Blogging For Money – July 2007

July has been an exciting month!
Not only did I get to experience the thrill of having my exploding CD post hit the front page of digg but I ran a fun little contest and met some new people as well.
Just in case that is not enough to make for an exciting month, I followed up the disappointing drop in income from June with a new record setting month in July.
Dollars and Cents
My goal for the month of July was simply to earn more from blogging than I did in June and I am happy to report that I handily beat that goal.

My earnings increased by roughly 42% from the month of June and I am benefiting from the lesson that many of us have learned from John Chow in that you need to diversify your sources of income.
While I did see my Google AdSense earnings come back after a decline in June, I had the biggest gain in income from Text-Link-Ads with an increase of over 40% compared to June. Unfortunately I did lose the one spot that had been purchased on this blog but my personal finance blog is sold out.
In addition to the increase with TLA, I’ve gone from $0 to $22 with PayPerPost and have been negotiating another deal for a private advertisement on my personal finance site which is not yet reflected in these numbers.
Also, I was lucky enough to receive my first donation via the “Chopper College” plugin at the end of each post. I’d like to take a moment just to extend my thanks and appreciation to Chris Gray from SEO Ladder. As a note to others, you can be pretty certain that a donation of a few dollars will get you at least one link back from my site! What are you waiting for? 😈
One disappointing piece of data was the drop in Kontera earnings. This is the 2nd month in a row that Kontera has dropped and has me contemplating the long-term use of Kontera on my site. It is possible that the Kontera earnings have been impacted by the summer slowdown so I will likely give it another month or two to see if the earnings pick up again.
Moving Forward
I’m encouraged by the increase in earnings after my decline in the month of June. Not only did I increase my earnings but I made more than I have in any month since I began blogging.
My goal for August is going to continue building on this progress and earn more money than I did in July. I’ll continue to work on diversification across various sources of income and explore additional opportunities to take me to the next level.
Here is to everyone having a successful month in August!