Anyway, between learning more about consolidating blogs, formatting ebooks for a professional look, formatting books for Kindle and PubIt, I’m also learning quite a bit about newsletters, email lists and Aweber features (not to mention that my brainstorming sessions are never ceasing).

On top of that, I recently came across an ad management tool. This tool, DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business is an answer to a growing problem that I seem to be having. You see, increasingly I’m receiving requests to advertise on my blogs/websites. The requests are emails that go something like this:

I’ve recently come across your site and am impressed with the content (they never tell me which site). I have a client who is interested or I am interested in advertising on your site (sometimes it’s a link within the content or a link on the home page).

My client/I have a budget of $XX and would be interested in arranging an advertising partnership.

That’s not the exact text of the emails I’ve been receiving but you get the gist of it. The emails have been coming with increasing frequency, which is good (I guess). The problem is I don’t know how to or want to spend the time with managing ads. That’s why I use Google AdSense. Set it and forget it.

Enter DoubleClick for Publishers

In reading the Inside AdSense blog, there was a recent post entitled Ad Serving Explained. Not that I was interested on how ads were displayed, but the DoubleClick video caught my attention. Check it out for yourself.

The best part of the whole deal is that sign up is free. So, I immediately signed up and realized, “Whoa, I’ve got a lot to learn.” I have no problem with learning, but for some reason I’m in an obsessive learning phase in my freelance writing career. If I could boil everything down into liquid form to drink it or vaporize it to inhale it, I’d be ahead of the curve.

Unfortunately, drinking or inhaling isn’t an option so tacked onto the rest of the things I’m learning, I’ve got to learn how to utilize DoubleClick for Publishers to get the most bang for my buck.

Although this current learning phase seems a little overwhelming, I fully expect that it will pay off in the end. A year from now when I’ve mastered these tools, I’ll be glad that I took the time to grow.

Speaking of growth, what have you been learning lately?

Abandoning a Blog

One of my newly created blogs has been taking quite a long time to get off the ground. I never expect too much in the first year, but this particular blog wasn’t showing the same signs of life early on in the process as my other blogs had. I figured the topic was a dud topic and that it just didn’t pay. Some folks don’t believe in placing ads on a new blog, but I do. It’s my measuring stick to see if my efforts are paying off.

The traffic to the blog is minimal, which is to be expected. What was a bit unusual was that in the several months that the blog has been up, the ad clicks were just about non existent. That was a little unusual even with minimal traffic. So, I made a mental note to abandon the blog. After all, in the space of 5 and a half months I earned a whopping .03 cents.

Changing the Ad Size and Location

Before totally abandoning the blog, I decided to change the location and the size of the ads. The color remained the same, but I increased the size of the ad and placed it within the content instead of above the content.

The flow of traffic remained the same but in less than a week, the blog earnings increased from .03 to $1.92. No, I won’t get rich off of $1.92 but it did tell me one thing…don’t abandon the blog. After not having a single ad click since August, I’ve had ad clicks several days in a row.

Getting Back to the Basics

I guess I was falling into the “disposable society’ syndrome. If it doesn’t work, throw it out. Instead, I realized that I didn’t need to get rid of the blog, it just needed some tweaking.

Lesson Learned:

If your blog’s income seems flat or barely existent, play around with the ad placement, size and/or color. You might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Of course after a momentary celebration, I had to take a more detailed look at how I did it and how I should approach this residual writing stuff going forward.  Here’s how I got there this year:

• eHow 49%
• Suite 24%
• Google 16%
• Infolinks 4%
• Text Link Ads 2%
• Amazon 1%
• Chitika 1% (I’ve since dropped Chitika)
• Affiliate sales 2%
• Kontera, Orato and AdBrite 1%

Earning $20,000 in residual income is especially exciting considering how much it cost for me to do it.  My top two money makers cost $0 to join.  Most of the rest of my income is tied into my own sites which cost me about $100 per year in hosting and $10 per domain name (I’ve registered about 5 domain names this year and only used 2). When I renewed my existing domains last year, I renewed them for multiple years so I didn’t incur the expense this year.

So far in 2010, I spent about $150 (although, this doesn’t include purchasing a new USB headset when my other one crapped out on me a couple of weeks ago).  When I compare my current expenses to the expenses I incurred driving to a part-time job 5 days a week, I’ve got to say that quitting that part-time job and working from home was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. After all, the part-time job only paid $8.38 an hour.

