My 2011 income report so far: $9,818.77 in blogging, writing online pay from Amazon, Adsense, Examiner, Yahoo, Commission Junction, Kontera, Linkshare and Text Link Ads, Inc

Seeing as though today is April 1st, it’s always a good time to pause and gather up an income report to see how much money I’ve actually taken in from January 1 – March 31, 2011.

Of course, everything I report here doesn’t reflect the expenses I’ve paid out for website hosting to Dreamhost, domain name purchases, book buys, etc.

Though God has brought me a great CPA who is working on my taxes — and the Lord showed me ways to get in on getting my LLC recognized as a Subchapter S-corp before the two-year deadline had elapsed since I formed the thing in 2009. Yay! Praise Him!

I got my LLC formed by The Company Corporation for around 200 bucks per year. My CPA is a local guy. And all these expenses are tax deductible for me!

I made $9,818.77 in writing and blog earnings from various sources and affiliate programs like Amazon, CJ, Adsense and more

What follows is the breakdown of that nearly 10 grand worth of monies that came flowing into my various accounts during the 1st quarter of 2011.

They are sorted by the organizations that paid me the most, but I can already tell that the order is shifting, and by my next 2011 income blog earnings report, you just may see Adsense or Amazon take the number 1 spot.

Examiner.com paid me $5,176.85 total for January, February and March of 2011

Ah…Examiner.

What can I say?

Apply to write for Examiner.com

In March of 2010, I wrote about bringing in around $1,200 from Examiner that February 2010, after I corrected that post and realized I’d made more than the $900-something I initially thought I’d made from them.

The month of March 2011 Examiner.com earnings are looking closer to $723 or more — the money that is due to come in April 2011.

That’s in large part due to two related factors: Google’s big Panda update, and my lack of writing as many article as a result of seeing them not get as readily accepted into Google News as before.

Here’s the month by month breakdown for my Examiner.com earnings, also known as Clarity Digital Group:
1/20/2011 Clarity Digital Group, LLC $1,530.39
2/18/2011 Clarity Digital Group, LLC $1,946.98
3/18/2011 Clarity Digital Group, LLC $1,699.48

Those months still reflect life before Google’s big Panda or “content farm” or “farmer” update that came swinging down on many sites on February 24, 2011.

The money that came in during March 2011 money reflects a near full month of February before the Panda update.

On some of my Examiner Google Analytics stats and my Associated Content (Yahoo) stats pages, I can clearly see the dip after February 24th.

They in some ways feel like the brook of Elijah drying up, so I have been moving towards more niche sites instead — ones that include product reviews of hot new shapewear lines for men and the like.

And I’m using tools like Build My Rank, to do just that, build my rank and my next set of earnings so they’ll way surpass what I’m earning through Examiner.

Examiner.com was a big boon to writers in 2008 or so… and at least I got in by September of 2009. Back then it was a lot easier to get pageviews, and get into Google News.

Obviously Google got hip to the concept and made some adjustments. Now they talk about “evergreen content” and are paying 50 bucks a pop for folks who make it in via our affiliate links.

One friend is still waiting to get in. I know others who were turned down and some who made it in. We shall see what happens, but ay yi yi with all the three pop ads I just closed out on Examiner. Seriously…

Amazon Associates referral program paid this writer $2,618.38 in the 1st QTR of 2011

As you can see from this breakdown, January 2011 was my most lucrative month of the three from Amazon product referrals:

01/27/2011 Amazon $1,144.06
02/25/2011 Amazon $705.51
3/28/2011 Amazon $768.81

CLICK TO ENLARGE THE PIC:

Honestly, I expected January to be a lot better, after all, my December 2008 earnings were more than $2,000 — and my December 2009 earnings were $1,891.99 — not including the $34.20 in gift card referrals.

While always grateful, I expected the December 2010 earnings from Amazon to be much more than the $705.51 that came flowing into my account in February.

But I am very hopeful in moving those Amazon Associates numbers well into the thousands this year, after reading a book by two women who have made nearly $20K some months in Amazon Associates referral fees.

I am still hopeful, despite all the controversy of Amazon dropping their Illinois affiliates due to tax law changes, even famous ones like Roger Ebert.

