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Boy, am I excited to report this month’s earnings! My direct advertising opportunities really took off, giving my monthly earnings a huge boost. It you remember from my July earnings report, I earned a total of $112.42, which was an 81% change over the previous month. This month proved to be even bigger, earning me a total of $270.16 for a 140% increase over last month!

Earnings Breakdown

Below is a detailed breakdown of the various sources of August’s earnings compared to what was earned in July.

Direct Advertising

This month’s biggest earner was direct advertising at $144.75. I had 3 sponsors during August — Search Engine Guide, XSitePro, and Ty Coughlin’s Reverse Funnel System — each of which purchased $50 125×125 pixel banners appearing in the top-right of the blog. (I should note that the reason my direct advertising earnings aren’t at $150 for the month is due to the fees incurred when utilizing PayPal for fund transfers.)

I calculated a monthly advertising price of $50 based upon several factors. The first calculation was to find the number of expected monthly impressions for a banner given the average monthly page views as reported by Google Analytics. I then decided upon a fair CPM based upon various articles I read on the topic of direct advertising and what other blogs were charging. Finally, I multiplied the CPM by the expected number of banner impressions, arriving at a price of $50/month.

PayPerPost

PayPerPost proved to be my second biggest advertising source at $65. The two review opportunities I completed included one for free Web hosting and a PPP direct request for Site Content Analyzer 3.

Interestingly, the PPP direct opportunity was actually one that I came across in Sponsored Reviews. I bid $60 for the opportunity on Sponsored Reviews, (which would earn me approximately $40 if accepted), then e-mailed the company to in an effort to cross-sell them into hiring me via PayPerPost for $40. My reason for doing this is twofold. First, Sponsored Reviews takes a bigger cut than PayPerPost, resulting in a higher price for advertisers for bloggers to earn the same amount. Second, the higher cost in the advertiser’s eyes is not going to encourage them to make a purchase; seeing a discount on a review opportunity will potentially help push the person or company into agreeing to such an opportunity.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense was my third highest source of earnings at $29.03. This is down a significant amount from July, which I was expecting. I had a large spike of traffic during the previous month due to a piece of linkbait making its way well around the blogosphere and the Web as a whole, resulting in many more AdSense clicks.

Affiliate Sales

My $20 in affiliate sales for the month is somewhat deceiving. It actually represents a “bonus” for creating an affiliate account on SEOBook. I wasn’t going to include it here, but since I recorded the $5 bonus for joining AuctionAds in a previous month’s earnings report, I decided that I should remain consistent by reporting it here.

Text-Link-Ads

Since being accepted into the Text-Link-Ads program last month, I had two sales on my blog late into the month earning me $4.75. A link is currently selling for $15/month on my blog (meaning I would make $7.50/month for a single sale). However, the purchases were prorated since they were both made late in the month.

AuctionAds

Finally, AuctionAds earned a measly $0.20. This is rather pitiful, and while I am tempted to remove the ads from my blog altogether, it would be nice to reach the $10 to qualify for payment since I’m only $1.29 away. I’ve read on other blogs that there were recording issues this month for affiliates that have since been addressed, so perhaps things will turn around. I’ll give it a chance for another month, but if things continue to look bleak, I’ll likely remove or replace the ads.