My Goals Going Forward

It is quite obvious after looking at the percentages that I’ve got a lot of work to do. I need to balance my numbers a bit more and add one or two more revenue sources.  In addition to more diversification, I need to beef up my numbers all around.  By increasing everything else, my eHow percentage will have less of an impact on my income. I’m not comfortable with them being the lion share of my revenue source.

I also want to invest in my money making resources.  I need to do things like upgrade my computer software, blog themes and some of my computer hardware.  My existing software/hardware has done a fine job in getting me to where I am, but I’d like to ramp things up a bit going forward.

In addition to the physical ramping up, I’ve got some mental ramping to do.  I’ve got to spend more time studying, learning and improving on what I’ve done in the past three years.  The Internet is constantly changing and if I want my earnings to grow (I’m still aiming for $10,000 per month in residual income), I’ve got to change along with it.

Well, there you have it, $20,000 in residual income.  If I can do it, I KNOW you can too.

A few facts about the blog

1. It provides reviews of a particular type of product.
2. Blog was created in January of 2009
3. It currently has 43 blog posts (an average of 2.2 posts per month)
4. Its written under an assumed name
5. All comments are closed
6. Google page rank: 2
7. Alexa Page Rank: 5,049,715 (far from impressive)
8. WordPress platform using a basic Thesis theme. No bells whistles or pretty pictures.
9. Daily traffic averages between 100 and 150 pages views. On a good day I may get close to 200 views, but generally it stays between 100 and 150.
10. Monetized with Google AdSense and InfoLinks. Earlier on I applied to Text Link Ads but they turned my blog down. I guess it didn’t get enough traffic for them. Who knows, maybe I’ll try applying again in the future.

Things I Noticed

I paid a little attention to where the traffic was coming from and where it was going. I used to insert a lot of links to the product manufacturer’s website to help my readers continue researching the product. One day, like a bolt, I realized I was linking away my income.

Most of the product manufacturers use Google AdWords and their ads were displaying on my blog. My readers were clicking on my links rather than the manufacturer ad links. Once I realized that, I went back and removed all manufacturer links. Now I will refer to the manufacturer website such as manufacturer.com, but I won’t hyperlink it.

The only hyperlinks in the posts are to other posts on the blog or articles I’ve written elsewhere on the same subject. No more giving away income.

Once I stopped giving away income I noticed the blog started earning more money. I can’t say for sure whether the monthly change in income was because I stopped the outside linking or because one month I wrote 4 posts instead of two, but between May of 2010 and June of 2010 the blog’s monthly income went from $69.97 to $315.20!

The following month the income dropped a little but it still earned $273!

[smartads]

As far as blogs go, I believe it has a nice monetary return per post. Since starting the blog, the posts are averaging $31.88 each (that’s 43 posts divided by the total blog’s income of $1,371.01). The $31.88 is a bit deceiving because during the first year the average earnings per post were $15.12. This year, so far, each post is averaging $54.33. I’d say that’s an improvement.

Lessons Learned

Here are a few things I’ll carry forward when I develop my next blog.

1. The blog’s topic will be about a product or service. I find those types of blogs offer the best financial return. I’ve got blogs on topics that are dear to my heart, but those are a labor of love because they earn bupkis.
2. I won’t give away links
3. I will place ads on the blog from day one. There had been some debate as to whether its good practice to immediately place ads on a brand new blog. Well, if I’m creating a money making blog, it’s difficult to make money without ads, so I put them on immediately. The blog that I refer to above earned $4.32 in the first month. That’s hard to do without ads.
4. Slowly add content and monitor the traffic. Some folks like to add a lot of content immediately when creating a new blog. I prefer just the opposite. I’ve found that even with a few posts you can tell whether the blog is a winner or not. I’d hate to spend an untold amount of time creating a ton of posts only to find out that it’s not a money maker. I like to work smart, not hard.
5. A surprising thing that I’ve learned is that there is life on the second, third or fourth page of Google. I don’t think my blog often ranks on Google’s first page. I’m sure if I put in a lot of time and effort I can make it happen, but I’d rather not work that hard.
6. I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that choosing the right blog topic and time are the two most important ingredients for a successful money making blog. If you have those two ingredients, your blog will make money.

