My Average Day

I have an email asking me what my average day was like - how much time I spend earning on the web and what my income was.  I've decided the best way to answer that is by recording my day and tallying up at the end, so here goes...

9.00am-9.30am - Time for a coffee!  I turn on the computer and head straight over to Inbox Dollars.  My first 5 searched of the day will be found through this site, which will earn me $0.06.  The site I search for is  Slice the Pie!  And over the next 30 minutes I drink my coffee and listen to music - posting reviews as I listen.  I posted 8 reviews and made $1.89.

9.30am-10.00am - I look at my Adf.ly account and my AdSense, noting that I made $0.21 and $0.89, respectively, before turning my attention to the boring part of the morning... my Paid To Click sites.  I have 6 of these on the go at the moment (2 because of the PTC Experiment) and the rest being tested for a review on the blog. NeoBux made me about $0.50 with referrals (in the last 24 hours) and the rest which includes the likes of ClixSense, PTCBox and BuxP have probably made only $0.25, with varying numbers of personal and referral clicks. It takes 30 minutes to get through this lot, partly because I have an increasing number of referrals to manage.

10.00am-4.00pm - It's time to do what I get paid for and go to work.  I'll complete this post later!  Still to do: forums, more music reviews, and surveys.

4.00pm-4.45pm - I decide to check out e-rewards, Valued Opinions and NPolls find a couple of surveys.  Surveys are one of the most profitable ways to make money on the internet and in 1 hour I have made £1.50 on Valued Opinions, $0.20 on NPolls  and the equivalent of $2 on e-rewards.  Usually if I can't find surveys on these sites there are others I will check out.

4.45pm-5.30pm - This is the last stint on me earning on the internet for the day and I spend it on Slice the Pie, earning a further $2.51, but also seeing that my referrals have been busy and added a further $0.38 to that sum.

In total today:

• Adverts = $1.10
• PTCs = $0.75
• Surveys = $4.20
• Music reviewing = $4.40

Grand total = $10.45 for 2.5 hours work, though there are other days when this can be higher this seems average, bringing in $70-75 per week (quite a nice 2nd income earned for the time most people send on Facebook).

AdSense

Well in creating this blog one of the first things I did was "monetise" the page.  Monetise the word Google uses for placing ads on the screen, in the hope that people click on the ads - and in fact they are simple urls which take you to a website, so google ads can often be great ways of navigating around the web on a set topic.

So, what do you get paid... well with Google AdSense this can vary quite widely from a few pence for a click to over a pound.  It is the company being linked through the ad who sets this price, but they can't be too stingy with their cash because AdSense users can block ad providers if they don't pay enough.

The trick with monetising is to make the ads fit your site, so that they don't become an inconvenience.  I have a number of sites and blogs, earning vastly different amounts.  For example, one site I have is called Instant Scores, which allows users to see live scores and league tables.  The larger AdSense ad is on the right-hand side, and the smaller ones placed to break up the text.

The type of blog or website you have is very important when looking to monetise a site.  Informative blogs and places of obtaining updated information often make the most money, so look to produce content that fits this remit.  Build your blog with advertising in mind, rather than an after thought and play with the layout to optimise the number of clicks you get.

AdSense used to have a referral programme but doesn't anymore - meaning you only earn for clicks on ads you get on your blog or website, but beware.  You can't encourage people to click your ads and you can't do it yourself.  If this happens you can lose all the money you've earned.

When you get to £10, you can have AdSense send you a cheque or transfer the money into your account.  AdSense can be used as the only advertiser on your site or as one of many.

I'm sure I'll come back to AdSense (and the alternatives) in the future, so I'll leave this for now and report how my AdSense earning mount up for this page.