Well, as some of you know, it seems that near the end of October, Google made an algorithm change which totally changed the rankings of many people’s sites…

For some, it was for the better, for a lot, it was for the worse.

I personally have noticed 3 of my top sites disappeared from the 1st page of Google…this resulted in a drop in income..  Up until Oct 24th, my main adsense account had an average intake of $110/day.  From the 25th to the 31st though, it’s only been an average of $79/day.

My other adsense account also took a hit on the 28th, going from $18/day to $6/day..

It seems as if my main adsense account is doing a bit better today, the day’s not over yet (6 more hours left) and it’s sitting at $84 so far…but it’s just due to some of my other sites picking up the slack for the 3 top sites that were lost.  You see, I have about 10 or more sites that perform well, but they don’t always perform great every single day…so it’s just some of those other sites that weren’t hit, making up for the 3 sites that I lost, for today…

I’m sure I’ve lost a lot more top page rankings for my sites, but I haven’t analyzed past my top few sites…

And who knows why they knocked some sites back while others remained fine.  I saw someone post they thought it might be the backlinks, but I have sites that I backlinked identically to the ones that got thrown off page 1 and yet they are still up on page 1 :/…so who knows.  But something on the sites that lost their ranking triggered this, whether it’s related to the theme of the site, the content, the backlinks, or maybe it’s a combination of factors.

Anyway, the only answer is to keep on backlinking via a variety of different methods and hope that in time they return.  Sites that are thrown back in ranking, as long as they’re not de-indexed, CAN return, only thing you can do is just work on your backlinks.  Thing is, you’ll never know when Google decides to bring it back to page 1, so just focus on backlinking up a bunch of your sites and don’t hold your breath for anything returning in “X” amount of time.

Adsense High

One thing of note that happened on the 19th of October was that I saw a nice adsense high on my main account of $160.07 and a grand total of $177.98 overall.  I believe this is an adsense high for me and it happened right after I updated some of my top earners with new content.  I’m guessing that somehow raised the rankings of these sites which lead to more traffic and thus more money…

The following day I made $142.23 on my main and $152 total… but then following that, I was back down to $92.95, so it seems like that was short lived.

Clickbank

Unfortunately Clickbank seems to have taken a beating this month!  I went *8* full days (Oct 14th – 21st) without making a single sale!  I’ve never had so many days go by without a sale in forever!

I do know that the drop in hops was part of the problem.  I had only 3,595 hops in October and from that made $392.27 Gross….September I had 4,903 hops and $627.45 Gross.  Comparing again, August I had 7,095 hops and $896.09…

I can’t say that it’s only because of the hops though because back in February, off of 4,391 hops I made $1,317.91…It could be the products or it could be that I’m not getting hops for the good converting keyword domains anymore.

Here’s a look at what it’s been like the last while:

October Totals

OK, here are the totals:

Adsense Total = $3,711.38 (An adsense high for me! My highest before this was $3,563.67 in March..October’s total is up $389.69 from $3,321.69 last month.)

CB Hops = 3,595 (Last Month = 4,903)
CB = $392.27 GROSS
CB = 21 sales/0 refunds
CB = $392.27 NET
9 UAW Sales = $214.40
1 BLS Sale = $29.10
EBay = $15.10 CAN = $14.90 US

Grand Total = $4,362.05

-Mike

This past month my adsense revenue has continued to go up without me doing anything… I noticed that recently my main adsense account has been having $100+ days again, the last time that happened was before Mayday, back in May.  Here are a few screenshots to show you what I’m seeing(images cropped to fit on screen):

My main adsense acct in August:

Acct in September:

As you can see, around the middle of September, it began breaking $100 again after not having done it for a little over 3 months.. It’s gone from a $70 avg to $94, almost a $15 increase..probably a bit more considering the change happened mid Sept…my avg from Sept 14th – 30th was $102.97.

This isn’t my full adsense earnings for this month as well…my total adsense earnings for the month of Sept was actually $3,321.69…pretty close to my highest adsense month which was $3,563.67 in March.

Here’s a full breakdown of the September earnings:

Adsense = $3,321.69 (up $721.40 from last month’s $2,600.29)
CB Hops = 4,903 (down from 7,095 last month)
CB Gross = $627.45 (down from $896.09 last month)
CB Refunds = 1 ($16.61)
CB Net = $601.07
9 UAW Sales = $187.60
2 BLS Sales = $58.20
Ebay = $16.26CAN = $15.77 US

Grand Total = $4,184.33 (up $395.07 from $3,789.26 last month)

-Mike

Hey guys,

As I mentioned in the previous post’s comments section, I have recently noticed another increase in adsense revenue..  It started funnily enough on my birthday, Aug 29th, and is carrying on steadily…

The increase is about $16/day.  I obviously can’t go into specifics about what I’m seeing, what I can say though is that while there has been a slight increase in impressions, it is mainly the clicks and eCPM which is causing this.

I haven’t really done anything to bring this about, but I can see that a good chunk of this increase is coming from a few of my main/bigger sites performing better..The reason?  While I have been adding a few pages to my sites here and there, I didn’t add any to these sites which are bringing in more money so it could be due to the sites just aging, however that’s just a guess.

