Hi there - I actually welcome your skepticism on this one - there's a lot of people claiming a lot of things online these days.
The reason I actually revealed the amount I've made with Amazon in this post was simply that I constantly get people telling me that Amazon is impossible to make good money with because it's just lots of tiny tiny commissions (ie 5% of a book sale isn't much).
In terms of what makes me my money - if you read the article you see that I'm linking to my photography blog. That is my main blog (in terms of both traffic and earnings). I do make some from ProBlogger but it's small in comparison with the photography one.
Yep I sell an ebook from my site - it's done ok but it's not my main income source by any means.
In terms of inflating the amount - not quite sure how to 'prove it' - I don't like to post screenshots of earnings pages because people tend to say they are photoshopped - but if you know anyone in Melbourne Australia and want to set up a meeting I'm more than happy to show them my reports live and have them verify them for you.
I'd also say that if I was going to inflate the numbers I'd probably go a little further than I did - $119k in 6 years isn't really the most amazing claim of making money online that I've heard :-) It's more than pocket change but it's small time in comparison to many.
Again - happy for people to be skeptical - I actively encourage people to be in this game, there's a lot of big claims, hype and empty promises going around. I myself pride myself on not promising big easy money - in fact I've written many times on how hard it is to make this kind of money, I've worked my butt off for 7 years building my blogs up - it certainly doesn't happen over night.
Happy to chat with anyone who wants to raise concerns over my approach and shed as much light as I can on the topic.
Not that it's any of my business, but I've found that putting too much effort into rebutting naysayers tends to just make me come across as combative and hurts my credibility. I address them at times, but I try to keep it to a minimum.
Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts (or links to anything already on your site that might be relevant) on trying to monetize a site that's primarily a grass roots movement and which is targeted at an audience somewhat predisposed to say "If you are trying to make money off me, you are a snake oil salesman and can't be trusted!" I've made it clear to people that I have no plans to cut my own throat for their benefit and this (and other stuff) has helped some with public relations. I know I still have major issues in terms of not yet having a steady pace of updates. But even if I did, I know of sites with tons of traffic that aren't well monetized. I want to avoid that fate. I know a few webmasters who are rather bitter about the time and effort they have put into a "labor of love" and the lack of money and lack of (official) recognition it has gotten them.
Anyway, sorry if this is kind of rambling. Thanks in advance if you bother to reply at all. :-)
I'll put my hand up as a Melbournite if someone is desperate to check up on Darren. Let me know if anyone is actually interested in some HN confirmation.
(for my behalf - I think Darren looks pretty legit - he makes money on stuff like photography & the olympics - and gets famous writing about blogging)
not a lot. I tend to develop blogs for US based audiences where there is more traffic and more monetization options. The only downside is that occassionally people think I've only got Aussie traffic and are not willing to advertise with us until we can prove the US traffic thing. Other than that there's not been a lot of problems
The reason I actually revealed the amount I've made with Amazon in this post was simply that I constantly get people telling me that Amazon is impossible to make good money with because it's just lots of tiny tiny commissions (ie 5% of a book sale isn't much).
In terms of what makes me my money - if you read the article you see that I'm linking to my photography blog. That is my main blog (in terms of both traffic and earnings). I do make some from ProBlogger but it's small in comparison with the photography one.
Yep I sell an ebook from my site - it's done ok but it's not my main income source by any means.
In terms of inflating the amount - not quite sure how to 'prove it' - I don't like to post screenshots of earnings pages because people tend to say they are photoshopped - but if you know anyone in Melbourne Australia and want to set up a meeting I'm more than happy to show them my reports live and have them verify them for you.
I'd also say that if I was going to inflate the numbers I'd probably go a little further than I did - $119k in 6 years isn't really the most amazing claim of making money online that I've heard :-) It's more than pocket change but it's small time in comparison to many.
Again - happy for people to be skeptical - I actively encourage people to be in this game, there's a lot of big claims, hype and empty promises going around. I myself pride myself on not promising big easy money - in fact I've written many times on how hard it is to make this kind of money, I've worked my butt off for 7 years building my blogs up - it certainly doesn't happen over night.
Happy to chat with anyone who wants to raise concerns over my approach and shed as much light as I can on the topic.