I am pretty happy that I saw my first set of actual results. Now my ePCM (estimated amount I earn per 1000 views) is just under $40. Now I just have to keep adding content, getting the traffic and hopefully I will keep earning.

Adsense is adding a few cents at a time to my account, though from what I work out it is from each time I get 1000 views rather than actual clicks.

My stock graphics are chugging along, earning a few dollars a week.

A long way to go to get to the $100 per day, but I have a 5 sites set up now, and am planning out how I am going to create and manage the content. I have been reading a lot this month, some relevant to earning money online, some not.

I have almost finished The Facebook Effect which is really good, I am always interested to know how these things work behing the scenes.

I also read the “book” Giants of Web 2.0 by Declan Barnett. One of the worst things I have ever read. It is a terrible sales pitch (for their event) made to look like a book that will help you use online video to drive traffic to your site. After reading his claims of earning tens of thousands per month I had a look at his profiles on youtube and twitter. His videos are all around the measly 300-1000 views mark, while his twitter account has a tweet about him wondering if he should get private health insurance because “its so expensive”. If he is earning as much as he claims, I wonder why a dollar or two per day is such a big deal……

At least I only borrowed it from the library, so no money wasted there, just time.

Speaking of good books, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income was a helpful read, I finished it in two sittings. It was full of usable lists and instructions to help you drive traffic and help increase the popularity of your blog. I will re-read it again in a couple of days but take notes along the way this time.

On the website side of things, I have been getting right into developing and customizing themes, which is going to be a great help later on.

The two sites I have built are getting more popular, and climbing in the Google results quite nicely. Hopefully in a couple of months I can get one or both on to the front page.

Although the sites have AdSense on them, the ads that are being served are not always relevant, which hopefully will change when I keep adding content and Google knows more about the themes of my sites.

I have signed up for a couple of affiliate programs for some quality (related to my sites) online stores (that I have bought from before), so I will begin promoting them when I have a good solid base of content and consistent organic visitors.

It seems like the small SEO changes I am making to the sites are having an effect, one of my sites is on page 2 for my keywords which I am pretty happy with.

Money earned for the first week of January:

Adsense: $0.00
Affiliate links: $0.00
Stock images: $0.25 Yeah!

Not to worry though, this month is still going to have a lot going on.

I am just starting to get my head around keyword research, so I can find marketable keywords in niches that I can write about. Keyword research is quite complicated and is not something that I want to rush, if I end up targeting useless keywords I will never get anywhere.

I am also reading as many posts as I can on SEO, and trying to streamline my wordpress installs and theme customisation (the fun bit).

In my case, passive income is going to to be a combination of money earned from ads on my websites, affiliate links and stock photos and graphics.  Like a musician, or author, I will be creating a product that needs a big investment (time, money or skills) at the start, which can then sit there and earn small amounts of money all the time.

I really like this idea as opposed to the traditional way of earning money – where you are paid only for the hours you put in. Sure, if you work a lot, you will earn a lot, but as soon as you stop, so does your money.

I know that the internet is full of people successfully combining IM (Internet Marketing) with their skills and motivation to create sustainable passive income streams. Although there are people making $1000′s per day, I am setting myself a lower goal, which is to be earning $100 per day by the end of the year (December 31st, 2012)

I had always heard of people getting earning money from their sites and apps, but I never thought about it too much. I was always thinking that I needed a big idea and a lot of money to start it up.

A few years ago I read an article that explained in how to make money selling microstock photography and illustrations. Basically you upload your photos or illustrations to sites like iStockphoto or ShutterStock and for each download they get you get paid a small amount.

Being a designer I had used all these sites for buying photos/icons/illustrations for clients, but never thought about uploading my work to sell.

I spent a few hours each week designing some small graphics that I uploaded to shutterstock, and got the occasional download. I pretty much forgot about it over the last few years but my files stayed there, earning maybe 25 cents per day, sometimes more, sometimes less.

That sounds like nothing, but I hadn’t had to put in any extra work after the original upload. Quite nice to think that they are sitting there earning (although a tiny amount) all the time.

After finding out about a similar stock site, I uploaded them on VectorStock where they sit there and earn me a few cents each day.

Now combined, they don’t earn me much, just under $100 a year for each of them, but it is still better than nothing.

This year, I plan to set aside some time each week, and focus on consistently adding to my portfolios on both sites, as well as start up accounts on some of the bigger stock sites that will pay me higher amounts.