From the Beginning

As you know, my true online freelance writing journey began in February of 2007. Back then I needed to get money coming in and fast because I had quit my part-time job. The part-time job was barely above minimum wage and I realized it just wasn’t worth the time and travel expense. I knew I could do better working online.

A Little Employment  History

Prior to the part-time job, I had worked both in the insurance and technology industries. I was a full-time employee/contractor and made a nice salary. I hated every minute of it. The hours and the commute was a killer (5 hours a day commuting). The money was nice, but was it really worth it?

As fate would have it, my last full-time job moved south by about 1,000 miles and I was unemployed. Not wanting another job for which I had to spend half of my day commuting I worked a few local part-time jobs.

I just couldn’t get my mind around the slightly above minimum wage part time jobs. I mean, my clothing and gas costs chewed up a bit of my meager salary. Oh, and I won’t mention the cost of weekly contributions for office baby showers, going away parties, retirement parties, etc. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Enough is Enough

I had been dabbling online playing around with websites prior to taking the last part-time job. In 2006 I earned $16.25 online from my dabblings. That meager $16.25 made me realize there was money to be made online. I just didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to know what to do and how to make the $16.25 grow.

After being forced to work the day after Thanksgiving and explaining that I already had plans for Christmas before I took the minimum wage job, I knew this job was short lived. Let’s face it, I was only making $8.35 an hour and after taxes, benefits, etc. I average about $125 a week, hardly enough to be worth the aggravation.

Throwing down the Gauntlet

I threw down the gauntlet and resigned. My last day of work was Friday, February 9, 2007 and that was the first day I started to take this online freelance writing stuff seriously. My initial goal was to replace my part-time job income.

So the Journey Began

Still having the work mentality, I found as many upfront paying gigs as I could find. I earned $5 per article and wrote until my fingers dropped. I also managed to land a magazine gig which did much to boost my writing income, but magazine gigs were few and far between so I concentrated on online writing.

Burn Out

I reached the burn out stage real fast. I was bringing in money, but I was working like the dickens. I managed to earn a little over $4,600 the first year but most of it was from up front pay sources. Only $1,400 of my income was residual income.

When I evaluated the numbers I knew I had to spend a little more time building up my residual portfolio. I wanted money, but I didn’t want to work my fingers to the bone to get it. I was beginning to feel that I traded the traditional job for a work at home ‘job.’ I didn’t want a job. I wanted money, but I wanted to enjoy my life too.

Working Smarter

The second year, I tried to write a host of residual articles. I also took on assignments for up front pay because I needed quick money, but I knew in my heart residual was the way to long-term happiness. I worked hard, and my hard work started to pay off. By the end of 2008 I had earned $10,000 of which $7,000 was residual income.

By my third year I almost doubled my prior year’s income. I earned $19,000 of which $16,000 was from residual sources. $19,000 is a far cry from my $8.35 an hour part-time job, but it still doesn’t match the salary I used to make as a full-time insurance broker or a tech writing contractor, so the journey continues.

Time of Reflection and Re-evaluation

Now that I took you through that long and drawn out journey, here’s the reason for my post. My own history tells me that residual income is the way to go. Over the years I have diversified my sources. I write in varying degrees for content sites such as Suite 101, eHow/DS, HubPages and Orato. I also have 11 websites/blogs of varying popularity (most of them are not very popular but they still earn money).

On my own sites I use various ad programs such as AdSense, InfoLinks, Amazon and Text Link Ads. I also endorse a couple of books and a few affiliate products.

Going Forward

I’m going to continue to do more of the same. I intend to continue writing for the content sites I currently utilize but I’ll spend more time and effort in building up the content on my websites/blogs. I’ll probably start a new site sometime within the next few months and get back to writing my book. I want my own sites/blogs/books to make up the lion share of my earnings.   I’d hate to build up several thousand dollars in residual income from a site that can one day pull the rug from under me.

My regular readers know that my goal is to increase residual earnings by $167 each month for the next 4 years to reach my $10,000 per month residual earnings goal. The wonderful thing about residual income is that if you put in the time and effort early on, it takes off on its own with little additional work

The Online Writing Secret?

From what I can see, the secret to earning money online is to keep writing and re-evaluating,  Time will handle the rest.