I’m not too interested in finding out the cause as regardless of what it is, it won’t change my approach/plan of action when I go full on into my business again, which is just to continuously add more content to my sites then backlink as many of the new pages as I can.  I like to keep things simple.

Here’s a look at the incrase in income in screenshots (I cut and pasted them from these 2 images here and here, so that they’d fit on the blog):

August 15th – August 28th (2 weeks before the increase)

August 29th – September 11th(2 weeks after the increase)

As you can see there has been an increase of about $16…However this isn’t ALL the adsense money I’ve been making.

You see one thing I’ve alluded to in the past but never officially stated was that I do have another adsense account under a separate legal entity…I never mentioned it before for a few reasons, partly because I wasn’t comfortable talking about such a matter, also partly because I didn’t want my blog to become a place to discuss/explain the process of setting up additional adsense accounts.

For those who don’t know, it is within the TOS to have 2 adsense accounts PROVIDED they are under 2 separate legal entities (ex: a Corporation and under your name, or under 2 corporations)… you can’t setup 2 under the same name though.

This other adsense account at the moment brings on average an additional $14/day so really my income has gone from $81/day to $97/day…not bad considering at my peak I was making $100-120/day.

BTW on another topic, here in Toronto, there is The International Film Festival(TIFF) going on..lots of stars are here, Edward Norton, Zack Galifianakis, Ben Affleck, Bill Murray, Mickey Rourke…I overheard some girls mentioning they saw “Fox” and how small she was, I’m guessing Megan Fox too, among others…

I was just downtown doing some shopping, updating my wardrobe and I saw this barricade, a mob of people and police officers… I had no idea this was going on!  I just wanted to get into this store, ‘Style Exchange’ and had to ASK to be let in as it was next door to some theater where all these stars apparently were headed.   I didn’t see anyone I recognized, but when I was trying to figure out what was going on, I remember seeing some guy waving in my general direction(I was walking behind the mob) as if he was someone of import.

I’m not one to be into this stuff, but just cool to know that’s going on in the neighborhood :>

Oh and about the clothes, I’m usually the type who’s really into dressing up nice, but got lazy about it since getting into IM…This past week or so I think I accrued 23 new casual dress shirts/t-shirts (Affliction/Guess/Buffalo/Le Chateau), 5 new jeans(Diesel/Parasuco/Buffalo/Guess), 2 new shoes (Jo Ghost) and 3 new jackets (Buffalo/Guess/Firetrap).  I tend to like getting stuff that is unique looking, thing is this stuff all ends up being damn expensive!

-Mike

As I mentioned in the previous post, things did pick back up a bit for August adsense-wise.  Here now are the totals for the month of August:

Adsense = $2,600.29 (up $403.21 from last month’s $2,197.08)
CB Hops = 7,095
CB = $896.09 GROSS
CB Refunds = 1 ($16.61)
CB = $879.48 NET
9 UAW sales = $241.20
1 BLS sale = $29.10
1 XFactor sale = $30.80
Ebay = $8.85 CAN (about $8.39 US)

Grand Total = $3,789.26 (Of course if Human Rewriter paid me, this would be at $4,000 for the month).

-Mike

It’s a month late, but figured I’d post them up anyways…Here’s just a quick look at what the totals were for July:

Adsense = $2,197.08
CB Hops = 6,594
CB = $724.02 GROSS
CB Refunds = 2 ($59.90)
CB = $664.12 NET
11 UAW sales = $294.80
1 BLS sale = $29.10
Ebay = $2.91 CAN (about $2.77 US)

Note: Human Rewriter I won’t count as they not currently paying their affiliates, however if I did count it, it would be another $200-250.

Grand Total = $3,187.87

Good news is that adsense income is up again since August 1st, so August totals should be better.

-Mike

As you know, many marketers as well as myself have used Human Rewriter for content…They’ve always delivered what I ordered in the time frame they specified and I’ve had no issues with the quality of the work for my purposes(UAW submissions)…

However, these days the company’s integrity is in question as they have not been making affiliate payments.

I noticed back on May the 1st of 2010 that I had not been paid via the automated payment system since March 15th (payments are supposed to go out twice a month).  I e-mailed support and was told that I wasn’t picked up by the automated system for whatever reason and they sent me the payment manually.

That was all well and good, however since then(May 1st) I have not received any payment…

I sent a message July 22nd to support to ensure that my payment would be sent out, I was told it would be automatically sent on August 1st.. Still no payment was sent however, so I e-mailed them again on August 5th to let them know, I was told by support they’d speak to accounting about this.  I sent an e-mail asking for an update on August 11th and August 16th, and received no reply, so on August 24th I sent the following:

“Hello,

It’s been 12 days since my last message, and 18 days since I sent the initial message and I haven’t received any response regarding the lack of payment for the last few months. There is currently $615.40 owing and I’ve waited past a reasonable amount of time, without any word back.

