So I got a Google Adsense cheque in the mail today for the amount of $209.12. As usual, it is in US funds and since the Canadian dollar is lower that means I should technically get more. The thing is, over the past few months the dollar has been going up and down so quickly where cashing these cheques at the right day could mean gaining or losing a few extra dollars.

It might not seem like much, but it does add up and is one of those things that it is good to develop a habit for I’d say. But as usual, for the sake of number tracking I am just going to tally up the total based on the figure on the written cheque. It looks like I finally broke the $1000 mark with the web publishing category. Not extraordinary I’d say, but again it shows that if you just do it things can add up.

Now whether or not I really want to think of ways to make it like a full time type of operation is up for debate. Though again my intent was to try and find as many different things to do as possible.

Stock Investment: $800
Web Publishing: $1095.67
Million Dollar Term: $100
Affiliate Sales: $91.01
Free Money and Credits: $100
Loose Change Savings: $209.23
Selling Items: $55.64

Total: $2451.55

What an interesting article that I just read from the associated press located at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j6DZ0gpsCSwquntzof4FR4yfqYXwD98V7B880 which outlines how the FTC is paying close attention to those in the social media real who accept money or gifts in exchange for articles and reviews for various companies.

I guess it’s the age old scenario of say a regular news media personality who praises and promotes a product mainly because they were offered thousands of dollars as an incentive to do so. As of now, in places like the blogosphere these types of things are usually voluntarily disclosed as opposed to forced in anyway.

This is a really tricky one I’d say as while I don’t think this will affect those pay per post or paid reviews type of services, since most of them ask that you disclose that the posts are being sponsored, this sounds very broad where even something as simple as an affiliate program can be affected.

An example would be like this. Imagine that I bought something from an online retailer where I thought the service was exceptional which I blogged about all the time. In the future, they offered an affiliate program where I could get a small commission for referring people which I figured “why not?” Currently, all one would do is mostly post banners and links to the company. So would that mean now you have to disclose that you get paid for referrals every time you write say a blog entry on how you just got your item shipped from them?

What this definitely does help with which will benefit everyone are those sites and blogs that claim they make say $100,000 a month with a particular program in an effort to get more leads and sales for a product or service. That would make it a little easier to determine if what they are writing are possibly just fluff to get your money.

I have been offered paid reviews many times for hundreds of dollars as an example and I can tell you that most sponsors definitely want to conceal the fact that they are paying you money to do so. For every offer I usually say that they have to be willing to disclose a bit about their business as well. Sure enough, that has scared away virtually all of the offers from my experience which I think is good as I always want to make sure that I am giving a well thought out and researched analysis.

Will this make it a little more intimidating for people that want to start some kind of side gig in making money online in their spare times with things like a blog? Probably I’d say. But in general, if you are truly doing it based on a passion which in turn brings in revenue then I don’t think it I going to be too big of a deal in the end.

For a lot of these online affiliate programs, companies usually give you an option to select what currency you would like them to pay you by when your funds accumulate to a certain balance. Almost similar to a Forex Trader, I sometimes hold off cashing in payments that were given to me in say a US currency if I think the Canadian dollar is dropping to earn more.

A quick example would be yesterday where the dollar was at about 82 cents US and today it is at about 79. Essentially, an extra 3 cents per dollar I would have lost if I cashed it in yesterday. Of course it is not much for a small volume, but it can mean a lot for higher payments. Therefore, many times I tell the companies to give me the payment in the presently stronger currency and has the best potential to earn more.

Is it worth it overall? I’d say yes not so much because of the money, but rather it kind of helps to teach yourself to earn more by just doing little changes and at the same time makes you realize that sometimes you have to do more active with your money then just leaving it in the bank to really get the most out of it.

This was definitely a surprise today. When I checked my mail, I noticed that I got a Widget Bucks cheque. I guess this is very similar to last time where I definitely was not expecting one as I took it off the site for load time reasons. As seen here, the cheque was for the amount of $56.61:

It’s always great to get payment for work that you did in the past which still translates to income in the future as well. That’s one of the keys to developing financial stability while at the same time trying to not glue yourself to your work life all the time I’d say. Another interesting thing about this payment is the currency rate. Since the Canadian dollar is down, this actually translates to an extra $10 or so.

But for simplicity sake, I will just mark it down as earning $56.61. I guess I will throw in that loose change that I accumulated too since I have no idea what to use it for which will be another $209.23 into the pool. I was trying to think of something to say buy and sell, but I couldn’t find anything that I was passionate about that would be new to me thought it would be interesting to document. But, here is the update so far:

Stock Investment: $800
Web Publishing: $501.18
Million Dollar Term: $100
Affiliate Sales: $91.01
Free Money and Credits: $100
Loose Change Savings: $209.23

Total: $1801.42

So this was the other program I was testing out as I mentioned that I was going to start dabbling with more sales based affiliate programs. This one was actually different in some way compared to others for me as the company is pretty new yet at the same time I was familiar with its business model and offerings.

Way back when I was exposed to the direct sales industry I was interested in doing more research about it and bumped into this company called Cognigen. What caught my attention was that when you think direct sales you usually think of people who go to friends and family members to try and sell products or services face to face.

While that company was classified as one too with the primary service offering being long distance, to me it looked more like a web based affiliate program similar to others such as Commission Junction (I dislike that company personally but that is another post all together). They also offered people who signed up these self replicating websites which was essentially your own web site store and was pretty unique at the time (How time flies ).

As a person who was into web publishing and online marketing, I signed up to see what it was like since it was free. The funny thing was that I wasn’t really taking it seriously at all and yet I was generating sales from sources such as people looking for services that the website offered.

I did actually make some small change money out of it as well, but despite that I still didn’t take it too seriously as the support system and direction of the company didn’t excite me enough I suppose compared to the other things that were happening in my life.

Fast forward to today and as it turns out the company has had a complete makeover with various acquisitions and is now operating under the name Commission River. By the looks of it, it seems like the company is definitely trying to market itself more as an affiliate program now. There sure are a lot of programs to market too such as phone and Internet services from established providers that I’m sure a lot of people already use too.

That was actually one of the reasons I thought it would be an interesting program too as at worst if you are already using one of the services offered on the site, then you can essentially get paid every month for services that you were going to use anyways when you think about it. You could also market it offline too if that’s your type of thing.

The main reason why I am blogging about this company first, as I am testing a few right now, is that this is the first entirely sales based affiliate program out of the group that I actually received a payment from. This was the envelope that arrived in my mail:

And here is the check that was in it for the amount of $91.01:

I looked at my stats as well and it seemed like the commission was generated fairly quickly as a result of a cell phone order that was sold. When I think about it, I actually made more than the widget bucks program already if you minus the $25 bonus that I received. I actually wanted to try out more things with this program, but like in the past the support system doesn’t seem very responsive to certain questions from my experience. So, we’ll see how it turns out. You can visit the Commission River Site and sign up if you want to try it out yourself.

I am going to create a new income label for these called “affiliate sales” to provide a comparison on what ends up being better as things progress. Updated results are as follows:

Stock Investment: $800
Web Publishing: $444.57
Million Dollar Term: $100
Affiliate Sales: $91.01

Total: $1435.58