Make Money From Photos, Adsense, Affiliate Marketing

Adsense / Photo / Chitika Earnings June 2009 - Approx $310

2009-07-01T11:18:00.000+01:00

Adsense = $267

Photo Sales = approx 20GBP (A physical print).

Chitika = $23

Earnings were up very slightly in June compared to May which is very good news considering that traffic is normally down significantly in June due to the start of summer holidays / better weather in the western world.

Here is a breakdown of Chitika Earnings since I implemented the Chitika Premium Meag Unit at the top of my irishviews.com photo web site:-

Date	Impressions	Clicks	CTR	Avg Cpc	eCPM	Revenue
2009-06-30	955	29	3.04%	$0.04	$1.33	$1.27
2009-06-29	1042	30	2.88%	$0.06	$1.70	$1.77
2009-06-28	743	21	2.83%	$0.06	$1.62	$1.20
2009-06-27	805	13	1.61%	$0.06	$0.89	$0.72
2009-06-26	885	30	3.39%	$0.06	$2.14	$1.90
2009-06-25	955	24	2.51%	$0.06	$1.50	$1.44
2009-06-24	968	22	2.27%	$0.05	$1.12	$1.08
2009-06-23	1000	23	2.30%	$0.04	$0.97	$0.97
2009-06-22	906	37	4.08%	$0.05	$1.96	$1.77
2009-06-21	826	19	2.30%	$0.05	$1.26	$1.04
2009-06-20	771	13	1.69%	$0.04	$0.75	$0.58
2009-06-19	868	23	2.65%	$0.05	$1.34	$1.16
2009-06-18	1006	35	3.48%	$0.07	$2.60	$2.61
2009-06-17	1067	27	2.53%	$0.09	$2.30	$2.45
2009-06-16	904	25	2.77%	$0.11	$3.15	$2.85

Which is half decent revenue to be sure. I reckon you would get even better returns if your web site was in a niche where advertisers pay more for clicks. If you want to try Chitika out - here is my affiliate link!

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Image Traffic From Bing...

2009-06-29T16:53:00.000+01:00

Traffic from Bing normally pales into insignificance compared to Google, but it is possible to get a large amount of traffic from Bing :-

This seems to have come from one post in my blog being picked as the top 'Holland' photo in the image results at least for a day anyway (I think)...

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photobox.co.uk customer service.

2009-06-20T13:21:00.000+01:00

I sold a print recently :-

Unfortunately the wrong print was delivered by Photobox.

This is the first time this has happened, and I have been using them for a few years now.

But I am pleased to say that their customer service was absolutely first class.

I submitted my complaint on their web site, and they got back to me the next morning to say that a new print was being sent out immediately, and to please return the incorrect one to a freepost address.

Photobox are not the cheapest photo printer on the internet, but after this experience I will definitely be sticking with them!

If anyone else has any experiences with other online photo printers, I would love the hear about them through a comment on this post!

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Chitika Premium Earnings

2009-06-18T16:35:00.002+01:00

Further to my post about Chitika Premium - here are my first 2 3 days earnings:-

Looks pretty good to me!

So long as my Adsense revenue doesn't suffer really badly (which I doubt), I'll be keeping my Chitika Premium adverts on my Irish Photos web site.

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Chitika Premium

2009-06-17T16:43:00.001+01:00

I have been reading of late about some people having success with the new 'Meag Unit', so I am giving this another go at the top of my Ireland Photos web site.

After much fiddling around with Google Ad Manager, I have managed to stop it from coming up at all for any traffic that is not from the USA or Canada, so only people that find my site through a search engine, AND are from the USA or Canada will see the Chitika Premium adverts.

I'll try it for a few weeks, and turn it off again if the results are poor...

If the worst comes to the worst, at least I now know who to use Google Ad Manager to 'Geo Target' my adverts!

If anyone else has any good or bad experiences with Chitika - please leave a comment below...

Thanks.

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Kontera Earnings..

2009-06-17T16:33:00.002+01:00

I said in this post ages back that I would post my Kontera earnings within a month - well it was not worth it...

