My Online Residual Income: Sources
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?
Wow! Excellent diversification – I love it. Great job this month, you’re totally killing it on eHow despite everything that’s been happening. Well done! I wish I had as much discipline as you as far as my article writing goes, but I’m focusing on other things, as I’m sure you know.
Anyways, just wanted to drop by and say hi, and awesome job. I wish you even more success for the rest of this year and beyond. Cheers!
Love the pie chart! It gives a great visual view of just where your earnings are coming from. Are you concerned about eHow accounting for so much of your earnings, especially now that earnings have really dropped for their members?
I will continue to write eHow articles to build passive income, but my main focus is to diversify and grow my niche sites.
Pat — thanks for stopping by! There has been a good deal of complaining at eHow by some members, but in my opinion most of that is unwarranted. The site remains a great place to earn residual income, make affiliate sales, and drive traffic to one’s own sites.
John — Thanks! Like I mentioned in the post, I’ll be focusing primarily on my own sites this year to increase Adsense earnings and affiliate sales. More diversification is definitely in the works.
This is absolutely inspirational. Well done. I know it must have required lots of work and patience on your part to get to this point. It must feel rather nice to be reaping the benefits. Well done, again, and congrats on the birth of your son.
In answer to your questions, I don’t think I diversify my income enough, but it’s something I’m getting underway this year. I’m definitely into working for myself online rather than freelancing. One of my main goals this year is to set up mini-sites.
All the best to you for the rest of the year.
Take care…
My husband is an editor for eHow. Wow, you make a lot of residual income from them. I’m learning a lot about different ways to earn residual income as I expand my Scentsy candles business. Good stuff!
Maria, I have to agree with you on eHow. Even with the the problems (which really don’t amount to a lot), eHow is the best paying residual income site. Right now I’m only writing for eHow and Suite101, but I’m hoping to branch out into some of my own niche sites and ebooks. I have to give you a lot of the credit. It was your ebook that lead me on this path. Thanks and good luck to you.
Hi, Maria,
Even though your sales were down in December, one of them was to me — or was in it November — so it’s no small thing to this gal.
I am starting this week to work through your book. I also purchased Janet Ford’s book, so I’m going to be a busy girl.
I write for DS (a little), have six articles on eHow and am getting ready to lay out the road a bit with my goals.
No website yet, but it’s coming.
Your break-down of past and possible earnings and now, your pie chart, is an inspiration. Thanks for posting it.
Good luck in the coming year.
Carriematilda
Wow, how did I not find this blog earlier? Anyway, I love how you showed us on a pie chart your various income sources and how much each one accounts for. I just started my blog a couple of months ago and I have so much to learn.
I have to explore your blog some more, so off I go.
p.s. I’m not sure how much eHow UK is affecting me (I only have 20 articles up), but I think noone else matches how quickly you can earn from your articles and rank them even.
eHow is by far my best residual as well!! I really enjoy the ‘passive’ part of that income!
One of my goals for 2010 is to focus on the most bang for the buck. I think residual is the way to go. I plan on getting back into my Suite 101 articles as well. Thanks for the visual!
[...] presents My Online Residual Income: Sources posted at Residual Income Web, saying, “Here’s a breakdown of my online freelance [...]
Great pie chart Maria. You are doing well as always but your really deserve it. I’d guess that the eHow UK thing and all the publishing tool issues hurt your eBook sales as many writers just stopped writing until things got fixed. Also Christmas is not about eBooks. Here is to a prosperous 2010.
I’m still learning the eHow thing and I don’t have much time to devote to writing well paying articles, but two areas that I have diversified into are t-shirts (triathletetshirts.com)(I use zazzle because cafepress screwed me) and I’m a Beachbody Affiliate. Beachbody sells the crazy popular P90X (which worked really well for me) and commissions are 25%. I’m still working on my backlinks and SEO (this site has been very helpful thank you!), but zazzle allows me to create a design on t-shirts, mugs, pet stuff, office supplies, etc. then set my own commission (currently 20%) the rest is completely passive.
Really great to see Bukisa on the list – I just setup my account there and have been on the ropes whether or not to start writing – but the graph shows it – I’ll definitely start up there soon
Keep up the great work!
Thank you for sharing your residual income sources. – It is nice to see other people suggest diversification. I plan to post something similar on my website in a few months, after I see how a couple of things work out. Here is how my online income is currently spread out:
50% – Ads, mainly through Google AdSense, are my biggest earner. I have them on a variety of websites. When one site’s performance drops for a season, another one can kick in.
31% – Paperback book sales. I have them printed on demand by CreateSpace and sold through Amazon.com.
19% – CD sales … They really just contain PDF versions of the books mentioned above.
I also have some affiliate stuff, but it doesn’t perform well at all. … My best month was 27 cents (unless you count the purchases I have made myself … If you count them my best month was $31, but it cost me over $800 to get it!) Usually I get nothing from affiliate stuff.
Over the next year I plan on expanding into ebooks, Wikihow, and Yahoo Contributor Network. I also expect to get more affiliate commission by linking my CD site to my Amazon books. (they are over the same topic)
I am currently (April 2011) getting $60 – $80 per month. But those numbers have been steadily increasing every few months since 2008. It just takes one well written article, or an anticipated book release announcement to bring in a wave of new visitors / customers.