March 08 Earnings
April 2, 2008 – 1:45 pm
This month has been pretty good for earnings. Our AdSense has gone back up by a 25% increase, I had a couple more Text Link Ads 'sales' too, which has helped with the income, plus a couple more sales on DIY Covers. Total for the month comes to $292, which is a good increase on the past two months.
More importantly is cash in the bank. We didn't get an AdSense payout this month (although the one due this month will be about £90), but with a few other payments in we've had almost £120 come in, and that's without AdSense, so just £7 short of the monthly target. However overall we've got £436.82 total which is £55 over the combined average (average last year was £381 at this point). With an AdSense payment every other month instead of every month the targets will not always be met, however I'm really happy to almost reach our monthly target without have AdSense included, afterall we all know it's not good to rely on just one main source of income.
This month has seen a refresh of 2 existing sites. One sells osCommerce templates and eBooks which was half on WordPress and half not (I set it up on WP before I knew about page templates!), so this month I finally got to integrate the site into WordPress properly, give the site a new theme courtesey of WPDesigner, and altered the site a bit to show a random template in the sidebar on every page (something I've been meaning to do), clean up the code and give a couple more options. I've got a few more ideas for the site which I'll be working on over the next month.
The second site is my Food and Drink blog. It's more of a passion than an AIS site as I do blog on there, however I've got a couple of ideas to maybe make a bit of additional income from it which I see as AIS as I would still blog there even if I didn't make any money from it 
So this month I'm intending to get these finished off and am then thinking about an overhaul on our Tattoo site. I've yet to finish the shopping cart on it (typically it just gets put to the bottom of the to do list) which I kick myself for as we could have made a fair few sales via it. Plus I have new tattoos to add which I think will be popular, along with some eBooks that I have the resale rights for.
Hope your month of March was good and April is prosperous for you too 
24 Responses to “March 08 Earnings”
Very nice and always pleasing to be meeting your targets as well as being ahead of where you were last year
By One Dollar A Day on Apr 2, 2008
Cheers ODAD
I'm definitely happy with the way things are progressing this year with plenty more to come 
By Sarah on Apr 2, 2008
Great work sarah. It's been a pleasure following your progress!
Keep it up! Ryan
By knupnet on Apr 3, 2008
Thanks Ryan
By Sarah on Apr 4, 2008
Inspirational post. Well done Sarah! Keep up the good work. Hopefully next year you'll be a millionaire!
Reading posts like this really push me towards getting my site off the ground!
Thanks again
By Mike Touch on Apr 7, 2008
Cheers Mike. Glad to have inspired a little motivation. I think seeing how others who are on a similar level do always helps.
By Sarah on Apr 8, 2008
My march earnings were up so I'm chuffed, don't want to get even lazier because of it though, if anything I need to work on everything more this month to try to continue to increase it!
By Adam Dempsey on Apr 9, 2008
Congrats on the earnings Adam. Blimey, your increase is more than my income for the month! It's always great to see the figures go up, means you're doing something right and the more you do the better it should get
By Sarah on Apr 9, 2008
I'd be interested in knowing how you integrated oscommerce with wordpress. There is a plugin/codehack for combining zen cart and wp but I found it inscrutable.
By mccormicky on Apr 10, 2008
Hi McCormicky, am a little lost. The site that this post was about doesn't use either osCommerce or WordPress so I'm a bit lost as to where you got that question from?! I wouldn't combine them anyway. There's an ecommerce plugin for WordPress and that's a better option in my opinion.
By Sarah on Apr 10, 2008
Chalk it up to sleep deprivation?
I meant to comment on March 08 Earnings,
specifically this excerpt:
…"One sells osCommerce templates and eBooks which was half on WordPress and half not (I set it up on WP before I knew about page templates!), so this month I finally got to integrate the site into WordPress"…
I just misunderstood it, sorry for confusing you. I saw osCommerce and WP mentioned together and got overexcited.
I use the ecommerce plugin on 2 other sites successfully and I also think it's the best option available (right now) but I'm always on the lookout for better.
By mccormicky on Apr 10, 2008
Ahhh okay, I understand now. I'll move the comments over
But yes, it just sells templates and there's no ecommerce involved there, simple buy now buttons 
Nice to hear from someone who uses the WP ecommerce plugin though. I've got to give it a trial run to see how good and flexible it is.
By Sarah on Apr 10, 2008
Coincidentally, March was our best Adsense month ever over the last 3+ years of running ads. Must be something in the water
By HB on Apr 10, 2008
I'm about to open a store on my own site selling my junk finds and I'll let you know how it goes.
I'll be using the plugin-the stores I mentioned were set up for clients.
By mccormicky on Apr 10, 2008
Great to hear HB. Increase in visitors or just increase in CPC?
Look forward to hearing about your experience McCormicky and good luck with the new site
By Sarah on Apr 10, 2008
Hi Sarah, it was a case of changing the ad format and placement which resulted in the CTR almost doubling overnight - it seems to have stayed at that level which is nice…
By HB on Apr 10, 2008
I've been using TLA for quite a while but I've only 1 ad sale so far - and that's like a pityful $2.25 USD a month - Adsense on the other hand is getting better each month.
On the good side, instead of getting $$$ I get nice freebies to play with - much thanks to my blog.
The favor from various computer hardware brands does make my life more fun.
By goldfries on Apr 13, 2008
Hey goldfries, good to hear your AdSense is improving. TLA seems to come intermittently, I guess it depends on who's looking and what they're after. I know some people who just seem to sell a lot more on their site compared to one of mine which took about 6 months to get one link on, similar subjects and my site gets a lot more visitors. Price didn't vary much either. Some advertisers just don't look deep enough I guess. Pot luck really.
Freebies are always cool though
By Sarah on Apr 15, 2008
Sarah I can't even see where the ads are on your site except the one in the top right!
By Mike Touch on Apr 17, 2008
Mike I don't run ads on this site and the top right one links to a post on this site
I have a few affiliate links in my links page. Our income comes from other sites we run. This site is merely my blog behind what we're doing and how well we're doing, with hopefully a bit of helpful info along the way 
Oh by the way, I keep having to pull your comments out of Akismet all the time, I'm not moderating you on purpose
By Sarah on Apr 18, 2008
Ah right. Thought this blog was what you were talking about in your earnings post!
Akismet is a spam thing isn't it? I guess it's because my site is not liked by spam filters. Don't really know how to get round that.
Cheers again.
By Mike Touch on Apr 20, 2008
Yeah Akismet is spam, but it usually goes by certain filters of words plus email addresses reported by WordPress users, not sure why yours is getting trapped as I don't think there's anything wrong on your URL.
Ahh well, just means I need to keep an eye in the Akismet list more often
By Sarah on Apr 21, 2008
It may be the whole 'free ipod touch' thing which they don't like even though my blog is just for general ramblings. I have emailed Akisnet to see what they say. Thanks for the heads up.
By Mike Touch on Apr 21, 2008
No problem Mike. I wish there was a way to just whitelist certain emails. I may have a look in the Akismet file when I have the time. It's strange they've not thought to do it. I believe Spam Assassin allows this.
By Sarah on Apr 24, 2008