A Web Entrepreneur's Journal

REA Article – Hydropower

Mike — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:31:51 +0000

This week’s chapter for REA is on Hydropower – the least expensive method of generating renewable electricity.

Week 7 – 2012

Mike — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:54:34 +0000

No new article for REA article this week. Instead, I’ve added some design elements to the site, including a favicon, a banner and a set of icons that goes along with each heading.

REA Article – Solar Thermal Collectors

Mike — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:28:08 +0000

A new chapter is now available on REA. This one covers the topic of Solar Thermal Collectors, the cheapest and most efficient use of solar energy.

Income January 2012 – $457.94

Mike — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:12:56 +0000

January was a great month. Not only was I able to hold on to the high income seen in December, but the income even increased slightly. I had thought that the Christmas sales would push up the income temporarily, but apparently Christmas did not play a big role in the number of sales made. This month’s income was at 457.94 dollars, which sets a new record and brings me one step closer to my goal of 500 dollars.

1. Product income

This month 51 books have been sold. 30 hardcopy books ($195.14), 16 Kindle books ($111.68) and 5 Epub books ($23.85). In total, book royalty income was $330.67. Slightly more than last month’s $322.14. The January sales figures for the Epub books have still not been updated. I’ll update these numbers once they are.

2. Advertisement income

The AdSense income this month was $116.68, up from 107.98 dollars last month in December. The YouTube Partnership program continues to outperform the ad income from my sites. YouTube yielded $68.07, the sites made $30.68 and the private ad deals gave $17.90.

3. Affiliate income

Amazon Associates brought in $10.59 this month from the sale of 11 items. The number of clicks were 1147, which means the conversion ratio was 1%. That is pretty good, I’d say.

Summary

January brought in a total of $330.67 + $116.68 + $10.59 = 457.94 dollars.

REA Article – Photovoltaics

Mike — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:05:31 +0000

This week’s REA chapter is on Photovoltaics, the process of converting sunlight directly into electricity. As usual, pictures will be added later. From now on, my schedule will be to write and publish one chapter to this site every week until it’s complete.

Goals January 2012

Mike — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:04:24 +0000

This month I’ve been working on two projects: HOPE and REA. It will still be a few weeks until I’ll be able to publish any chapters for HOPE. It’s a very large subject that requires extensive research. I haven’t even registered a domain for that site/book yet. REA on the other hand is in many ways an easier project and one I have more first-hand experience with. Therefore, it should be easier to complete. From this day forth, I will try to publishing a chapter to that site every couple of days, starting with this first chapter on Wind Energy. The chapters will be supplemented over time with pictures and other improvements.

My goal for this month will be to get 5 chapters published on REA.

Marketing Strategy – Natural Link Building

Mike — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 14:24:07 +0000

On PWM, I talk about how there comes a point when the natural link building made by your visitors becomes more valuable than your own artificial link building. This is when you start to gain far more traffic naturally than what you gain as a result of your artificial link building. At that point, generating more high quality content will be a better investment of time than artificial link building.

I feel that this switch has happened during 2011 for my sites. PVT in particular gains around 3000 page views per month without any active marketing. This increase is way beyond what I was ever able to achieve with artificial marketing. The other content sites have also started to grow naturally by a few hundred page views per month. And because the sites are interlinked they also benefit from each other’s growth.

And so this year I will be switching marketing strategy away from artificial link building and towards natural link building. This is a really exciting change since it means I will be able to focus most of my time on creating new content for sites and books, rather than spending time on promoting those sites and books.

Income December 2011 – $431.28

Mike — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:24:08 +0000

And so December has finally come to an end. I have already examined the income for each week of this month, but in this post I’ll put it all together. I did not manage to reach my goal of $500, but I did set a new record by breaking the $400 barrier.

1. Product income

Book sales were up compared with last month, because of Smashwords Epub sales starting to kick in and possibly because of Christmas. 56 books were sold, which is a new record. 22 were hardcopy books ($144.01), 17 Kindle books ($92.58) and 17 Epub books ($85.55). In total, book royalty income was $322.14. A large increase compared with last month’s $236.99.

2. Advertisement income

AdSense income for the month was 107.98 dollars. A new record, thanks in large part to the new YouTube Partnership program. YouTube paid $62.76, my sites generated $27.30 and the private ad deals yielded $17.90.

3. Affiliate income

There was only one affiliate sale made through Amazon Associates this month, which brought in $1.16. It is a suprising drop from last month’s sale of 8 items, but I suspect it’s a random occurance. The number of people who clicked through to Amazon is about the same as last month, around 800 clicks.

Summary

The income for December comes to a total of $322.14 + $107.98 + $1.16 = 431.28 dollars. A new record.

Income Strategies

The strategies I’ve been using to boost income these past few months have started to show their results – the Google Books program, the Smashwords network and the release of two more books.

The Google Books program has generated 218 book visits with 2 buy clicks, but no sales or ad revenue has yet been recorded. This is better than nothing, but if the buy percentage is the same as with Amazon Associates, I will need at least 100 buy clicks to generate a sale. It will be interesting to see if the traffic for this sales funnel grows over time.

The Smashwords program now accounts for 26% of the book income and 30% of the books sold. It will be interesting to see if this continues.

The two new books for PWM and HOS are not selling nearly as well as the programming books. I’m not sure exactly why, but it’s likely because PVT, which is promoting the programming books, has significantly more traffic than HOS and PWM, which are promoting the two other books.

One strategy that has been working well was joining the YouTube Partnership program. The extra $63 per month has made the total ad revenue more comparable to the significantly larger revenue generated from book sales.

Income December 2011 – Week IV – $83.54

Mike — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:18:01 +0000

The last week and a half of December Siforia made 83.54 dollars. 8 Kindle books ($48.01) were sold, but only a single hardcopy book ($6.82). AdSense revenue was $10.81 from the sites and $16.75 from the YouTube Partnership program. Finally, there was one sale through Amazon Associates yielding $1.16.

Considering this period was for 10 days instead of 7, the income was a bit below expectations. However, it is to be expected that people buy less books after Christmas. The good sales figures seen for the first week of December was probably also due to Christmas shopping.

This concludes my week-by-week income report for December. I’ll summarize the results in the next report.

Entrepreneur Goals 2012

Mike — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:50:05 +0000

With the new year quickly approaching it is time to set some new long term goals for this project. Last year, in 2011, I set the goal to reach 200€ in monthly passive income. That goal was achieved in August and the income has since increased then to around $350 by the end of this year. The goal for this next year, 2012, will be to reach 1000 dollars in passive income. This means I will have to more than double my current income, increasing it by $650, or an average of 54 dollars each month of the year. The main means by which I will raise the income will be through my second goal.

The second goal will be to release four books during 2012. Around one book every three months. In 2011, I did manage to publish five books, but a lot of the writing for those books had been done in previous years, which is not as much the case now. The books I aim to release in 2012 will be: Handbooks in PHP, HTML and CSS in addition to HOPE, the future prognosis book that I’m currently working on.

What will your goals be for 2012?