Paula Neal Mooney, writer and online money-maker, makes over $50K per year and is author of the new book, 50 Over $50k: Real Online Money-Makers Reveal How They Make Money on the Web
When I first posted my very first blog post ever back in December 2005 – an essay called “Motherless” – I had no idea that people made money online through writing and blogging.
I was just getting out of the send-a-snail-mail-query-to-editors mode, and began seeking out a way to display my writing online so I could easily pitch magazine editors with a link in an email, instead of dropping hard-copies of my written stuff with the costly SASE for bong letters into blue mailboxes en masse.
By 2006, I’d finally figured out that people were getting paid online from programs like Google Adsense and Amazon Associates, and I jumped in, trying my “creative hands” at making money online, too.
In May and June of 2007, I created a blog post titled “Paula’s List of Blogger Salaries” that went viral – one that pegged my income around $12k for that year.
(Note to the IRS and others: The income noted here is all closely approximated gross income received, and does not reflect the business expenses deducted. My federal and state income taxes are always paid and up-to-date, thank You, Jesus!)
Back in 2007, I wrote a 'Paula's List of Blogger Salaries' post that went viral
In 2008, my income had swelled to around $40k, and in 2009 it rang in just under $44k.
Bless God the online writing money just continues to grow – and by 2010, I’d finally cracked the $50k threshold, bringing in $50,462.77 for the year.
What follows is a breakdown of how I made the money from each revenue stream, in order of highest payout to the least:
$31,184.82 from Examiner.com in 2010
$9,270.01 from Google Adsense in 2010
$6,446.39 from Amazon Associates in 2010
$1,556.51 from Yahoo! Contributor Network in 2010
$1,107.35 from Kontera in 2010
$438.94 from Commission Junction in 2010
$222.22 from eBay Partner Network in 2010
$129.06 from Text Link Ads, Inc. in 2010
$58.72 from Linkshare in 2010
$28.75 from Perfiliate Techn in 2010
$20.00 from AOL, LLC (AOL’s new Seed) in 2010
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Paula, this info is great and very informative, please take a look at my site http://www.allinthekoolaid.com and give me some suggestions as to what ads I should be placing on my site, thank you.
Hi Valeri -
I’ve found that ads right beneath the blog post title can receive some pretty good clicks and pay well — experiment with text/image ads or both, and since you’re on Blogger, here are instructions for doing that:
http://paulamooney.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-put-google-adsense-ads-in-your.html
Congrats! You deserve the money too–and hopefully much more next year
Thanks, PJ – Yeah, I’m working on hopefully much more in 2012 and beyond.