Alternative Income

My Online Income Was Way Down This Year

by

My online income dropped to $3740.12 this year from $4644.28 in 2008. There were two reasons for this. The first one is that in 2008 I made about $1500 from credit card referrals. I don’t think I even made $150 from credit card referrals this year. People were not applying for cards and many of the credit card issuers cut back or eliminated their affiliate sales.

The other cause of my decline in income was from decreased competition. The site Bankaholic.com sold for $15 million last year and that spawned a ton of new bank sites. My bank blog BankBonuses.info has been my main source of online income but its amount of search engine traffic declined this year due to all the new sites.

With the acquisition of MyRetirementBlog.com my income should go up in 2010 but I would like to increase the income from my other sites as well. I don’t currently break down my income by site but I am going to start doing that next year so I can get a better idea of where my money is coming from and hopefully come up with some ideas to increase my earnings. I will probably start breaking my income down by source also.

I know there are a lot of bloggers that read this site – Did your earnings go up or down this year?

Participating in Clinical Trials

by

I have received a few comments from people wanting more information about the medical studies. Specifically they wonder if I am worried about the safety of the trials and how one finds a clinical trial to participate in. I´ve covered these topics in previous posts and comments but I´ll try to sum up the information here.

The safety of clinical trials is not something I worry about too much. There is some risk but I think many people vastly overestimate the risk. Many times the drugs I´m taking are already approved drugs but being administered in a different form. Even if they are not already approved drugs they have been extensively tested by the time they have a clinical trial. There are medical staff frequently monitoring you for any signs of side effects so if something were to go wrong they could promptly take care of it. I´ve done at least a dozen medical studies and for most of them I have felt no effects at all. The exceptions were one drug that gave me a headache and a sleeping pill which (not surprisingly) put me to sleep.

While people overestimate the risk of clinical trials I think they underestimate the risk of over-the-counter and prescription medicine. I don´t take any prescription medicine and rarely take any over-the-counter medicine. About half of Americans take at least one prescription drug and one in six take three drugs or more. I couldn’t find statistics on how frequently over-the-counter drugs are taken but since they account for the majority of the medications used in the United States it seems safe to assume they are used more frequently. This leads me to conclude that I take less medication than the average American and am probably not exposed to any more risk than average.

The recent deaths of celebrities such as Danny Gans and Michael Jackson show that just because a medication is prescribed doesn´t mean it is safe. Over-the-counter drugs are also pose dangers as shown by the new acetaminophen warnings that came out earlier this year. Heath Ledger is a famous example of the danger of abusing over-the-counter drugs. This is why I don´t normally take any medication unless I really need it.

If you are wondering how to find a study to participate in it is pretty simple. In my area and other areas I´ve lived there would be advertisements on TV and in the newspaper for upcoming clinical trials. If you don´t see any ads in your area check out ClinicalTrials.gov and GPGP.net to see if there are any clinical trials being conducted in your area.

June PPC Campaign Results

by

I ran a PPC campaign for my site BankBonuses.com during June to make a little extra money. I’ve run PPC campaigns in the past with mixed results. I usually make either a very small profit or a very small loss. I’ve been making adjustments to hopefully make my PPC campaign consistently profitable.

My initial results for June were disappointing when I examined them at the beginning of July. My revenue from Adsense and Chitika were a couple dollars less than what I spent on Adwords and I had no affiliate sales. My goal is to have my ad revenue equal my PPC expenditure and any affiliate sales will be profit. As it turns out I did have an affiliate sale in June but it didn’t post until a few days into July. I also found out that I had a couple of $25 Wachovia Visa gift cards in the mail for referring new customers. I don’t have any way of tracking where the referrals came from so I am going to guess that one was generated at Bank Bonuses and the other one was generated by my eHow article on the Wachovia $25 referral bonus. These unexpected earning combined to create a nice profit for June.

I’m running the PPC campaign again this month. I’ve already made an affiliate sale although it is for a smaller amount due to a promotion they have running this month. My ad revenue is running slightly higher than my PPC expense and I’ve made a couple more Wachovia referrals in addition to a couple of ING Electric Orange referrals. Even if I don’t make any more sales I will once again have a nice profit this month.

Even though I’m making a profit the past couple of months it still isn’t a lot of money. There are lots of things I could do to improve my site and my PPC campaign. I’ve been reading ShoeMoney’s PPC course and once I’m finished I will be implementing some ideas from the course. If I can be consistently successful with this PPC campaign I will start some more campaigns. I’ll keep you updated on my results.

Should You Concentrate or Diversify your Income Sources?

by

I had a challenge for myself this month to do something different every day to make extra income. I haven’t been able to come up with that many different ways to make extra income but I have had some insights based on my experience so far.

Most of the things I’ve done to make extra money don’t pay much and don’t have much potential to make significant money. These things just take time away from other projects that have better prospects. For example, I already belong to a survey site so I might do an occasional survey for an extra $3 if I have extra time but I don’t think it is worth my time to pursue more survey opportunities. I only have so much time and mental energy available and it is best to spend that on projects that have better income potential.

Also I can see a possibility of getting bogged down by looking at all the different ways to make money that are out there. You might spend so much time trying to find the best way to make money that you never get started. Or you might try to develop several ways of making money at once which will probably lead to inferior results. This is because you don’t spend enough time on any one of them to improve your skills and become better. This is where the jack of all trades, master of none analogy applies. I think the better income potential would be in concentrating your efforts on just a couple of projects.

My main focus now is going to be on improving my blogs and websites. My secondary focus will be on working on my writing and selling it. This should work well since my secondary focus complements my primary focus. If I think of another income source that would fit with these two I might add it as well.

I’ll still have some other income streams that take a minimal amount of time and mental energy (i.e. interest,dividends, cashback).

Let me know what you think.

Alternative Income Activities This Month

by

I have a goal of doing something every day this month to make extra money. We are just a third of the way through the month and I can see this goal is going to be difficult to meet. I want to come up with a different alternative income activity for every day and I’m already running out of ideas and falling behind. Here is what I’ve done so far this month.

  1. Launched a PPC campaign.
  2. Pinecone Survey.
  3. Law School Survey.
  4. Capital One Purchase Checks. Check out this FW thread to see how to make money with these credit card checks.
  5. Order dollar coins.  Here is a FW thread on making money ordering dollar coins.
  6. Moved money from non-interest bearing account to 5.01% APY reward checking account.
  7. Sold extra books to Half-Price books.
  8. Medical Study.
  9. Added new Adsense ads to Tight Fisted Miser and Bank Bonuses.com and tweaked placement of existing ads.
  10. Sold CD at Second Spin.

None of these items are very big money makers and in the case of the PPC campaign it might be a money loser.  I need to come up with some money making ideas that have more potential.  If you have any ideas you want to sure I’d love to hear them.