Back At 5 Figures: I Earned $10,640,56 in August

byEddySalomon

49.2K followers

Updated 6 years ago

I'm happy to report I've finally hit a 5 figure month in 2018. This past month I earned $10,640.56. It's probably more than that but I'm only counting programs I can easily pull the data and tend be consistent for me every month. lol

How Did I Earn It?

First I apply the spirit of what the training teaches and what I've laid out in my cheat sheet. So feel free to review that since there are no magical secrets.

In terms of the actual money, I take a multiple streams of income approach to my blog Work At Home No Scams. I don't just promote one company and I don't just focus on sales based affiliate programs. I cover every possible way for me to earn. This way every visitor that comes to my site will make me money regardless if they buy something or not. I don't like leaving money on the table. For a few years I was doing that by primarily promoting sales based affiliate offers. But I realized that not everyone is willing to invest in themselves.

I have to account for people who don't have money or don't want to spend money to make money. So I added other ways to monetize my site that didn't require a sale. So let's see how that breaks down in numbers.

Display Ads: $2666.53

Display ads are basically banner ads that are served on your site automatically once you've added code on your site. You don't have to deal with finding advertisers or getting their payments. An ad network like Google Adsense or my new personal favorite MediaVine will do all that work for you. Once the display ads are installed on your site the ad networks handles everything else and pays you most of the revenue collected from the advertisers. All you need to do is keep writing great content and following the training here at WA. But you shouldn't even consider display ads until you're getting some good consistent traffic.

I resisted using display ads the last couple of years because I find ads annoying and adsense wasn't really paying as much as they did back in the day. But I realized I deal with ads on sites that provide good content all the time. I had to convince myself it doesn't matter what you don't or do like Eddy. If you're seeing ads on websites, it's probably not as annoying as you think and the site owners are making money.

I was right. This month has been the biggest month for me in terms of display ad revenue. Shout out to Nathaniel for putting me on to a better ad network.

CPA (Cost per Action) Offers: $4163

This is when an affiliate network or company will pay you for a lead. A lead is basically when someone fills out a form on a website for more information or to join a site. Some networks will require that your lead actual confirm their email address by clicking on a link that the company will send via email. This is referred to as a double opt in (DOI) lead. Most companies will pay a lot more for this rather than a single opt in (SOI) lead where your lead doesn't have to confirm their email address.

The pay for leads will vary greatly depending on the industry and affiliate offer. I tend to promote things that pay $2 -$7 per lead. But companies can pay up to $100 or more for leads. It just all depends on your niche and industry. When you join an affiliate network you can ask your affiliate managers for what type of CPA offers they have in your niche and their pay.

CPA offers has been my bread and butter for years. It's a lot easier to get someone to join something for free or just fill in their information than it is to convince them to whip out their credit card and buy something. So I love CPA offers. When other affiliates turn their nose about earning a few bucks per lead, I eat it up. Because I know I can make it up on volume and better conversions. It accounts for more of my income.

You can find CPA offers by Googling "CPA networks". Just keep in mind that you don't need to change anything you're doing in terms of adding cpa links to your pages. The same way you would add an sales based affiliate link like an amazon link in your content, you would do the same thing for a CPA offer. It's just another affiliate link and the only difference is you get paid if someone becomes a lead rather than needing them to buy something. So don't over think it. You don't need any special training. Just do what you've been doing but now add CPA type of offers to your mix.

Sales Based Offers: $3811.03

This is pretty much what most WA members are focused on. You have to convince your visitors to buy something in order for you to earn a commission. I admit I'm very weak with this type of affiliate marketing. For me it tends to convert lower than the other methods I mentioned above. But regardless I don't do too shabby with it. I love programs like WA which offer both CPA, sales based and recurring commissions. It's like a buffet of affiliate income in one program. lol

But promoting and converting sales based offers aren't my strength. I'm always inspired when I see other WA members income reports and the sales they make promoting things like WA. I used to get "jeally" but now I've learned to be happy with my lane and strengths.

My "Rocky" Comeback

So all this sounds pretty amazing and it is. But I've experienced this type of success before and at higher income amounts back in the days. But it all went away because I deviated from what WA taught. As a result of chasing after shiny new objects, Google pimp smacked my site with a penalty. That led to a massive drop in traffic and my income nearly wiped out. You can see the bloodbath below.

That decline in traffic totally changed my life and that of my family. It was a very dark time. It made me re-evaluate this business and things in my life. I had given up. Then one faithful day Kyle and Carson reached out to me. They wondered why I had stopped. I told them what happened. And they were like dude, you're fine. You can come back. And they literally helped me get back on track. I started to write content again and apply what they taught in the training. And as you can see over time my traffic and income came back. That's what WA can do for you.

It was a long process but I knew from experience that this did work. I just had to trust in the process, be patient and consistent on my end. And thank goodness I did, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. I'd still be crying in a corner in the fetal position listening to "Depress Mode". Lol I'm still not making the high 5 figures I made back in my heyday. But this is a good "start" for me. lol

Your Takeaway

I could have just made this blog post a typical income report. I read them and I find them very inspiring. But I wanted to give you a little more by sharing some of the monetization tactics I use and why. My hope is that you'll have a few aha moments and consider other ways to monetize your site. We all work very hard to provide quality content to our users and you should be compensated fully for it. But a lot of times we're leaving money on the table because we're not aware of other ways to monetize. Or worst still we block our income potential because of our own perceptions and assumptions. Don't do it. Test things out for yourself and let the numbers tell you what you should or shouldn't do.

I also wanted to share my failure with you because too often people are afraid to fail. They don't realize it's part of the process and you can fail forward. My failure was a great lesson from a personal and business standpoint.

There were things about my personality as a father and husband that needed to be improved. But they took a back seat because I felt I was being such a great provider and that's all that mattered. When you stripped of most of your earning power you're left with nothing but the man in the mirror. I was forced to deal with him and make changes. This led to me being a better husband and father because I focused my energy there instead of my business because that was pretty much wiped out. I needed to go through that and I'm happy I did.

I was reminded that money wasn't everything. My family was! I learned to be happy being "broke". I stop fixating on when I was balling and learned to be happy where I was. I may have not been rich financially but I was rich with family and friends. That's more important than anything. When I finally made that realization, that;s when things started to inch back. I was inspired again and things fell into place for me.

From a business standpoint, I learned to stop chasing shiny new things and quick fixes. I went back to the basics of what WA teaches here. It was slow going but it worked. I don't chase after fads or secret loopholes anymore. I stay in my lane and focus on things I know I can control and work long term which is writing useful content.

Well I think I've yapped enough. You should get the picture at this point. There are no secrets to share. It's all just hard work, patience, consistency and following the training. Hopefully you're inspired. If so, feel free to chime in below.

Thanks for reading.

Eddy with a y aka NOT EDDIE! lol

P.S. This is my 50th post and I hit 5 figures this past month. There is a lot of 5 going on here. lol