I broke $10,000 in March 2012 vs $1,800 in 2011

Actually I broke $11,000. $4,362 adsense, $3,298 cj.com and $3,728 amazon. March was my one year anniversary of working for myself...and was a record month.

You can read one of my first posts from November 2010 where I was pumped about making $930.
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...i-ve-done.html

Then, In September 2011 I broke $100/day in adsense and predicted I'd break $10,000 in 2012...I just did... http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...y-adsense.html

I don't have an email list...although I'm trying to start one now.
I don't have my own products to sell.
I only sell physical products, no clickbank stuff (not that that is a bad thing).
Most of my adsense related sites are giving things away I've made for free.
I do mix in amazon and adsense on some of my sites.
I don’t backlink heavily...all my sites are 15 months old or newer and are all PR1 and below.
I probably have around 30 sites that make money each month.
I have two adsense accounts (one's my wife's) just in case something happens beyond my control to my sites.

//Amazon tips
Are you looking for those $100+ products to sell? I don't...you know how I determine if I'm going to make a site around a niche of products on amazon? My only criteria is if I can RANK for the keyword in google...I don't give a rats about how much the product costs. It's also good to see some of the products with some nice reviews. Once people get to amazon they buy other stuff...a lot of my money comes from other things people buy once I get them to amazon.
Bottom line....get people to Amazon.

Some products on cj.com pay a lot more (20%-35%) then you can get on Amazon and I cherry pick those and link to the vendor site in cj.com. However, when customers go to a vendor in cj.com they usually only buy that specific item vs at amzon they buy a lot of other things.

//Things I’m doing in 2012
I’ve built over 80 sites in the last year and not all have been winners. I’ve been shutting down sites (probably 40 or so) that are not performing or are low quality early mistakes.

I’m building larger broad niche sites or category sites that can go after lots of random keywords and longtail. I’ve noticed on my larger sites that a lot of the traffic comes from longtail keywords.

I’m really focusing on quality. I’m giving quality advice, news, free items and even how to guides or helpful comparison information. Quality content is long term and that’s what google wants and that’s what customers want.

I’m still going light on my backlinking, using blog networks, web 2.0, social bookmarking article marketing, directories, manual blog commenting...I also do some spammy fiverr gigs to web 2.0 properties/pages like link wheel, pyramids and forum blasts (not to my money sites).

I’m getting into drop shipping. I’ve partnered with some successful businessmen and we’re setting up partnerships and drop shipping websites with people that have products but not the time or knowhow to sell online. I’ll hopefully have some tips experience on drop shipping in the coming year.

I’m just a regular guy with three kids that made the dream of working for myself happen....after a lot of hard work...it’s not easy and it doesn’t happen overnight.

Thanks to all the warriors for all the great tips I’ve read over the last year.