Wizzley Earnings Goals and Results for 2012

This article is my Wizzley business plan for 2012. I share my earnings targets for the year and I'll add actual earnings figures as the year progresses, just as I did in my earnings page for last year. 

I'm doing this partly for my own reasons. Putting the numbers out there keeps me focused on my goals. 

And partly because I hope it will be useful to others who write online as a serious business and want to set their own goals and targets. 

Wizzley is not my main source of income but it looks set to become a serious secondary source in 2012. 

Update: My Wizzley content stopped performing in May 2012 so all bets are off until it hopefully recovers. I'm also working a lot less that I planned as I'm having fun with my kids. 

Oh dear. That's dreadful! Overall May was an excellent month for me online, but not on Wizzley. Why? Less traffic, pure and simple. It's not a seasonal issue. 

I've not created much new content on Wizzley in May because stuff elsewhere is working much better for me and it makes sense to put more effort in there. Plus I've taken lots of time out for kids activities and school holidays. 

There's still time for things to pick up so I'll keep monitoring and updating content. But my output is likely to be down considerably from my original plan. This means that the target amounts will need reducing in line with actual output, and in line with reduced performance. 

Well I was a complete slacker on Wizzley in April! First the children were off for over two weeks for the Easter holidays. Then my other half got our 3D printer working so I've been doing some 3D modeling. And then there was a bake sale for preschool to prepare for. My Silhouette Cameo craft cutter got lots of use preparing the signs!

I'm way behind on my output so I'll have to revise my goals downwards at some point (they were based on a particular level of production which I haven't met.) I just haven't put in the work needed. But that's okay, I've been doing lots of fun stuff instead. 

So this months total was down a bit on last months. Overall my online earnings are up this month. Actually my Amazon earnings are up this month for Wizzley, it's other stuff that is down. I seem to be useless at diversifying! 

Looks like I might miss my May target. But as I said, I haven't put the work in. 

Hmm. Well March was a strange month. My traffic went down quite a bit and I expected my earnings to drop too. But they didn't. Maybe I kept the buying traffic! Actually Feb was helped by a single large one-off action, so maybe the trend is even upwards if I take that into account. Or maybe I got lucky this month too? We'll see. 

A couple of my best earning pages dropped in google rankings after I updated them. A familiar pattern, hopefully they'll be back at some point. Other stuff made up for the loss from those pages. 

There's a bit of Viglink in there this month. As usual Amazon is the largest by far. I really need to diversify! 

I started to question being open about my earnings when a Wizzley author went through my pages in a particular niche and created similar articles on Zujava - not cut and paste, just using my topics and ideas. (It's an odd bunch of topics so the copying is obvious, they popped over to my Squidoo account for inspiration too.) It is annoying, especially when those topics actually mean something to me and have been researched.  

The thing is, I don't think I'm doing particularly well. And I think I do as well as I do with my topics because they are my topics and I know about them, or put the time in to find out about them. 

February turned out okay. I didn't really do much for Valentine's day so that wasn't a significant factor. Much of the content I created in February was forward looking so hopefully the pay off will come later. 

I'm not entirely satisfied with how I'm doing, I haven't really found my groove at Wizzley yet, hopefully something will click at some point. 

My earnings include a (very!) small amount from Viglink. That's something I'm definitely going to work on. I'm far too dependent on Amazon. But I haven't done a huge amount with other affiliate programs on Wizzley because I want to make sure I'm sharing with Wizzley much of the time. I appreciate what we have here. Viglink means I can promote a whole range of vendors and share with Wizzley. Perfect. 

I'm not at all sure what to expect for March. 

January went much better than I expected. I hadn't really put any thought into January ahead of time. I took most of December off work to enjoy Christmas with my kids. 

I earned $469.44 via Wizzley in January. Amazon was the largest chunk of that. Then other affiliate programs and then adsense. I've included a few Zazzle sales of products I only feature on Wizzley, but I haven't got tracking set up there. 

I'm pleased with the performance of other affiliates as I'm too dependent on Amazon at the moment. Though I'll still keep using Amazon because it works and because it contributes to the Wizzley site. 

February is a shorter month so I'm not sure it will be as good. I'm hopeful that I'll hit my $300 target for February after such a good January. 

Well if you look at my Wizzley earnings for 2011 you'll see that in December 2011 I earned $1157.50.  So I'm looking at multiplying that by 5 which seems pretty reasonable. Much of my existing content should make money for me again this year if I make any necessary updates.

Of course things can go wrong. Wizzley could fall out of favor with google or have a change of business model that doesn't work for me. That's a risk. The possibility of risk doesn't stop me setting targets though. I'm not putting all my effort into Wizzley and I know that I own the content and could move it elsewhere if I needed to.

If circumstances change then I'll adapt my business plan. Until then I'll keep working towards my goals.

I started writing online in July 2010 so I'm not hugely experienced. However I have put in the time and effort to learn the trade. And I love what I do so it doesn't feel like work. 

Here's my basic plan:

• Write useful stuff
• Write about things people are interested in
• Write lots

That's pretty much it really. I don't do much in the way of keyword research. I don't do social media. I don't do lots of backlinking. 

I do a bit of interlinking with relevant content I have elsewhere, when it's useful. 

I think the main problem people have with earning online is not putting the work in. Or spending time on busy work.