Derek Semmler dot com - money, motorcycles and cars (with a little bit of everything else)

If you remember, December saw my streak of five consecutive months of record earnings come to a close. However, the new year has brought new success with my efforts to earn money from blogging.

In 2008, I have set a goal to focus more on affiliate marketing as an additional tool to make money online. While the results have not materialized yet, I have launched a new TTZ Media affiliate site and have been exploring the use of NeverblueAds.

If you’re trying to make money online, you need to constantly be exploring new tools and methods of making money. You will not be successful if you simply put up Google AdSense ads and expect the money to magically appear. With this monthly recap, I hope to share with you the tools and methods that have been working for me as well as which ones have not been working.

Dollars and Cents
While I did not set an all-time record in the month of January, my earnings did increase by nearly 25% over December and that is a very encouraging growth rate.

The numbers in January are very encouraging as the earnings from AdSense, Kontera, TextLinkAds, and LinkWorth each set an all-time high for one month.

The AdSense earnings had a significant jump and nearly doubled the previous high in one month. While falling just short of earning $100.00 in one month, the results were very positive and reversed the trend of reduced earnings.

There have been a few sales of TextLinkAds on this site and that propelled me to new heights there as well. Outside of private ads, TextLinkAds was the highest source of online income in 2007 and that has continued into the new year.

There was the potential for a new monthly record in terms of online income, however there were a few private ad deals that I was not able to close. After negotiating with a few advertisers, I was not willing to bend as far as they wanted on the pricing structure and we could not agree on an appropriate discount for the use of a prepaid arrangement. While it would have been nice to secure these deals, it is not worth doing at any cost.

ReviewMe and Amazon continue to be lackluster in their earning potential, although I have received a new offer via ReviewMe that is currently under consideration.

Plans for February
The fact that the new year has brought an increase in earnings for the primary tools used in my efforts to blog for money is very encouraging.

In February I would like to refine the process for private ad deals and create a better method of managing the deals that are currently in place. In addition, I will be working on generating traffic to SpicyTechDeals.com to explore the possibilities with my TTZ Media affiliate site.

Overall the goal will be to continue to build on this success and begin a new streak of consecutive months with an increase in income. As always, please feel free to ask if you have any questions!

How are you doing with your efforts to blog for money?