It’s that time of the month when I take a look over where income has come from in my own business over the preceding month—this time, December.
Let me start with the trending chart (click to enlarge it) that tracks earnings in the total and separate income streams for the last nine months. You’ll see from this that December was a very good month!
Actually, “very good” is something of an understatement: it was my best month ever, and just under double the income for the previous month.
The increase came from a number of the income streams, and it occurred for two main reasons:
- A Christmas promotion on my photography blog: I ran a “12 days of Christmas” promotion on dPS that promoted 11 different products—my own eBooks as well as a series of affiliate promotions. This was the main reason for the leap in the affiliate stream (it’s over ten times higher than the previous month), but it also pushed ebook sales up significantly (double the previous month). I’d be happy to write a post on this promotion in the coming weeks if people are interested?
- Holiday shopping: AdSense income always rises at this time of year for me as a result of the Christmas rush (up by about 20%) and Amazon Affiliate earnings also rose (around double the average monthly income from the last year).
Following is the income stream breakdown:
Note: ‘Continuity’ refers to membership sites ProBlogger.com and Third Tribe. I did not do any speaking/events in December.
Looking forward, it’s going to be slightly depressing to post January’s figures after this month—affiliate sales, AdSense, and Amazon will of course return to normal after the Christmas promotions (in fact they often are a little lower than average in January). However we’re also looking to launch a new ebook on Digital Photography School next month, so hopefully that stream will be healthy.
How were your December earnings?
very cool! It was from affiliate earning.. I wonder how much is it…. :lol:
Looking at your graph Affiliate work seems to be generating the most revenue at 44%. Does this reflect the amount of time you spent on each area though ?. The reason I ask is :-
If you are spending 70% of work time on Affiliates and 30% on every thing else (which is actually bring in 56% of revenue). then you could spend more time on other areas and increase revenue.
I had my best December yet too!
Website traffic hit 348,000 in the month of December for my elementary music resource website, and sent AdSense income through the roof. Woo Hoo!
How I wish I could be making money like this from my blog. Am feeling jealous Darren!
Congratulation Darren! I noticed increase of earnings in December too. Especialy because of the Christmas and shopping for gifts and designs. My posts about Christmas were very popular and I made some sales. Not as many as you off course, but I’ll get there someday :) I hope :)
Hi Darren,
I want to where did you get this nice design from? I mean i know it runs on Genesis Framework but who designed your blog and for how much?
I was wondering whether i could get a good blog design made from them for my blog.
Thanks,
Rakesh Narang
Again, you are rocking with affiliate marketing, it is what I am not with and I love making money with affiliate programs rather than adsense :-)
I am working on building my visitor base before I can sufficiently succeed in making any money, if at all. I am using my website only to experiment with different essays, articles, videos, linking to different popular things, etc. It is an experiment and I have all the time in the world to try and improve and figure out the ways that work most efficiently. Once figured out, I plan to start a website based upon my findings and talk about it.
I read lots about “affiliate marketing” but have never read a great tutorial on the subject. I run a fishing blog that makes about $1 per day in Google Adsense ads. I’d love to double that by adding an affiliate component. Is it as simple as linking to products on amazon.com? seems really time intensive.
Darren, push me in the right direction on an affiliate marketing strategy. Thanks again. You are by far, the most informative blog resource i’ve utilized over the years.