August ends tomorrow. Business earnings this month were pitiful. $299. Should I be amazed that I haven’t put a gun to my head yet? If you divide the $299 by the hours I’ve worked this month it comes to an average of about 0.75 cents per hour if I’m doing my Math correctly. I have no idea how there’s still enough money in my accounts to cover the bills; but we should manage to get the bills paid.

I’ve bee MIA from here for a few days because I’ve been working hard on one of the celebrity gossip sites after realizing there was a resurgence of traffic from Google. Google had dropped the site to the bottom of their index because I’d violated their terms by creating a duplicate website. At the time when they dropped the site, it had just begun to see an increase from around 50 - 100 visits per day to 600 - 1000. After they dropped it the traffic fell to under 100 visits per day; but it’s been improving lately and is now getting from 700 - 1200 per day, which still isn’t anything to sing and dance about, but by comparison to my other sites, this site included, if the site’s success is to be measured by traffic stats, it’s the most successful of the bunch so I thought I should try to see what I can do with it to bring some consistent income out of it.

What I’ve noticed though is that the increase in visits and page views isn’t really translating into an increase in Google Adsense earnings. It’s starting to dawn on me that I won’t get anywhere trying to rely on Adsense for income. I need to see visits in the hundreds of thousands and page views in the millions for that.

I’ve managed to get text link ads to approve the site after they’d initially declined to add it to their inventory. So far I’ve sold 2 ad spots; but because the site only has a page rank of 3, the most I’m getting for the links is $5 bucks per link. It’s highly unlikely I’ll sell all 10 ad spots. That would bring $50 per month; but I’m inclined to think it will be very difficult even to sell 5 ad spots and pull $25 per month via text link ads. What I need to do is find other ways of monetizing the site so that I’m not relying just on Adsense, or just on text link ads.

At any rate, the bills for September will get paid. I’m relieved about that; and even though I only managed to bring in $299 in August, I don’t feel as desperate and terrified as I was starting to feel a few weeks ago. I suppose it’s because my head has been spinning with ideas and it always feels better when you at least have some ideas for things you might be able to do to make money. It’s when you’re not making money and you have absolutely no idea what you might be able to do to make money that panic starts to rise.