Residual Income Web Blog

Let’s face it: Links make the web go ’round.

More specifically, backlinks are the lifeblood of any content-based residual income.  For a webmaster, good backlinks  (links to his site, from other well-ranked blogs and sites on the web) are invaluable. No matter how good your on-site SEO (search engine optimization) is, your site will go nowhere without solid links to the content you have to offer.

If you already have good content and a well-organized site, but aren’t seeing the traffic or Google search results to match, the number one thing you can do is to build links to your main site page and to some of your best content pages within your site. Ideally, each and every page of content you publish online should have a good backlink pointing to it. After your website is well established and builds page rank (PR), simply linking to new pages from your index page or tier-2 page that also ranks well will be sufficient. But in the beginning, and periodically as rankings ebb and flow, you need to build solid links to your site, blog, or other online content.

One-way backlinks from well-ranked sites are considered high value backlinks. These are the best of the best and most valuable to you as a webmaster or content author. One-way means that the site links to you, but you don’t link back as you would in a link exchange. For example, if a high-ranked blogger or national news site linked to one of your content pages, you’d be in the money.

Keep in mind that the page rank of the page that links to you is important. Even if the parent site has good overall PR, it’s the page that links to you that “counts” for the value of the backlink. Therefore, simply linking to one of your sites from a Squidoo lens or an article on HubPages will not give you a top-level backlink reflecting the site’s overall popularity in Google — unless, of course, the article with the backlink is featured on the front page or otherwise builds its own high PR.

Another thing you have to keep in mind is that some sites block Google from following outgoing links, using the “nofollow” meta tag in their html code. I use nofollow tags on affiliate links on my blog, which is an appropriate use of the tag, but some sites use nofollow tags for virtually all outgoing links — eHow.com is one of them, so adding your site to the Resources section of an eHow article won’t help you build backlinks at all. If you’re confused, don’t worry, I’ll keep it simple: everything I link to in this article allows dofollow links at the time of this writing.

Since my focus for 2010 is to build income through my niche sites and blogs, creating plenty of backlinks is a top priority. Here’s what I suggest for building backlinks, based on what I’ve read and am experimenting with myself:

• First and foremost, give people (specifically, webmasters and bloggers) excellent content they will want to link to naturally. Not every post you write is going to be amazing, but articles that are compelling, informative, helpful, or innovative will attract some attention.
• Guest blogging. While it takes time to write a quality blog post for someone else’s site, the ability to include a link to your own blog or website can be very valuable. Network with bloggers in your niches to find these opportunities, or they may come knocking as has happened to me in the past.
• Submit articles to blog carnivals (these are typically only good for blogs, not static articles on a niche site). Most require commenting turned on, and some require that you link back to the published carnival in a timely fashion — which is good blog carnival etiquette, anyway.
• Host blog carnivals and require that participants link back to your site.  Publish the carnival monthly to ensure a steady flow of links to your site. Weed through carnival submissions to make sure you are only giving links to quality content.
• Add articles to content sites, especially revenue-sharing content sites that will pay you a little (or sometimes a lot) over time in addition to the value of your backlink. I recommend HubPages, Squidoo, and InfoBarrel.
• Utilize content blogs, such as Jevitt and Snipsly, by setting up an account, entering your Google adsense publisher ID for additional revenue, and publishing relevant blog posts with links to your sites.
• Submit articles to article directories, including EzineArticles, GoArticles and ArticleVolcano.
• Bookmark links to content on SheToldMe, LinkVault, and Redgage.

To manage backlink building effectively, I plan to devote one work session a week (ie a few hours) to building backlinks to my niche websites, blog posts, and eHow articles. And then, I’ll backlink to the backlinks.

Do you build backlinks to your content? What’s your strategy?

Wondering how to diversify your online income? I’ve found that having many sources of residual income is the best business model.

This pie chart shows the main sources of my online residual earnings for December 2009. These earnings were truly passive income as I took the entire month of December off from online writing,  publishing and marketing to enjoy time with my family.

As you can see, eHow still accounts for the largest single source of residual income, making up over half of my online earnings that month ($1,765 from my WriterGig account and two other, smaller, eHow profiles).

My eHow ebook is the second largest amount, and that pink slice represents just the net earnings, after paying affiliates their share of any sales made by affiliate links to my book. Sales were a bit low in December, actually.

I enjoyed a great month with Amazon affiliate earnings — the holidays really help increase earnings in November and December every year. Selling several Kindles certainly helped, as commission for those is $25 to $50 each depending on the model.

Through cj.com, I’ve linked up with one merchant that fit perfectly for one of my niches. I have several eHow articles and a Squidoo lens on the topic, and earned $1,000 through selling that particular product last year. In December 2009, sales from that item were very good.

My “other affiliate earnings” includes things like Hostgator, NicheBlogger and other products I use and recommend on my blogs.

Google Adsense Earnings were above $100 in this graph, keeping up a trend that started last year and has continued into 2010.

Bukisa earnings remain steady, primarily through my referred Bukisa members although, and some of my articles are doing quite nicely there, too.

Diversifying online revenue sources ensures a steady overall income even as individual ones ebb and flow because of a myriad of factors, such as the economy, societal trends, online advertisers and the like. I focused primarily on eHow and my ebook during the first two years of my residual income venture (2008 and 2009). Thus my online income is not diversified enough for my liking and I plan to spend this year building up the Adsense and affiliate earnings pie slices represented in my pie chart. I’ll do this through my niche sites, which include a pets site, a toy & game site, a personal finance tip blog, a food blog and a home & garden blog and site.