Here are (as far as I can tell - my earnings so far (just form this blog):-

It'll be a while at this rate before I hit the new $75 limit for payouts!

You may notice that it says from 19 Dec 2008, and I am sure that I started using it long before this date - but it won't allow me to go back any further than this for some reason... At any rate... Not too impressive!

While on the subject of Kontera, I installed their new Wordpress plugin on my Irish Photo Blog and I'll be damned if I can get it to work!

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Phillip Bradshaw, senior search consultant at bFirst (SEO)

2009-06-16T12:54:00.001+01:00

I got one of those annoying automated emails the other day from an SEO firm. Normally I would just delete it and get on with what I am doing. But that day I had a little bit of spare time on my hands. Here is the email:-

Phillip Bradshaw wrote:
Hi
My name is Phillip Bradshaw, senior search consultant at bFirst. Excuse the unusual approach, however I am writing to inform you that I recently visited your website, www.ni-photos.jmcwd.com, during a routine survey of web sites which may be capable of higher search engine performance resulting in an increase in online sales. I hope this information may be of use to you, if not then I apologise for any inconvenience caused.
I took the liberty to do some research on your website, and uncovered some interesting points. This may interest you, since it appears that you are trying to gain new business through your website.
From my initial observations, your site is probably underperforming in the major search engines - Google, Yahoo, and Bing (formerly MSN). When searching on a topic, most people don’t look past the first page of search results. I struggled to find you in the first couple of pages, meaning that you could be losing a significant amount of business.
After checking the search engines, I ran a back-link check on your site. Back-links are the number of times your site is linked through another website. Your website has 43 back-links, meaning low search results. Back-links also help build your site’s Google Pagerank score. Right now your site has a Google Pagerank score of 0/10, which is probably one of the main reasons why your site isn’t showing up in the first page of the search results.
The final aspect I noticed about your site was page indexing. The more pages your site has indexed with unique keywords, the higher you will rank. Right now, your site has only 0 pages indexed by Google, which is quite low. This can be down to many reasons which our service can help resolve.
So, here’s a recap of my findings on your site:
- Your Google Pagerank is 0/10
- You have 43 back-links
- Your website has 0 pages indexed
I’m going somewhere with all this... I wanted to do my homework and research your website because it’s my business. We are in the business of doing three things for your website:
1) Fixing all issues with your website
2) Ranking your site to the top of the search results, and
2) Blowing your online revenue off the charts.
What we do is simple: we correct every single issue with your website that effects how the search engines perceive you, then put you on the first page of search results in all the major search engines by working on your site month on month. It’s a no-nonsense approach that cuts through marketing fluff to the core of what gets a site to the top. We know what that is. We know how to do it.
The reason why I’m so confident about that is because we have done it before . Our clients are happy: Dubai Properties, Gravel, Health Store, Van Hire, Fire Extinguishers, Coffee Machines, Swimwear, Limo Hire and more - all are on the first page of search results. We put them there. We’re so confident that we’ll put you on the first page that we will refund your money if we don’t achieve what we promise.
With pricing starting from as little as £40 per keyphrase per month your website is too important to let it go to waste, especially when UK online sales were up by 30% to £59.8 Billion compared to last year. I’d love to be able to discuss this in more detail. If you are genuinely serious about improving your online revenues, please reply to this e-mail with the keyphrases that you want to rank under or give me a call (01524 888880, option 1) and we’ll talk.
Kind regards,
Phillip Bradshaw
Senior Search Consultant

Here is my reply:-

mmmm...

In fact, probably the main reason it is not showing up in the first page of the results is that there is a 301 REDIRECT in place to the new site - irishviews.com (and there has been for about 8 months now!).

So I wish you good luck in making ni-photos.jmcwd.com rank well in the search results!

NB - "Zero pages" is indeed quite a low number. Thanks for pointing that out!

Philip, I am going somewhere with this.....

If you are going to send me spam, please at least do a rudimentary check before sending it out!

Also, can I ask, how did you get my email address?

Thanks.

