This past September, when I launched my first blog, I did so with the basic intention of having a quick place to publish some of my freelance and personal work (well, the stuff that’s not under non-disclosure agreements). I blogged hard at first, then took a few months off while I was enrolled in a pretty tough quarter at school. During that time, I would casually check out my analytics, traffic reports, and the handful of affiliate links that I had setup on a whim.
Yesterday, after several months of neglect, I revisited those affiliate programs and discovered some rather interesting finds…
Cold, Hard Facts (and a few bucks)
After 5 months of not blogging (that is, 2 blog posts were written during that entire time), I managed to gather:
- 7,342 visitors (6,278 were unique)
- 17,782 pageviews
- 450 Affiliate Click-Throughs
- A whopping $155 from affiliates + Google Adsense
A pittance of cash, sure, but enough to cover my webhosting expenses and a few trips to iStockPhoto.com. It’s not a lot, but it was enough to provoke me to spend a little more time blogging and a little less time freelancing 24/7. Still, I needed an experiment to formalize my new endeavor, so I’ve come up with the following plan to do a little more time investigating this idea of promoting affiliate networks via WordPress:
The Plan
Now, I’ll say this first: I never really intended to make passive income from blogging at the start – it seemed greedy and anti-community; But lately it’s become an interest of mine for a few reasons:
- It’s fun: I’m a big nerd when it comes to analytics and UI & there’s few things more exciting to me than a game where I’ve gotta use analytics to achieve a goal.
- It gives me a reason to blog with consistency: It sounds silly, but if I don’t have metrics to consistently check, I get lazy & I’ll usually go months where I do nothing but freelance non-stop and never write a word about it.
- I get to promote products that I actually like.
- Who doesn’t like passive income? Sure, the total income might amount to pennies, but those are pennies that I made without sending a single invoice out.
- It’s Research: Every single one of my clients would like to know more about how to monetize their blogs, corporate websites, RSS feeds, and anything else they can make a buck from. It can’t hurt to have a little firsthand experience.
So, for those reasons, I’ve decided that I’ll be taking a few hours out of every week to promote my affiliate networks and study the results from a designer’s point of view. No, the purpose of this isn’t to make MDNW a visual mind%$&@, it’s to run some experiments and see if this myth of monetized blogging actually has some truth behind it. During this entire process I’ll be reporting back the relevant data for anyone that’s interested in this stuff.
The metrics that I’ll be tracking
- Site Traffic through Google Analytics
- Actual time spent
- Affiliate Networks
- Google Adsense Statistics
- AdBrite Statistics
- Stock Art sales through Graphic River
- Ad Placement (sidebar, in post, etc.)
- Ad Formats (image, text, flash, etc.)
The Rules
A handful of research categories aren’t enough though, so here’s a few rules to keep the end-goal in mind:
- I can only spend 8 hours a week.
- I must make at least 2 blog posts a week that relate to non-affiliate stuff.
- I can only promote products that I like & use
- All content MUST be relevant to freelancing, education, graphic design, and/or web design.
- I will actively reject any Adsense of AdBrite ads that aren’t relevant
- Oh, and most importantly, it can’t piss off users – which means you. If you spot stuff that’s sketchy – speak up and I’ll take the axe to it.
So that’s it. My grand plan for conducting a WordPress + Affiliate Networks blog-experiment. Any thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Similar Experiences?
It's awesome to get a bit of money from something se up as a whim! Great , I hope you got some great use of the money you got! Now youcan add some things to the site, right!
hey brandon i like your style but it sounds to me that with your detailed approach you could should be making much more than 155bucks for that kind of traffic i think if you posted a lot more consistently you would SE that number rise drastically !
I like it very much.. great share and very interesting
Wanted by Top Affiliate Programs Networks and more. If you got the stuff Mr/Ms. Super Affiliate we want you
so its been like 8 months since u posted this article….so what happened 2 the plan? id love 2 hear an update about it
I subscribed to your blog when is the next post
respect
poly banger
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I subscribed to your blog when is the next post
respect
mike hlower
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This is the best post on this topic i have ever read.
Thanks
Jikso laiye
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I added your post to my college Report
respect
Joseph tan
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Your idea is great and is already a plan or shall we say an itinerary of “what-to-do” for the year. I love your concepts and might as well do it for my own “itinerary”.
Now this is highly recommended post for me. I will surely email this to my friend.
regards
Alejandro Jaylon
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