Google Adsense paid me $1,343.13 so far in 2011…

And here’s that breakdown:

  01/25/2011 Google Adsense $526.58
 02/25/2011 Google Adsense $452.37
 03/25/2011 Google Adsense $364.18

I can’t help but think of the days when my WatchFreeEpisodes.com made $5,000 per month in Google Adsense income — but then I got greedy and began adding too much aggregated content with wp-o-matic in the wrong way and got that site banned from Google, along with CPTimes.com.

But hopefully I’ve learned better ways to do things, and I’m looking forward to setting up more niches sites around the same topics that Google will love and readers as well — since the “watch TV online” genre seems to be a good one for high-paying ads.

I feel like I’m in that transition and resetting stage that has always eventually been proved out to be a positive repositioning.

At least I’ve gotten a lot of my Adsense channels set up with better descriptions so I know where the money is coming from better.

Associated Content — now known as Yahoo! Contributor Network — paid me $374.58 in the first quarter of 2011

I’ve been with AC (I guess they are now known as YCN?) for years, since 2006 in fact, when my son was going to kindergarten.

But they are another one that’s been hit by the Google Panda, so these steady payments…

1/12/2011 Yahoo! Contributor Network $128.26
2/8/2011 Yahoo! Contributor Network $124.59
3/9/2011 Yahoo! Contributor Network $121.73

…may look more like 70 bucks that I just tallied up in my Yahoo Contributor Network account. I don’t write for them much, but I do like the assignment desk where I can just grab an assignment and write about it if I want, and some publish immediately.

It’ll be interesting to see how these Google Panda-attacked sites will fare in the long run.

CJ paid me $124.34 in 2011 so far

Commission Junction has a whole bunch of sites you can promote — one used to be Examiner, another is the SnagaJob.com website that I wrote about a while ago, and they are still paying 1 buck a pop for referrals. But I don’t really know if that site is helping people find jobs — I hope so.

There are other sites under CJ that can be promoted. And now that I’m learning more about getting backlinks to get better search-engine rankings, I can end up applying the same philosophy to all the products I pitch thru the various places like CJ and more.

01/20/2011 Commission Junction $69.54
03/18/2011 Commission Junction $54.80

Kontera paid me $97.43 so far in 2011…

…and I hope it’s time for another payment in 2011 soon. Let me check my account.

Make money with Kontera ads

I don’t know…I can make hardly heads nor tails out of their interface, because it’s not easy to see what period you’re getting paid for.

At least they don’t have a $100 payout minimum anymore, and it looks like I have over a hundo coming soon to my account because they haven’t paid me in a while because there is a minimum payout and the waiting of a month period delay like Amazon Associates does.

I see that “business opportunities” has replaced “franchise” or “episodes” as some of my most popular keywords — and heaven knows what those ads lead to. I wonder if those ads help keyword backlinks?

I must research, plus I want to see what other kinds of earnings people are making through in-text or in-line ads like Kontera.

Linkshare paid me $46.09 in 2011 so far…

…and most of that was probably from iTunes, from posts I’ve written about music here and there.

Here’s that breakdown:
01/24/2011 Linkshare $3.81
02/07/2011 Linkshare $39.38
02/28/2011 Linkshare $2.90

eBay Partner Network paid me $25.22 in 2011 so far…

…and I had a heck of a time playing around their site trying to figure out what specific products were getting the clicks.

Turns out it probably was the CND Shellac Nails Twitter page or website I have set up, but I seem to remember eBay contacting me about something related to that.

We’ll see how this can grow.

Text Link Ads paid me $12.75 in 2011 so far…

…and I don’t know if I have any people left wanting to buy ads on my blogs.

Usually I get a few dollars into PayPal on the 1st of the month, but I didn’t notice any coming in today yet, so I’ll examine Text Link Ads sometime and see what’s going on with that company and if folks are still using it as much — and whether those backlinks help or hurt sites in the eyes of Google.

Here’s that little breakdown:
1/1/2011 Text Link Ads, Inc $4.25
2/1/2011 Text Link Ads, Inc $4.25
3/1/2011 Text Link Ads, Inc $4.25

So there’s the first 3 months of 2011.

I truly believe this year can see a huge, astronomical jump in my income to $275K or so — because my eyes are open to all these new ways of getting good Google rankings that I didn’t really use before.

As always, stay tuned and follow me for my progress.

And leave me comments of your blogging and writing income online details — no matter how big or small! We can all help each other…