Now I am only having a bit of fun, I know that Philip Bradshaw is a human being and was probably not the person responsible for the email being sent anyway - so Philip, if you did read my reply and think I am being a bit cruel, then don't take it to heart... :-)

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Adsense Earnings So Far (Almost all photo related)...

2009-06-10T17:37:00.001+01:00

Just to cheer myself up - here is a screen shot of my Adsense earnings to date ($16,347.52):-

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Summer

2009-06-03T10:27:00.000+01:00

Taken from my Summer page:-

Summer has started early here in Northern Ireland. We have had 2 fantastic days in a row now! (This is very unusual :-)

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Adsense / Photo Earnings May 2009 - $263

2009-06-01T09:43:00.002+01:00

Adsense = $263

Photo Sales = 18GBP.

Traffic decreased a bit again from last month (not sure why yet)..

(Actually, I think it is because summer holidays in the western world are getting under way as early as May these days)...

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Offline Photo Sales.

2009-05-20T10:15:00.000+01:00

I have never made any effort to sell photos offline.

There is far too much time and expense involved in printing, mounting, framing and marketing for my liking... (Well, that, and the fact that most of my photos are not that good!)

But there is a great local Art Gallery near me who also sell photos - Artzyard Irish Art Gallery who were prepared to take some of my photos off me, and then handle everything else, so we'll see how that goes....

Here are some of the photos I chucked in to them:-

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Another Slightly Above Average Photo Sale..

2009-05-16T19:33:00.000+01:00

Dundrum Castle:-

As I said before - your photos just have to be reasonably good to sell, provided you have enough eyes on them....

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Foxmarks / Xmarks...

2009-05-06T11:59:00.001+01:00

This is a fantastic add-on if you use firefox, especially if you sue more than one computer (e.g. one at home and one at work).

See http://www.foxmarks.com/

I just noticed today that the name had changed to 'Xmarks', when my Foxmarks add-on was updated, so I decided to type in my web site on xmarks.com to see what they said about me, and here is the info:-

https://www.xmarks.com/site/irishviews.com

This is quite cool. It looks like my site has been bookmarked in various categories already...

I think this site will become really important in the near future ...

So if anyone wants to leave a review for my site at

https://www.xmarks.com/site/irishviews.com

Let me know and I'll do likewise for your site!

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Adsense / Photo Earnings April 2009 - $282

2009-05-02T09:05:00.002+01:00

mmmmm... I seem to have deleted the old April earnings post - so here it is back again (in shortened form)..

Traffic was down a bit after St. Patricks day...

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Adsense / Photo Earnings March 2009

2009-04-01T10:17:00.000+01:00

Adsense = $407
Photo Sales = £24 GBP

Traffic is still increasing (slowly).

So if current progress keeps up - I'll be able to make a living from my photos by around 2050!

:-)

I normally end these earnings posts with a gratuitous `money` photo, but for a change, here is a nice photo of a cute little pony:-

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Working For Yourself.

2009-03-25T09:08:00.000Z

I have now been self employed for 3 full weeks. It is the best thing I have ever done.

The only down side so far is that I have been even more busy than I was when I was working for someone else (mostly doing Google Adwords for local companies).

So I have not actually got round to doing any more photography than I would have done before...

But I will definitely remedy this soon as spring is in the air here in Northern Ireland!

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Adsense / Photo Earnings February 2009

2009-03-02T13:20:00.000Z

$315

Traffic is on the up again..

Considering that February has 3 less days than January, $315 is a significant increase on $234.

I also sold another hi-res photo for 15GBP in Feb (This one):-

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I Am Now Self Employed! (Unemployed?)

2009-02-04T09:32:00.018Z

I handed in my notice at my full time job a few weeks ago.

I was working as an IT manager at Campbell Fitzpatrick Solicitors, Belfast..

They were a great company to work for, and I enjoyed my time there, but after 9 years, I decided it was time to move on and work for myself.

So, a much bigger percentage of my income from now on will be made online...

Watch this space!

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Adsense Earnings - January 2009

2009-02-02T13:48:00.015Z

$234

On the face of it - not very impressive, but my traffic is starting to improve again after my 301 redirect of about 3 months ago.

