As usual, Ebay was my biggest earner with nearly 33% of the online income. I’m glad I’m not dependant on only one source for the majority of my income, especially since I found out that one of my friends got booted from the Ebay Partner Network (EPN). While the real reason is a mystery, I can only guess it was one of the following:

1. He wasn’t promoting related products on his blog. This tells the EPN that you’re not a serious affiliate marketeer and that you don’t know how to internet traffic conversion works.
2. Some of the other sites were thin-sites. A site with no content and just affiliate links to products doesn’t usually rank well in the search engines and as a result gets no traffic. This also indicates that you’re a novice.

Ebay is facing problems increasing their revenues. They desperately need people to market their products for them. However, they don’t want people to sign up for the affiliate program and use it subsidise their own purchases.  If you make it seem like your internet marketing skills are non-existent there’s a pretty high likelyhood of their rejecting you. But you do have 60 days to try out BANS and get a refund if you don’t like it. If you don’t like BANS you can try this other Ebay plugin for wordpress that is pretty decent.

For more information read  my 1,000 word guide on how to make money from BANS. 

Anyway, here’s the monthly breakdown for July’s online income:

• Ebay Publisher Network: $1,171.08
• TLA: $491.84
• Linkworth: $271.73
• Adsense: $111.12
• Kontera, RevResponse & Direct Ads: $1090.55
• Amazon: $13.77
• Other/Affiliate: $47.54

Direct Ads were a huge portion of the income as well. But this number goes up every July! Check out last July’s online income numbers. This July, the online portion is almost 40% higher while my dividend income is 40%! Speaking of dividends, I need to write a post about that!

My “other affiliate” is pretty low. It’ll probably be higher next month since I won’t be working and can devote more time to it. Lets see how that works out.

In the past year I’ve experimented a lot on different sites and I’ve found that Ebay’s affiliate program is pretty easy to implement. I’m also experimenting on new things, many of which just don’t work so I scrap them and move on. One of the things I did try a while ago was automated blogging. You create a site that pulls content from other sites and you put adsense around it. Not only did I get little traffic, the site was de-indexed from google and adsense blacklisted the site. Essentially I was warned that my adsense account might be shut down if I continued such blatant theft of content! While I don’t make much money from Adsense, it’s still $1000+ a year.

Anyway, let me know how you guys are doing and what seems to be working for you (or not!).

Related Posts

• November 2, 2007 -- Making $3,000/Month In Passive Income
• July 14, 2009 -- $7,353.84 In Online Income!
• January 30, 2009 -- December 2008 Passive & Alternative Income Update
• May 18, 2008 -- How Passive Is Your Passive Income?
• April 20, 2008 -- Earn Passive Income From Domains
• November 20, 2008 -- Passive Income For October 2008: A New Record!
• November 1, 2008 -- Online Income and Passive Dividend Income Update for September

Check out the new laptop I got courtesy of Ebay.com! No, I didn’t buy a laptop on ebay, but I did use the money ebay sent me to buy a really nice notebook. You can learn more about the configuration of the 16 inch intel core 2 duo HP laptop here. With the recession going on and unemployment soaring, its nice have someone sending me a few dollars now and then for my discrentionary purchases.

As I reported previously, I’ve made around $15,000 in the first 6 months of the year through various online income streams. Last month was no exception. I’ll report the exact amount later, but again ebay was a major portion of this number. I won’t know the exact amount until Saturday but so far it’s just over $1,000. I’ve outlined the steps to create ebay income, but if that’s too technical for you, you might want to check out this new program called NicheDevil that looks very promising. It comes with a 60 day refund policy so there’s no downside. If you are unable to make any money online with it, just get your money back. The creator is the same guy who turned me on to BANS which has made me $10,000 so far so I’m more than happy to throw a few dollars his way to check out the product.

Is anyone else making money selling real estate, sports cars or gold coins on ebay or through BANS? If so let me know your success stories!

Update: I bought NicheDevil and I set up a few sites with NicheDevil. While it took me considerably longer than the 36 seconds advertised it was a considerably easier than setting up a comparable BANS site. I also liked the automatic pulling of tweets, youtube  videos and images based on your target keywords. The only drawback was I had to get HostGator hosting. I used the online chat help and asked if they had any current promotions – they said they had a 20% discount with the code “Beach” so I used that to get Baby hosting which cost $95/year for unlimited domains. I still actually prefer Dreamhost but they didn’t support the installation of IonCube loader so I had to use HostGator instead (well, I didn’t have to but I’m too busy to figure out how to install it myself). I also bought a few domains from 1and1.com since they offer free private registration and currently have .com domains for $6.99!

Overall, it was a quick and easy setup. The sites look pretty good. I downloaded GIMP and made some minor modifications to the layout of the site (just background color and header image which I borrowed from someone else!). I’ll let everyone know how they work out.

Related Posts

• November 1, 2008 -- Online Income and Passive Dividend Income Update for September
• January 30, 2009 -- December 2008 Passive & Alternative Income Update
• April 24, 2009 -- Selling A Car On Ebay
• April 23, 2009 -- Online Income Update: 1st Quarter 2009
• October 6, 2008 -- How To Make Money On Ebay Without Actually Selling Anything
• April 20, 2008 -- Earn Passive Income From Domains
• March 4, 2008 -- Monthly Passive Income Crosses $2,000 Mark!

