, indeed even the lack of transparency, all suggest that there are HUGE problems with the way Google is handling “click fraud” from the point of view of the smaller publishers.

• Rates are declining anyway for clicks, in some cases a click generates only 1c or 2c. Though over 100,000 impressions, this could be a generous $50! If you’re generating that number of impressions per month, you’ve probably got decent traffic.

So it’s no wonder, as John Chow has done, that bloggers are beginning to ditch Adsense for other revenue streams that are less stressful: sponsored reviews, affiliate linking, text linking, etc., to name but a few. IN fact, it’s not a good idea to put your entire stock in Google Adsense! In fact, this month, John Chow entirely ditched Adsense because of its poor performance on his blog.

Further Reading:

The nonsense about AdSense: The Times Online.
Banned from Google Adsense – Lost $200,000

How are you monetizing your blog? Have you had problems with Adsense fraud? Do you even bother with Adsense? Let’s hear it!

Disclaimer: InvestorBlogger does use Adsense in this website, but is seriously considering removing it.