Earlier I wrote about how I am dedicating myself towards affiliate marketing to reduce my dependencies on Google Adsense. Google Adsense is still my main money maker bringing in low 5-digits ($$,$$$.xx) per year. I was also making good money with YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network), but Yahoo just does not get it and I removed it from all but one website due to laughable performance. Their ad targeting was just a big joke.
So, 2008 is half-way done and I checked to see how my affiliate marketing efforts are doing. I know I could have done better with more time on my hands, but under the circumstances (full-time job, family, etc.) I am pretty happy with the results. These are not the final numbers, but it comes pretty close. The screenshot does not show any income from Google Adsense or other sources of income that my online business has – these numbers are affiliate marketing only.
So, the second half of 2008 is upon us. My goal for the next 6 months is to meet and exceed the numbers of the first half of the year and to add an additional 50%. If I am able to do this than my income from affiliate marketing will cover my entire monthly business expenses (web hosting, domain name registrations, cell phone service, Cable Internet Access, etc.) easily. My fixed, recurring expenses hover around $500 to $550.00 per month.
Most of my affiliate marketing income is NOT coming from PPC marketing efforts, but rather thru SEO and organic traffic to my websites. In late September I will attend a 2 day PPC training class (PPC Summit) and I hope that by late October/early November a big push will follow accordingly. I am doing some PPC marketing here and there, but for the next 3 months I am mainly concentrating on building up websites that can be used as the foundation for PPC marketing. With the knowledge and skills I hope to gain from PPC Summit I want to use those websites as the foundation for my PPC marketing. Landing pages are easy to order (outsourcing) or to customize (I have several base templates ready for customization) and with the existing websites I should be able to get a few campaigns going fairly quickly. Since I build all my websites with SEO in mind as well, these websites might already be making money at that point, too.
Why am I waiting? Well, as said I am already doing some PPC marketing – but with very mixed success and I hope that the training class will finally push me over the edge to more consistent results. Until then I pre-stage several pieces, plus refresh my cash balance to be able to jump right into it. By the time late September comes around I have a solid foundation in place. If my PPC activity becomes more successful before then I would not mind either. 
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