Is Human Rewriter going to honor this payment? If I do not hear back, I won’t have any other choice but to make sure other Human Rewriter user’s or potential users aware of what is happening here.

I’d like to be put in touch with Terry Smith from accounting to have the $615.40 transferred manually.

Thank you,

-Mike Iser”

Following this e-mail I did receive a response.  It appeared to be a copy and pasted message as the previous recipient’s name was left in:

Ben,

Unfortunately I have little (actually no) control over affiliate payments, and cannot make a statement as to when they will resume being paid out.  I have attempted to contact our accounting people several times in regards to this issue, but have received no response.  All I can tell you is that we will more than likely be phasing out the affiliates program when the site undergoes its next update.  It also looks like the business may be changing hands.

Their affiliate commission model is to pay 20% commissions on what referrals spend for life, so it seems as if they are no longer willing or able to continue with that and at the same time have decided to sell the business…

No communication between support and accounting + not paying + selling the business?  Doesn’t look good…

Seeing as how I did not see anyone talking about this on the Warrior Forum or anywhere else, I thought I’d make a post to let others who use or may use this service know exactly what is happening.

Below is the email transcript:

Human Rewriter – 1
Human Rewriter – 2
Human Rewriter – 3
Human Rewriter – 4
Human Rewriter – 5

If anything changes, I’ll post about it, but right now, not looking good.

Hey guys,

As you know by now, I decided to take an extended break from this website…Even when I achieved a full time income online, I did not stop updating/working to fully enjoy what I’d done, so I figured now was the time to do that.

I thought about coming back and making a small update post, but then realized I’d likely just get pulled back into updating my site, something I didn’t want to do just yet..so I completely took this site off my mind and did not check in on it for the past month.

Sorry to those who had posts caught in ‘pending’ status…People who have at least made 1 post are put on the auto-approve list (unless a word triggers it to go to pending)…Then of course there are spam users/posts that wind up in the trash.  I usually add new posters manually to an auto approve list, but was not around to do that.

After taking this break, there is one thing that I’ve learned, even at this stage in the game… it is ’still’ beneficial to keep yourself accountable via something such as a daily blog as it does help you to get more work accomplished.

Regarding the past month, I have intentionally not worked on my business as much as I normally would, however I do have two writers who continue to produce content for my sites on a daily basis.  A lot of this content is made to expand out a lot of  my sites which are at 5-6 pages to 10-11 pages…I’m now at a point where I’ve had all that extra content written out for about 80-100 of my sites and I’m in the process of posting those up.  After this I’m going to focus on building up the writing on a select few(20 or so) websites.  The focus has mainly been on content lately, I’m going to have my hands full when I get around to backlinking..

One other thing to note is that I’ve found my adsense income has picked up since around the beginning of August.  In June, when the Google change hit the sites, it was at an average of around $71/day…Now for the first 10 days of August it seems to be around $85/day on average.  The main reason for this is due to an increase in eCPM.  What caused this?  I’m not 100% sure…backlinking is usually the cause for increases in income, however the only thing I’ve done with regards to backlinking were the UAW re-submits.

BTW, at the moment I don’t have any plans to do any structured updating, so updates/me checking in may be sporadic, although that may change down the road…

And again, in the meantime, feel free to talk in the comments below :>

-Mike

Hey guys,

I’ve been thinking about this for some time….lately the daily updates have gotten pretty mundane/monotonous and I’ve been questioning whether or not this is really something I should continue doing.  Especially since the daily updates have served their purpose, I intended to update daily until I was able to reach a full time income, which I did some time ago.

Granted I had a dip in the income, but I question whether I should be updating you on a daily basis about adding 10-15 pages to a site each and every day…I also don’t want the blog to be just about checking how much money I made for the day.

I’ve done the daily updates continuously now for 427 days, and sure, I could keep going , but I just feel that the original intention has long been served.

One other thing about giving daily updates is it doesn’t give me much time to rethink and figure out additional approaches to my business as I feel a responsibility to deliver some tangible work rather than just log that I’ve been brainstorming various tactics for 1 week straight.

I’m thinking I should switch to just updating just whenever I feel there is something worth mentioning.   I’ll try not updating for a week and see how that goes…

Thoughts?

-Mike

Today I just spent time putting together 12 articles for one of my writers to be re-written 3x each.  I’ve been getting these articles from some of my previously submitted Ezines which are all around 250 words.

Since I need the UAW submissions to be at least 375 or so words, I’ve been combining 2 of those Ezine articles to create 1 article to be sent for re-writing.  It’s easy to combine these as they are articles with bullet points, nevertheless, it does take a bit of time to do this.

So far I’ve had writing done for about 24 UAW submissions saved up, will have to use them at some point.

Aside from that, the holiday weekend is over and income is back up..

Earnings For Monday July 5th:

• CB = $21.24
• Adsense = $95.21
• Total = $116.45

-Mike

Short/late update…Got another 10 posts up…

The earnings For Sunday were understandably low due to the holiday weekend as you can see…

Earnings For Sunday July 4th:

• CB = $0
• Adsense = $37.64

-Mike