RORY HANSEN

Many of the big names in internet marketing are proponents of setting goals for their affiliate and internet marketing campaigns. And, while I’m also a firm believer in goal-setting, I’ve never actually sat down and thought about my affiliate marketing goals– at least, not in any way which would result in a firm, realistic goal.

But, that’s all changing today. I’ve decided that, after many months of saying I’m going to actually start trying to make money online, that I’m finally going to put forth a somewhat serious effort to do so. And the first step in reaching my goal is to state it in black-and-white, here on this blog, so that I can be held accountable for reaching it.

My goal: By June 30, 2009, my monthly net earnings from all affiliate and search marketing efforts are to exceed the amount of my monthly mortgage payments. (For the sake of security and privacy, my target goal will be simplified to $1500/mo.)

So where am I today with respect to that goal? It’s been a while since I’ve actually tallied up the numbers from the myriad of affiliate and internet marketing programs that I participate in. But here’s a decent estimate:

Current status:

• Time effort per month: ~3 man hours
• Earnings per month: $250 US
• Costs per month: < $10 (web hosting)

So, as you can see, although I only spend about 3 hours per month working on the niche sites I run, I still earn about $250 US per month through a variety of programs. To reach my goal of $1500/month, I’ll obviously have to spend more time developing my sites, but hopefully, I’ll also be spending this time smarter than I have been to this point.

Anyway, I’ve got a number of ideas bouncing around my head that I’ll need to start executing on, so I’ll end this post here. I’ll be posting monthly summaries of my earnings results, so that my visitors can track my progress. I challenge you to set your own affiliate marketing goals, too, on your own blog, and through friendly competition, naybe we’ll meet our goals together.

So, back in June, Firefox 3.0 came out, and I wanted to see if I could spin that into making some extra income via Google’s Firefox referral program, just as I had done with Firefox 2.0.

At around the same time, Yahoo! had come out with a new promotion which awarded a $100 credit for users which returned to Yahoo! Search Marketing. I figured that I should at the very minimum break even, and that an average campaign would net ~$100 US (the amount of the credit).

The Result: $184.60 in referrals. All profit.

The $100 credit from Yahoo! lasted about 6 days, so it was a really short-lived experiment. And while it is nothing close to the $2000+ I made during the Firefox 2.0 release, it’s still easy money. Easy free money. And there’s nothing better than that.

Unfortunately, a few months later, Google shut down their Referrals program, and so lost one source of passive income each month. But, I’m constantly experimenting with new affiliate programs and other sources of income, and, since then, have already overcome that loss.