Here’s my breakdown for the 2nd quarter. I made $7,353.84 in online income I made between April 2009 through June 2009. For comparison, I made $6,760.85 in online income during the 1st quarter.

• Ebay Publisher Network: $2729.85
• TLA: $1487.09
• Linkworth: $664.82
• Adsense: $382.79
• Kontera: $26.88
• Direct Ads: $1,599.15
• RevResponse: $18.97
• Amazon: $79.22
• Other/Affiliate: $244.82

On average, I made just over $2,250 a month.  As usual, Ebay was the largest income producer.  Till date this year, I’ve made just over $5,000 from Ebay affiliate commissions and over $8,000 since I started last year. (click on the graph twice to see a larger image).

As you can see from the graph, the earnings (in yellow) have steadily increased each month (with a big surge before Christmas followed by a huge drop right after!). Read this post on How to make money from Ebay without selling anything if you want more information about starting your own niche sites.

One of my fellow blogtrepreneurs makes over $3,000 from his BANS sites so there is decent money to be made.  However, the few $100k/year guys I know make it from selling ebooks and other online products. From what I gather, that is the most likely way to make a real living from online marketing and sales. Towards that end, I’ve been working on a project to create and sell some online ebooks. Within the next several weeks, I divulge more information about it. Until then, all I can say is that the idea was motivated by this $7 ebook!

Related Posts

• August 13, 2009 -- $3,202.52 in Online Income For July 09
• January 30, 2009 -- December 2008 Passive & Alternative Income Update
• May 18, 2008 -- How Passive Is Your Passive Income?
• November 2, 2007 -- Making $3,000/Month In Passive Income
• June 20, 2009 -- Creating Online Passive Income: Interview With HubPages CEO
• April 23, 2009 -- Online Income Update: 1st Quarter 2009
• October 6, 2008 -- How To Make Money On Ebay Without Actually Selling Anything

I was able to ask the CEO of HubPages.com and YieldBuild.com, Paul Edmonson some questions about his entrepreneurial experience and passive income.

How did you begin in online marketing?

I started in online marketing back in 1999 when I first started working on the search engine optimization strategy for MongoMusic. Since then I’ve started numerous sites that range from lead generation to niche content, been an SEO consultant and am now the CEO of HubPages.com and YieldBuild.  Both technologies are geared toward helping publishers optimize their online ad revenues.

I have made a few hundred hubs personally, but there are over 367,000 Hubs published now and more getting added every day.

HubPages revenue is driven by the YieldBuild ad optimization service that come primarily from optimizing AdSense, and Microsoft PubCenter through our service.

I think the biggest challenge of online businesses is getting to scale.  It generally takes time and several iterations to get a product or service fit to the market.  Generally, you won’t know how good a business will be until the product is fit to the market.  I think this process is the most difficult for every web based business I’ve bee apart of.

It starts with quality.  You have to make a quality product or service.  This take time and lots of hard work.  And.  You have to continue to improve and iterate.  If you are starting out online, I’d suggest make something extraordinary well, and keep iterating until it gets fit to the market.

Personally my wife and I have Hubs and a few sites that make about $2K-$3K per month, but our YieldBuild business will gross over $3 Million this year and is growing quite quickly.

Yes, people should check out HubPages.com if they are interested in starting with earning revenue online by creating and sharing content. Make high quality Hubs and overtime, you will start to generate revenue.  For people that have sites, they should take a look at YieldBuild.com and try our ad optimization services.

While he mentions that he makes $2-3k from his hubs, he didn’t tell you that he has nearly 250 hubs. This must have taken serious effort. Creating online income, passive income or any sort of income for that matter isn’t easy. Its takes time and effort. Many people give up before they even get started. If you expecting to see quick results, you will likely be disappointed.

What online revenue streams do you have? What has or hasn’t worked for you?

Related Posts

• July 14, 2009 -- $7,353.84 In Online Income!
• April 23, 2009 -- Online Income Update: 1st Quarter 2009
• October 6, 2008 -- How To Make Money On Ebay Without Actually Selling Anything
• September 10, 2008 -- Passive Income Update For August 2008
• May 18, 2008 -- How Passive Is Your Passive Income?
• February 11, 2008 -- Supplement Your Adsense Revenue!
• February 7, 2008 -- January’s Online Income Grows 36.92%

Well, someone finally bought a whole car (as opposed to spare parts or accessories) through one of my sites. And not just any car – an antique 1972 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow!

Of course, $130 in affiliate commissions isn’t exactly earth-shattering, but it’s the largest sales commission I’ve received from Ebay so far!  And coupled with the sale of an antique seiko watch, a few designer bags and cheap ipods, it almost pays the rent!

Related Posts

• August 13, 2009 -- $3,202.52 in Online Income For July 09
• July 29, 2009 -- Ebay Bought Me A Laptop!
• July 14, 2009 -- $7,353.84 In Online Income!
• April 23, 2009 -- Online Income Update: 1st Quarter 2009
• January 30, 2009 -- December 2008 Passive & Alternative Income Update
• November 1, 2008 -- Online Income and Passive Dividend Income Update for September
• June 1, 2008 -- $2,811 In Passive Income For April 2008