Last month I posted this — “I decided to see how much money I could make by devoting the entire month of August to building affiliate sites. The goal is to work 7 days a week, devoting no less than 10 hours a day to this. Not much to report other than my shoulder and back are killing me right now.”

The results: I didn’t meet my 31 day goal for August, but I broke it and flew past a few days later. I am not going to publish numbers; I will say its definately enough to live on.

I did a few things with Azoogle earlier this year so this was not exactly my first run at affiliate marketing. Additionally, I have run PPC campaigns on Adwords since mid 2004 (with mediocre results.) So to be fair, if you have zero experience in this industry there is a path to be traveled.

Despite focusing on affiliate marketing right now, my long term goals still involve building profitable internet properties.

There are good reasons to expand your knowledge base of making money online. I think I have pointed this out before, but this industry is very segregated. On occasion you have a few people who crossover, dig deep, and reap the profits. At a quick glance, how many “adsense emperors” (you heard it here first, 0 results in Google) are making money from affiliate programs? Or how about domainers, making 10 or 20 cents a click when the traffic buying is bringing in $10 affiliate commisions?

It pays to focus on something specific and get really good at it. The thing that really sticks out to me is how many people in these segments sub-industries of online marketing think the other parties have some racket going on. After all, how many years have we heard about “domain squatters”?

Bottom line — keep learning. Get out of your comfort zone. Find out why and where your revenue is coming from. If you are making money from Adsense, learn about your top advertisers. If you are already successful at web publishing chances are high you can make a lot more money with a little extra work.