How do you diversify your online income? What are your best sources and what are your goals for increasing them in 2010?

A year ago, my Adsense revenue, a very small part of my residual income, was less than $10 a month. Now, it’s consistently above $100 monthly … that once-distant payout threshold that seemed to take forever to break. It feels like quite an achievement to receive a payment from Google each month as opposed to once a year.

If I were to improve my Adsense earnings at the same rate in the next twelve months, I’d be seeing $1,000 a month in Adsense earnings next October. While this amount is one of my goals, I don’t know that it’s achievable in a one-year time frame, as I don’t foresee being able to multiply my efforts by ten times my current level.

Still, I do have plans to write content pages for each of my sites every week, and set up and add to my domains that are currently empty and awaiting blogs or html pages. Just today, I added Adsense code to pages on my much-neglected Site Build It website, and am curious to see how those ad units will perform.

There is incredible potential when monetizing sites with Google Adsense, alone or in conjunction with affiliate marketing when appropriate. I am inspired by successful webmasters who gross tens of thousands a year and even a month with this business model.

Earning money online can be a slow process, as it has been in the case of my Adsense earnings. But the trickle that comes in the beginning is just that, and as I keep reminding myself, those who recognize the potential and keep working at it will see long-term success.

Tell me about your experience with Adsense revenues — is it just a trickle of earnings at this point, or a mainstay of your income?  Share your tips with those of us just getting off the ground.

Niche websites can be one of the best ways to build a residual income online, although earnings are usually low at first as the webmaster builds up page rank and traffic to the site.

This was certainly the case with my first website, a nutrition site I built with Site Build It and did not monetize from the start, instead working on traffic building before including advertising and affiliate links. I don’t think that’s a bad strategy, but in retrospect I would have included monetization channels earlier than I did.

In late December 2008, I started a pets-themed site using a basic html template (not Wordpress) and included Google Adsense ad units and links to Amazon books from the start. I have added 10 content pages on keyword phrases closely tied to the site url, which is a three-word search term on the overall topic.

The adsense bids for these keywords are really on the low side, actually — but conversely, competition for the article keywords in Google search results is also low.

Income from the site is not substantial yet, but it is more than I expected for time invested, pages online and number of backlinks to the site (very few).

To date, my earnings from the site are as follows:

Google Adsense for content …….. $246.59

Amazon affiliate earnings ……….. $   20.11

TOTAL ………………………………… $266.70

That’s an average of a little less than $1.50 a day, or about $45 a month. The past couple months have accounted for a higher percentage of earnings, obviously, so I am actually earning closer to $65-$70 a month with the site as it stands. I expect that number to go up as I add more pages and include affiliate links to a Clickbank ebook on the topic that I have bookmarked.

My marketing of the site has been limited to building a few links to the main page or one of the content pages through article sites like Bukisa and link libraries such as Xomba.

Interested in doing something similar to increase your residual income online? Be sure to check out my Make Money with a Website series to learn how to create and monetize a niche site efficiently.

Have you had success with a niche site? Share your tips, below.

Are you just getting started? Comments and questions welcome!

My Residual Income blog posting has been infrequent, I know, and I hope my kind readers aren’t terribly disappointed in me. Between my family, home, and online work I am trying to balance everything and fit in frequent blog posting, but I do fall short sometimes. Here’s an overview of what I’ve been up to in my efforts to build my residual income to $50,000 a year (still have a ways to go!)

My husband and I are writing a licensing course for professionals in the insurance field. I know that’s a little vague, but hopefully I’ll be able to share more details as the project progresses. There is a good long-term, consistent income potential with this product, although we will get only a portion of the tuition cost each student pays to take the course.

I’ve started experimenting with Squidoo, another revenue-sharing, user-driven content site. The main difference between this site and eHow is that Squidoo’s revenue is primarily via affiliate sales , with some additional advertisement money; conversely, your income on eHow is primarily from Google adsense and other ads on the site, with some bonus earnings from affiliate marketing if you utilize the resources section.  Squidoo is an excellent way to integrate Commission Junction products into your content with an attractive presentation on a well-ranked site. There are built-in modules for eBay products and Amazon items. The site pays you 50% of the revenue your Lens (article) brings in through the modules that you customize and additional money from the ads on the page.

When you add your own cj.com or Clickbank affiliate links, you keep 100% of the earnings. A Squidoo user by the name of PotPieGirl has written an extensive guide to earning significant income on Squidoo. She is legendary on Squidoo, and her lengthy ebook goes beyond Squidoo in scope. She earns a substantial income by marketing affiliate products, primarily through Clickbank. I have started reading this ebook and plan to review it here on the blog shortly.

On eHow, I took a couple months off writing with no detrimental effect on my monthly earnings. In fact, I had a few great affiliate sales in addition to the regular eHow ad earnings via my eHow articles. I plan to keep adding several new eHow articles each week. It’s so simple to do, and the income has been very good for me thus far, so I’m still working toward my $2,000+/month eHow goal. I could do it more quickly but since I am branching out with other projects, my pace has slowed.

My niche sites are going well. They need more content as most one only have a handful of pages. Still, my Google Adsense earnings from niche sites are now averaging about $3/day, so I should be making the $100 payout almost every month and as I add more content, my average will hopefully increase in time.

I’m putting off writing my second ebook/ first print book until I get my main writing project — the licensing course –completed. I’ll keep you posted!

What are your current goals and projects to build long-term residual income? I’d love to hear your comments, below!