Here I show how much I made on AdSense, Amazon & Affiliate, on my Investment Sites in December 2016. Note that I’ve bought 3 new websites in December, totaling $15051. So my income from investment website went up significantly from $2292.77 earned in November.
AdSense is still the king!
In December, I made $2,222.11 on Adsense alone, which is $567 more than in previous month. This is directly related to adding income from 2 new sites, purchased in the beginning of Dec. However, these new sites together earned $758.03. So technically, my Adsense income is down about $200 for the month. This is primarily due to holidays season’s slow traffic, which normally dips this time of year.
Here are AdSense app screenshots:
As you can see I’ve marked the sites I bought in early December with orange “New Site” titles. One of them is the $10000 investment site that I talked about here. Notice that it earned $677.85 in 25 days. During the previous month (before I bought it) it has made around $325, so I more than doubled it’s income right away. Read my post where discuss the numbers and how I did it.
PS, this new $10K site also earns money with an Affiliate program, which I will discuss below.
Other Income – Amazon and various Affiliate Programs
Combined Amazon affiliate income in December was $236.28 (vs $300.67 in November). However, I did finally come close to hitting 7.5% commission rate (only 20-30 orders shy of 351 needed for 7.5% tier). Again, I think this is because people pretty much stop Christmas shopping in the last 10 days of Dec. My Dec 25 and Dec 31 income on Amazon was $0 🙂
Other Affiliate Networks Income:
Lead Generation: $211.69
Mobile App Affiliate (from $10K site): $203
SwagBucks Affiliate: $121.00
December Combined Totals by Income Type
Here is a table of all revenue streams and total. Individual website breakdowns will be below.
Amazon Affiliate$300.67 (7% commission rate)
| PLATFORM | MONTHLY INCOME |
|---|---|
| AdSense | $2,222.11 |
| Amazon Affiliate | $236.28 (7% commission rate) |
| Lead Gen Affiliate | $211.69 |
| Mobile App Affiliate | $203 |
| SwagBucks Affiliate | $121.00 |
| Total | $2,994.08 |
As you can see, total investment websites income this month is $2,994.08 (compared to $2292.77 in Nov)… I’m $6 shy of making $3 grand per month in investment income, and up $701.31 from November. Bear in mind that this increase is result of investing $12551 in new sites. My total NEW income in December is $961.03 … this roughly equates to 7.66% monthly return (or 91.88% annual return). However calculating return rates this early (especially considering that $10K site only made income for 25 days in December) is not practical. Also, my $2551 website is still not fully optimized, because there are 100s of pages that I need to go through and place ads .. 🙁
December income breakdown my website
Here is breakdown by site, including dates when I bought these sites, and how much I made since purchase, on each website. I’m Including 2 new sites in this table.
| SITE NUMBER | NOV. INCOME | PURCHASE PRICE | TOTAL INCOME TO DATE | DATE OF PURCHASE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site 1 | $248.99 | $5000.00 | $6,815.57 | March 2015 |
| Site 2 | $295.43 | $3300.00 | $7,588.1 | Oct 2015 |
| Site 3 | $173.42 | $1500.00 | $1,603.13 | Apr 2016 |
| Site 4 | $988.12 | $6700.00 | $6592.11 | Jun 2016 |
| Site 5 | $126.44 | $650.00 | $657.18 | Jul 2016 |
| Site 6 | $193.78 | $4500.00 | $701.75 | Sep 2016 |
| Site 7 | $80.18 | $2551.00 | $80.18 | Nov 30, 2016 |
| Site 8 | $880.85 | $10000.00 | $880.85 | Dec 6, 2016 |
| TOTALS | $2,987.21 | $34201 | $24,885.19 |
So again there is a small discrepancy (a $6 mistake I made somewhere in calculation totals for this month), but I’m pretty much at $3 grand / months income from investments. However now I’m about $9K down on my Purchase vs Repayment … however I don’t think it will take me long to come back to being even. I was even and even up a few hundred last month, but since I invested $15051 in December alone, it will be few months till I’m in the green again.
Investment income outlook for January and 2017 as a whole.
So if you look at the sites income breakdown – my best performers are sites number 2 and 4. I exclude Site #3, as it does not earn much (although it paid for itself in 7 months). I have great hopes for 2017.
