June was a great month overall – it appears my “productive” feeling from May actually paid off, although I’m sure the best is yet to come. Certain areas of my income saw record numbers, while others have declined slightly. Overall, I think I’m headed in the right direction.
As always, I write these reports to show you that someone who has a full time job and spends a relatively small amount of time outside of work on his online income activities can still achieve a steadily growing stream of passive income.
If you’ve been following me for awhile, you pretty much know the drill with Lending Club. It’s a peer-to-peer lending site that I feel is my only true source of passive income (i.e. once I’m invested, I make money by doing virtually nothing). As of the end of June, I was invested in 92 loans (+2 from May) and my net annualized return was 6.97% (-0.41% from May).
I’ve determined that the primary reason my returns have declined over the past couple of months is because I’ve been investing in less risky loans over the past several months compared to when I originally started with Lending Club. I used to invest in a lot of high return loans (10-12%), but since then have added a lot of loans in the 5-7% range.
As I always point out, my current interest rate at Lending Club far exceeds that of any type of “safe” investment like money market bank accounts and CDs (certificates of deposit). It’s important to keep in mind that Lending Club loans are riskier than these other types of investments. However, I strongly believe that the additional risk is more than compensated for by the higher rate of return.
Here’s a visual from Lending Club that I think will highlight for you exactly how great this source of passive income is:
To me, this is astonishing. For investors with 800+ loans (i.e. you can’t say it’s a “small sample size”), the vast majority have seen returns of 6%+. No one of those investors has actually lost money (i.e. 100% of the returns have been positive).
Here’s an image from my Lending Club account summary that show my performance compared to other Lending Club investors:
If you’re interested in trying Lending Club, you can sign up with this link and get a free account. If you’re unsure whether this type of investing is right for you, you can deposit a small amount (loans can go as small as $25) and become familiar with it.
To me, trying something like this and investing a small portion of your money is a no brainer. You’re going to get higher returns than a bank account, and although it locks up your money for a period of time (you are generally paid back over 3 years), it’s well worth the ability to have your money earn you money, with virtually no effort on your part.
Info Barrel Earnings Challenge
[Read about the challenge here]
Ironically, after finally writing articles for the first time in 6 months, my earnings decreased. It just goes to show you that earnings can and will be volatile regardless of what you do. All you can do is continue to work hard, add content, diversify, and the earnings will come.
As of the end of June, I have written 130 articles (+2 from last month). Here are my June Google AdSense statistics for Info Barrel:
In June, I earned a total of $63.44 from my Info Barrel articles (-$21.83 from May).
June InfoBarrel Earnings Summary
- Google Adsense: $63.44
- Amazon Associates: $0.00
- Chitika: $1.56
- Other Affiliate Earnings: $0.00
- Total: $65.00 (-$24.90 from May)
If you want to add InfoBarrel to your passive income portfolio, you can sign up for it here.
Niche Site Duel
As a part of Pat Flynn’s niche site duel, I created a niche site last September based on P90X, an extreme home fitness routine. I feel like a broken record when I say this, but yes, I’m still struggling to rank this site. As you may have seen, I wrote a post attempting to analyze what the issue with this site might be. The good news is, my earnings have now increased for a second straight month – the bad news is, they’re still embarrassingly small.
June Niche Site Duel Earnings Summary
- Google Adsense: $0.93
- Chitika: $0.00
- Amazon Associates: $3.91
- Total: $4.84 (+$2.59 from May)
Amazon Niche Site Challenge
[Read about the challenge here]
In November, I launched a challenge where I’m creating several niche sites specifically tailored for Amazon’s affiliate program (i.e. selling physical products as an affiliate of Amazon.com), and I’m following the lessons taught in Chris Guthrie’s Niche Profit Course. You can read my original post for more detail and you can also read the update I wrote in December.
This is one area that I’m excited about for June, because I saw record earnings since I began this “challenge” nearly 9 months ago (wow, I can’t believe it’s been so long). Yes, earnings growth has been slow, but I’m feeling more and more confident that I’m on the right track.
In addition, I’ve started creating more sites to add to this portfolio, and I’m outsourcing all of the content creation and SEO. Some of my new sites will be more AdSense focused, but I will continue to monetize with both Amazon and AdSense, with some other occasional affiliate programs.
For my new sites, I will be using a new Amazon plugin that I reviewed here.
Here are the stats for June:
# of Amazon niche sites: 10 (+2 from May)
Total June Amazon Niche Site Earnings: $110.80 (+$82.89 from May)
My Authority Website
As I detailed here, I’ve started an authority website that I have big plans for. I’m taking the process very slow and steady, but I’m making progress and foresee good things in the near future.
There isn’t much for me to report as of right now – I’m slowly adding content and I am seeing a little bit of organic trickle traffic (0-5 visitors/day), but no earnings to speak of yet.
Misc. Affiliate Income
My miscellaneous affiliate income saw an increase once again. Here’s the breakdown for June:
- Adsense: $2.89
- Amazon: $0.00
- ClickBank: $324.48
- Commission Junction: $151.00
- PayDotCom: $0.00
- Private Advertising: $35.00
- Market Samurai: $0.00
- Other Misc.: $208.05
Total Affiliate Earnings for June: $721.42 (+$35.85 from May)
Although I did write a “product promotion” post this month (for the EasyAzon plugin), you might be interested to know that it only accounted for $75.33 of my Clickbank earnings.
Income Summary
Here’s a summary of June’s earnings. Instead of summarizing it by source (i.e. AdSense, Amazon, etc.), I’m going to summarize by project/challenge, which I think makes a bit more sense.
- InfoBarrel Earnings Challenge: $65.00
- Niche Site Duel (P90X site): $4.84
- Amazon Niche Site Challenge: $110.80
- Misc. Affiliate Income: $721.42
Grand Total for June: $902.06 (+$96.43 from May)
Although I still haven’t broken $1,000, I definitely can’t complain about another month of increasing earnings!
Popular Posts
These were my top 5 most popular blog posts in June based on number of views:
1) Online Passive Income and Blog Update [May '11]
2) How Efficiently Do You Build Amazon Niche Sites?
3) The Ultimate Backlink Tracker (Free Tool)
4) 142+ Ways to Make Money Online
5) How to Make $2,000 Per Month Writing for InfoBarrel
Until next month, best of luck to you and your passive income projects!
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March | April | ||||||||
Amazon | AdSense | CPA | Total | Amazon | AdSense | CPA | Total | ||
1 | 25.00 | 5.60 | 30.60 | - | 0.02 | - | 0.02 | ||
2 | 2.89 | 2.97 | 5.86 | 6.05 | 2.20 | - | 8.25 | ||
3 | 13.83 | 0.68 | 14.51 | - | 0.75 | 1.25 | 2.00 | ||
4 | 15.56 | 9.06 | 24.62 | 18.09 | 3.64 | - | 21.73 | ||
5 | 1.23 | 0.47 | 1.70 | - | 1.94 | - | 1.94 | ||
6 | 0.21 | 1.37 | 1.58 | - | 3.07 | - | 3.07 | ||
7 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | ||
8 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | ||
$ 58.72 | $ 20.15 | $ - | $ 78.87 | $ 24.14 | $ 11.62 | $ 1.25 | $ 37.01 |
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Online Passive Income and Blog Update [June '11]
Related posts:
- Online Passive Income and Blog Update [July '11]
- Online Passive Income & Blog Update [December '10]
- Online Passive Income & Blog Update [March '11]