Everyone loves numbers – especially when it comes to how much money one has or makes online. I am only a small fish in the pond when it comes to make money online, but I want to share at least a little bit what can be accomplished even when only working part-time for yourself late at night when you are too tired to be extremely productive. So, here it is – my income from Google Adsense: on average I made $1,050.00 per month from Google Adsense. That again averages out to a little above $34.00 per day from Adsense – every day 365 days in a row. If I would move to a low cost country like India it probably represents a good and decent income. Here in the US however it does not get me too far to cover my cost of living.

Private advertising is slowly on the rise and already made about 25% of my income from Google Adsense. yeah, I like that. However, most of that came in between September and December and so I hope to push that number up by at least 15% so that private ad sales go up to ~40% of my matching income from Google Adsense.

The worst performing Affiliate Network for me was CPAEmpire. I made a total of $15.60 and after my AM left the company the new affiliate manager emailed me asking a few questions and then never responded back ever (yeah, I know I am not a big gun in affiliate marketing, but contacting me and then never responding to my response …). The best performing affiliate network for me was (still) Azoogleads (even though they no longer have an AM assigned to me (yeah, I know, I am a small fish in the pond)). The affiliate program that made me the most money in 2007 was Amazon.com (low 4-digits $$$). The highest single affiliate pay-out for one lead was $400.00 and was made from a web hosting affiliate program. I spend most of my advertising dollars on Google Adwords (roughly $3,500).

I hope to make a similar posting next year around this time with numbers that are a little more impressive. Especially I personally like to see more income number from affiliate marketing.

In my mini series of blog posting about how to improve your business operations I wrote about using a journal to keep track of business issues and how it could help your business. Keeping a journal is a great way to keep track of certain business events. Another important piece is time management. It is too easy to goof off and drift away from doing work to ignore this issue. This is even more important if you are (still) operating your business as a part-time business (like I am (at the time of this writing at least)). I usually start working for myself when the day winds down and most people rather sit on the couch and watch TV or so. My day starts at shortly after 5 AM and I usually go to bed between 11.30 PM and midnight. I do spend 20-30 minutes in the morning to check email and to take of emergencies that happened over night and cannot wait (does not happen often, but …). I check and respond to email during lunch time or when I get home from work. Then I do the family thing and spend time with my wife and my son. I start working for myself after 8 PM. A good cup of instant coffee refreshes me wakes me up again and keeps the engine running. Still those hours until I go to bed wind down fast and so the first 90 minutes of my evening work are the ones where I am most productive.

To use my most productive time best I need to be organized. If I would not be organized up to a certain degree, I would waste a lot time and the business would suffer. During the day I usually plan out what I want to work on at night. Anything that comes to my mind makes it onto my list and I sort it out and shuffle it around until I got the priorities in the right order. Not everything I think off will be worked on, but the critical stuff always gets taken care off. Some things are pushed all the way back to the least productive hours. That usually includes reading SEO or PPC related blogs or to visit some forums. You get the idea.

An important tool for me is Microsoft Outlook. I use the calendaring function A LOT. I set recurring reminders whenever I identify a task that I need to look at more than once. Another thing I do is to send myself emails with reminders, links, notes – pretty much anything I need to look at or want to explore further. I also make it a habit not to hit the “snooze” button in Outlook to remind me later. I’d rather have it pop up and remind me more frequently. Overall I think I am doing pretty Ok in keeping myself under control to get most out of my available time. I know this is a long posting for something rather small, but it might give you an insight in how other people work. Maybe you have a better approach? Please share. I am always open for new ideas.

I meant to do this a long time ago and I finally did it. I started an electronic journal that I want to use to keep track of any business related action. Why is this important? Have you ever found yourself struggling to remember what you did at a certain date back in time? Did you forget a conversation you had with a client or business partner? Did you make a PayPal payment without being specific enough about the details? When did you sell a specific website again? It’s stuff like that, that I want to use the journal for. It’s supposed to be like a small diary where I post 2 or 3 sentences about my business actions. Then I can go back in time when needed and check on things as needed. This is especially important when doing SEO work or PPC stuff where timing can be an issue. Another good reason to keep a business journal is for tax purposes. I hope not to be audited by the IRS, but you never know. It’s a good thing to have a good accounting system in place and quick access to all the receipts. But it is even better have a journal that allows you to go back and associate a financial transaction with certain details and to present this to the IRS.

So, how do you keep this journal thing under control and manageable? I use a new WordPress blog for this. A blog is some sort of online diary already. WordPress has a great feature called “post by email” which allows you to post to your blog by sending an email to a specified email account. I installed WordPress into a password protected directory on one of my websites and configured it to accept postings via email. The directory is also excluded from search engine spider activities via Robots.txt. All I have to do now is to send myself an email to my secret email address and the messages get automatically posted to the blog or journal. No need for maintenance. No need to login and write posting. It is so easy nowadays to write a quick email. All I got to do is to pick a good subject line and then write 2 or 3 sentences in the email body. The only time I will ever need to login into my blog is to review an item.

A few things to keep in mind. Make sure your blog does not ping technorati or any other site that a blog usually notifies about updated content. Check on your blog occasionly to make sure your messages get properly posted. Check for SPAM (ASKIMET is your friend). Make sure to activate the postings. Find all necessary instructions here.

Overall I think running a small journal is a great way to work more efficient and to run a better business. If you are not very organized this type of journal does not require much effort or work. There is no SEO or much customization of the blog necessary. Give it a try and let me know what you think.