Actually my goal for this year is $10K / month from investment websites, but it will be expensive to achieve 🙂 As I mentioned before, I did just spend $15 grand buying new sites in Dec. Mostly for tax purposes, but also I’m testing new strategy of buying sites on credit!
I’m looking at a $28K site right now, but most likely will pass, because I’m pretty tapped out, and want to have some cash reserves on hand.
However I do plan to RE-INVEST all my investment income in 2017. So In January I plan to spend at least $3000 on buying new sites! 🙂
Testing / Optimization:
I just finished my first more or less scientific AB Test, and found a clear winning ad size for a specific ad placement. Read how I achieved 138% improvement with split testing. I am now running similar Split Tests on other sites (including site #1). If it results are good, I will replace top 728×90 leaderboard units with 336×280 rectangles on all my sites!
Site Winners:
Site #2 earned 229% in 14 months. However as I mentioned before – this is a highly seasonal site, so it will be a low-income ($300 or 10% monthly) until April, when income will begin to climb, at should peak at around $1000/month in the July/Aug.
Site #4 has earned 98% of its purchase price in 7 months. As of today (Jan 9, 2017) stands at $6592.11 compared to its purchase price of $6700. However, since August, it’s been earning around $1000/month, and continues to grow, so I expect this site to make at least $12K by at 1 year “anniversary”.
Site #8 had a great start in first 25 days ($880.85 / $10000). However, first week of 2017 the RPM has decreased significantly, so I’m still concerned with how long it will take to recoup its $10K sale price. However, the traffic is up on the site, and I think drop in RPM in January is temporary effect of advertisers cutting back on spending, after holiday season – typical AdSense behavior this time of year.
Site Losers:
Site #6 is clearly not doing very well. In 4 months it made only $700 so it was a poor (rush) decision for me to buy this site. However, income and traffic are stable, so I am hoping to recoup investment in 18-24 months, which is Industry standard. Not that this site makes money primarily on Amazon affiliate, so I will need to experiment with product links.
Site # 7 is not performing to its best potential either. I think after I spend time optimizing ads on this site, it will perform better than it did in Dec. However, there are 100s of pages to go through, and they are “long lists” type posts, often more than 50 items listed in each article, so cleanup will be slow 🙁
Well – I still hope for the best, and wish all a happy new 2017! Keep optimizing and testing.
How many visitors do you have on your website(s) to generate this Adsense income?
Simone – the more, the better! However, it all depends on a niche. Certain “keywords” pay a lot more than others.
For example keyword “credit card” has average CPC (cost per click) of $7-9, and you can make a lot of grate content around it. Here is some data from SemRush:
By contrast, “waterfall” has VERY LOW CPC of less than a dollar. That’s because advertisers usually want to “sell” credit cards and not waterfalls … here is CPC stats on waterfall keyword:
Hypothetical example
However, credit card is a VERY competitive keyword and is very difficult to rank for … and that is where your traffic comes in. If you have 10000 daily visitors to your waterfall website, and average CPC is $0.50, and Click Through Rate (CTR) is 3% you will get 300 clicks per day and make about $150. That would be an RPM of $15 (which I think is a bit high for a “waterfall” type website).
By comparison, if you get 100 visits per day to a credit card page, and your CPC is say $7 and CRT is 3% you would make $21 and an RPM of $210 (!) … now your RPM on credit cards is much better, but overall income is low, because of lower traffic.
So to answer your question again – the more traffic you have, the better, but it’s also important to be in a “good” niche. As an example, a client of mine has made $13,483 (that’s USD) in October 2017. He has very low RPM, but had over 20 MILLION page views!
Simone,
I have a site that gets ~250-300 visitors a day, and makes $250-300 a month.
I have another site that gets 1000 visits a day, and makes ~$350 a month.
So it all depends on your content, CPC, and how well you optimized ads.
Then if you grow traffic, your income will grow exponentially.
For example if I take 1st site to 1000 visits a day (which is very much attainable), i’ll be making $1000 a month, or 3 times more than my 2nd site, with same traffic.
Hope this helps.
Very passive income,
My 5 sites bring me $5000 a month from adsense
But i built them myself
Anyway, yours are too inspiring
I may buy sites in future
Thanks