I hadn’t counted up my online income all year — so seeing as though today is the end of the month, September 30, 2013, what a grand time to tell you how my grand total of online writing (and other) income is up to $19,592.73 (that’s gross, not minus expenses, okay, Uncle Sam?) thus far.
Here are the amounts I just calculated from downloading all my PayPal and Chase bank account activity and using Excel’s lovely subtotal function to figure out:
AMAZON ASSOCIATES Total $1,503.50
This is the income I earn from recommending products through special links, representing my cut of the take from Amazon. Take a look at some of the stuff I’ve written about Amazon Associates to learn how I promote my products.
AMAZON DIG Total $1,773.47
This “Amazon Dig” is one of my favorite transactions to see hitting my account. It’s short for “Amazon Digital,” and it represents the monies I’ve made from royalties of my Kindle books, which are those that appear on my Amazon author page under my real name, and others that I’ve published under pen names.
At this point I have 15 “books” in print, and I put that word in quotes, because while some are large volumes of work that took many weeks or months to develop, like my main 350-page or so long book that helps others publish their own Kindle books, there are other Kindle works I’ve created that aren’t that long, only 25 pages in length.
Expect one of my next Kindle books to be a great book showing others how I’ve learned to increase my Kindle book sales.
AMAZON EU Total $263.27
Another description I love seeing coming through my checking account is the “Amazon EU,” which represents sales of my Kindle books in select countries in the European Union.
AMAZON.COM Retail Total $7,034.83
Now this may look like a whoppingly beautiful number, but it’s kind of a misnomer. This 7 grand is a holdover of sales revenue from when I tried my Fulfilled by Amazon experiment, a project where I delved into selling products via Amazon that would’ve been more profitable had I not gone a little loopy with all the spending on my American Express cards last summer.
This number does not reflect the expenses for the cost of the products I purchased — a figure I haven’t calculated as yet this year, but surely will when it’s time to report all these numbers to the IRS. (So technically, if we back out the $7K, I’ve made about $13K in 9 months from primarily writing online so far in 2013.)
GOOGLE ADSENSE Total $3,625.11
Lovely Google Adsense has been cranking along faithfully for me for at least six years now, and if you can see an advertisement above below my post title, or one below the post title on my Dark Girls movie niche website, then you’ll see the kind of positioning that works well for me.
Links positioned in a prominent place sort of like on my TV shows and videos website are also ones that can get a great click-through rate, if it’s a topic that people are motivated to click, like on a website about entrepreneurship or making money.
ELANCE INC USA VENDOR PAY Total $2,264.91
Writing for various clients via Elance has been a God-send for me, especially since I was looking for ways to get paid faster and pay off Amex quickly. (Thank the Lord they’re working with me.)
I always wondered how other writers were finding freelance writing clients, and now I know how. Look forward to another Kindle book in the future where I spell out exactly how I found my clients and how to present your best writing samples and published work in order to get good writing jobs — and how to politely back out or away from the clients who are looking to get a whole lot of something for nothing.
Elance has great Escrow accounts to help protect us writers from clients who don’t want to pay, but thankfully I’m learning how to bid for the jobs that sound interesting, use my best skills and are willing to pay what great writing is worth.
Clarity Digital Group, LLC Total $2,256.02
Examiner is still cranking along for me as well, though it’s not putting up anywhere near the numbers I used to get in 2009, when I first began writing for them. (Apply to write for Examiner here, and check out some of my Examiner articles here to get an idea of what I write.
At its height Examiner would bring me more than $6,000 some months — back in the Tiger Woods and Eddie Long scandal days — but who knows if those pageviews will ever return. That ship may have sailed, so my focus is mainly elsewhere.
Yahoo! Inc. Total $466.90
Yahoo is still going along earning me money, and I’ve written for them for more than 7 years — although I only write rarely when I find a great assignment to take or a wonderful reason to publish an article.
Join the Yahoo! Contributor Network here if you’re so inclined.
CJ.com Total $229.84
CJ.com represents the commissions I’ve made via Commission Junction, mostly from throwing affiliate links to Groupon (which seems to be my most consistent earner through them these days — along with Ulta.com products) in my Examiner articles. When people click through and buy the Groupon deals or Ulta products, I make a referral fee.
Text Link Ads, Inc Total $74.40
Text Link Ads allow people to buy links on your blogs, and to tell you the truth I didn’t know people had purchased links via some of my blog posts, but I don’t think I have any in the works from TLA anymore.
CopyOrDie Total $30.00
This represented payment for a 10-page eBook I wrote for a client, so I threw this income in my list.
LINKSHARE CORP Total $29.88
Linkshare is just like Commission Junction, and I mostly make these piddly amounts from any referral income I get via pitching Walmart products or iTunes stuff or whatever affiliate links readers find buried all around the net in my writing.
IZEA, Inc. Total $18.00
Let’s see, it took me a minute to remember that IZEA is related to Social Spark — and although I’ve made great money with them over past year (in 2011, they even sent me and my family to Kalahari for a beautiful night and I got $200 or so to boot, plus the royal treatment and free food and stuff), lately even though I get plenty of leads and show I’m interested, I haven’t gotten hardly any offers this year and I don’t know why.
Oh well, perhaps that’ll turn around.
GUMROAD INC BOOK Total $13.50
This may be actually the time I bought my own book to test out Gumroad, which is an eBook delivery and payment system I love, but for some reason I’m just including it here anyway.
EBAY Total $4.55
The eBay Partners Network hasn’t been paying a lot per click, but then again, I haven’t written about some crazy and interesting thing for sale on eBay lately and placing the affiliate link code to it in my Examiner articles, so there’s a reason this income has gone down.
I tend to focus on what works, and leave back the stuff that takes too much work to prove worthwhile.
mystycdawns.com Total $4.55
Lastly, here’s another payment for my book when it was an eBook, prior to me placing it on Amazon as a Kindle edition, which I prefer much better — and so do my customers.
There you go. It helps to see where I am, and hopefully these links and info has helped you, too.
