How much is enough?

November 16, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 11 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Musings 

I hope the subject of this post didn’t mislead you. If it did, I apologize right now.

I just didn’t have room to ask the real question I’m pondering this morning…

How much do you have to earn from something in order for it to be worth the effort?

That’s closer to what I’m thinking about.

My goal for my online marketing has always been to clear $100 per day for my efforts.

Since I don’t use pay per click advertising, and I no longer have upgraded memberships in the traffic exchanges (or even use them anymore), and I don’t use paid classifieds any longer, my only overhead is hosting, domain names, and a few services that are ancillary to what I’m doing.

So, it would seem that being able to clear $100 per day would not be too difficult. All I’d have to earn is about $110 per day and the goal would be met.

Still, it just isn’t working out that way.

I used to think the plan to follow would be to have 100 sites each earning a dollar a day. It sounds simple, but it never worked. Some of those sites were lucky to earn a dollar a month.

As much as I like the concept of having many little revenue streams that add up to one large revenue river, the reality has never lived up to the idea.

A couple of years ago, I thought I was well on the way, but things took a detour, as you already know, and I’m trending downward.

There are some reasons for that, I know.

1. I was earning profits by recommending the traffic exchanges and a couple of MLM programs. However, over time, I realized that this was just a treadmill and I was getting nowhere fast.

2. I was making a profit by recommending books and other products through Amazon.com, but they dropped me when the NC legislature passed the tax law this summer.

3. I was making a profit by recommending some ebooks that I used to think were valuable, but no longer think so, so I stopped recommending them.

4. I was earning money from Squidoo from publishing lenses, but that has been declining and I just earned the lowest amount I’ve ever earned from them for a month – just over $2.00.

5. I was earning nice checks from Cafepress.com for the designs I’ve uploaded, but that has declined since they started setting the prices they’d charge in the marketplace. Now, most of my sales are through the marketplace and, instead of earning $7 or $8 per sale, I’m earning closer to $2.50. I’m making more sales, but earning less money.

6. One thing that is really holding up for me, even though it’s still down from what I saw the last couple of years, is earnings from recommending Site Build It. The residuals for annual renewals are doing very well, but the new sales have declined quite a bit. Lately, I’ve been doing more work on planning what I’m going to do on my SBI-powered sites than I have been in promoting the service. But, I believe that it is a long-term strategy that will lead to increased profits in the long-run.

7. Google Adsense income has continued to do pretty well, even though it, too, is down from what I used to earn. Part of the reason is that I’ve removed it from some of my popular sites. I’m starting to reconsider that move and I may be adding Adsense ads back to some of my sites where I previously removed them.

So, those are some of the things I’ve been thinking about.

Then, over my first cup of coffee, I asked myself, “How much do I have to earn from something in order for it to be worth the effort?”

Now, I’m asking you that question, too.

If you promote something and it earns only a few dollars per month, or per year, is it better to just let it ride, because something is better than nothing?

If you think that is true, would you do the same thing in real life?

In other words, would you take a job that just pays $10 per month, rather than one that pays that much – or more – per hour?

If you would not, why would you settle for earning that much from a program online?

Let’s say that you’re earning $100 per month from a program, but you work 20 hours or more, per month, to keep it going. Is that worth it?

What if it only took a couple of hours to earn that $100? Would that be worth it?

Now, this is where you’d probably expect me to recommend something and pitch you on why you should buy it to help you earn more.

I’m not going to do that.

I’m seriously interested in your opinions and hope you’ll comment with your expectations, observations, and evaluations of what you’re doing and how well it’s going.

If I were still depending upon earning a living from affiliate marketing this year, I’d be nothing but skin and bones and living in a culvert or under a bridge somewhere.

I’m still earning a living from my online marketing efforts, but it’s mostly from helping local business owners in Murphy, NC promote their brick and mortar businesses online. I’m not earning what I want to earn, but at least it seems to be growing a little.

So, what’s your opinion?

How much do you have to earn from something for it to be worth your effort?

Act on your dream!

JD

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