I still have high hopes for the future, especially since I have handed in my notice at my full time job, and will therefore have more time to get more photos added to my photo web site.

In the mean time, if anyone wants any Adwords Pay Per Click Campaigns set up, I am a Qualified Google Advertising Professional, and I'll do you a good deal!

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Google Image Search..

2009-01-23T15:00:00.000Z

As I mentioned in a previous post, when I moved my photo web site from ni-photos.jmcwd.com to irishviews.com using a '301 Redirect' it went pretty well with regard to 'Web' search results, but it was a disaster with 'Image' Search results in Google (From which I used to get about 50% of my traffic).

Well, a full 3 months later, *some* of my images have started to reappear! (62 down and another 1000 or so to go!).

While this is good news, the moral of this story is that if you are getting decent amounts of traffic from Google Image Search, DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING or it'll cost you a lot of:-

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Would Anyone Like To Do A Guest Post Here?

2009-01-21T09:34:00.000Z

Anyone?

NB - It should be related to photography in some way...

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December 2008 Adsense Earnings and 2008 Overall Photo Earnings.

2009-01-02T16:43:00.001Z

Adsense Earnings for December 2008 are $225 - my worst month since, well - as long as I can remember, although December is traditionally not very good for me as I do not have any really good Christmas Wallpapers.

2008 has been very similar to 2007 in that earnings from all other stuff that I have tried (CPA / Affiliate stuff etc) - amounts to pretty much ZERO. So while I may grumble form time to time about how poor Adsense can be - it is still far and away my biggest earner AND takes up very little of my time!

I had a BIG drop in visitors a few months back, caused by all my images disappearing from Google Image Search after I moved them from ni-photos.jmcwd.com to irishviews.com using a 301 redirect (which worked fine for normal 'web' results but NOT for 'image' results!). With any luck, they'll be back in a few months (new images placed on my web site tend to take at least 3 or 4 months to appear in Google image search in my experience). But hopefully it be worth it in the long run. (It was a bit confusing and untidy having all the photos on a sub domain of my web design web site).

Irishmyspace.com, ireland-screensavers.com, and this blog also generated a small amount of income - but not enough for me to even be bothered adding it up and listing it here!

So to recap - Adsense Earnings for 2008 by month (In US Dollars):-
Jan 2008 - 558
Feb 2008 - 660
Mar 2008 - 797
Apr 2008 - 693
May 2008 - 800
June 2008 - 593
July 2008 - 574
Aug 2008 - 550
Sep 2008 - 745
Oct 2008 - 754
Nov 2008 - 296
Dec 2008 - 225
2008 Adsense Total - 7245

Total Earned From Hi-Res Photo Sales / Photo Usage Rights = Approx $900 (This is approximate as most of my sales were in GBP). I think the lesson to be learned here is that you do not need to have absolutely amazing images to be able to sell them. Most of the images I sold were just a bit above average in my opinion, and would probably not even have been accepted if you tried to submit them to a stock photo web site such as istockphoto.com. If you can get a huge numbers of people to view your photos, you will make sales. As to how you should price your high resolution photos, here is an online stock photo price calculator which can give you some sort of idea what to charge. I always price mine on the low side as I am conscious of the fact that most of my photos are not exactly 'award winning' material, and most of my visitors are cheapskates who generally just want free or nearly free images. Also bear in mind that when trying to agree a fee on an ad hoc basis, you will get a lot of time wasters, and sometimes a lot of emails to and fro just to secure a small payment. But for me, it has been worth the hassle this year!

Chitika Earnings in 2008 = approx $130.

Project Wonderful Earnings for 2008 = $50

Total Photo Related Earnings For 2008 Are Approx $8,325

Since the purpose of this post is to boast about how fantastic my earnings are :-), I'll gloss over the fact that my outgoings for the year for hosting, travel, camera equipment, payments to other people for the use of their photos etc. are probably well in excess of $2000!

P.S. - Most of my earnings are due to 'SEO' - and I thoroughly recommend the Search Engine Optimization For Dummies book :-

which taught me most of what I know about Search Engine Optimization.
SEO For Dummies is the only book I recommend 100% without any hesitation whatsoever. It will save you hours (and hours) tracking down similar, and not always accurate information on the Internet. Even if you already know 99% of everything there is to know about Search Engine Optimization, it is still worth getting!

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Using Google Analtyics With Your Adsense Account...

2008-12-22T13:41:00.002Z

If you are not a regular reader of this blog, let me preface this post by explaining that the vast majority of my earnings come from Google Adsense on my IrishViews.com photo web site...

It has been a long time coming, but finally, Google have now integrated Analytics with Adsense...

This was being rolled out on an ongoing basis - but I think that majority of Adsense accounts should now have an option to link their Adsense account to an Analytics account. If you have not done so recently, then login to your Adsense account and check if you have this option!

I only have a few days worth of data to look at so far, but provided this tracking is fairly accurate (which I think it probably is), I can say without reservation that it is...

FANTASTIC!

This really does change everything...

You'll now be able to see how much was made from each search term, traffic source, and pages on your site:-

This is fantastic!

e.g.

You might find that:-

People searching for "Wallpaper" give half the eCPM as people searching for "Desktop Backgrounds"

Traffic from live.com is much better than traffic from google.com

Page A gives much better returns than Page B on your site (OK - you could already do this using channels in your Adsense account - but now it is even easier)..

You'll now be able to concentrate your time more on what does work and less on what doesn't!

As always, if anyone else has any experience with any of these things, then please leave a comment!

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Why Blogging Sucks!

2008-12-18T20:39:00.004Z

Nearing the end of 2008, it is time for a re-appraisal of what is working for me and what is not working for me with regard to my rather limited spare time.

Here is a screen shot from Google Analytics of the traffic for this blog, since I started it(roughly 18 months ago):-

(Most of the referring traffic is from Entrecard - which is of notoriously poor quality).

Here is a summary of approximately how much money my blog has earned me directly during that time:-

ZERO!

I certainly don't update this blog every day, but if I was to add up all the time I had spent on it so far, I think I would break down and cry! :-(

I think, in short - if you have a lot of spare time on your hands, and you really love blogging, then by all means give it a shot. But if you think that it is an easy path to riches then you are sadly mistaken...

NB - one of the main aims of this blog was to bring traffic to http://www.irishviews.com/, at which I have had a small amount of success. But compared to the amount of traffic that I get from other sources with much less effort, it cannot be called an unmitigated success!

Are there too many blogs?

Am I clogging up the internet with yet more garbage that practically no-one wants to read?

The answer to both above questions is, I think - Yes!

*Disclaimer* - I don't know everything, and am very far from being one of the best bloggers - but I still maintain that there are far easier ways to make money (online and offline)...

If anyone else has had similar experiences with blogs (or disagrees completely with me) - please leave a comment!

Thanks!

PS...

This post is inspired by the following from Andy Beard :-

http://andybeard.eu/2007/10/why-blogs-suck.html

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Wealthy Affiliate University

2008-12-14T15:04:00.000Z

Anyone who has followed this blog for a while knows that I am not a fraud. I do not pretend that you *need* to sign up to anything just because I get an affiliate commission from it.

The only affiliate thing that I have really promoted so far is

I have been a member now for 3 months.

While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, *if* you are not already an experienced marketer, *and* have enough spare time on your hands to put into action most of the guidance provided on the site, then I am 100% sure that you will find it good value for money.

Having said that, I have now cancelled my membership!

"Ha! - Hypocrite." I hear you say...

Let me explain....

I have a full time job, and numerous other commitments.

Before I joined, I knew it was going to be extremely difficult to devote much time to it. But it was a case of 'I have to just do it, try my best, and stop putting it off indefinitely'...

Unfortunately, after 3 months - I have STILL not found the time to implement 10% of the stuff that I know I need to implement to make a half decent stab at affiliate marketing.

Maybe you will join and then end up cancelling your membership for similar reasons. But you won't know what you are missing unless you give it a try, and in the worst case scenario - the most money you will be out is $39!

If anyone does want to give it a try - You can sign up through my affiliate link for which I will be extremely grateful (be sure to let us know if you do so!).

Thanks!

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