A reader asked me how am I earning a good side income?

Back in early 2009, I listed out my “Goals” for the year 2009. And sitting at number 6 is “Side income of RM10,000/mth by Oct 2009.”

My side income comes from Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on expired domains and also selling of text links. After the Chinese New Year …. starting in February 2009, I could see a drop in my PPC income. Advertisers were cutting budgets. Advertisers were also reluctant to renew their buying of text links on most of my websites. As a result, my side income took a plunge. Currently, my side income average about RM1,000 a month.

Looking back, there were a few months between July 2008 to September 2008 whereby I was earning more than RM3,000 from my side income. And at that time I was so tempted to quit my job and go full time building on my side income. Luckily for me I was patient enough to adopt a wait and see approach. And now I am glad I did not quit my job back then.

I have now turned to offering Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to add another income stream for myself. Currently I am optimizing the keyword “Top MBA Malaysia” for a local education institute. This niche industry is competitive as well. However, I do see an opportunity for me to build a business out of SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

My goals are clear and I just have to find ways to overcome these obstacles to reach my goals.

Just when I’m progressing smoothly towards my goals, suddenly a setback has occurred.

This is a very bad week for me. Google has decided to drop my parked domains and this has resulted in me losing at least 70% of my side income.

I have been working on buying expired domains for the past 15 months in a bid to earn domain parking income from expired domains. My income has increased steadily and has grown until it contributes to 40% of my total income, including my employment income.

Google has removed some of my parked domains from its search ranking. As a result, visitor traffic plummeted. No traffic = no clicks = no income.

I have my goals to achieve. I will have to rework my plan to achieve those numbers.

Looks like I will have to start developing my domains. The bright side of this is that once I developed the domain, then the traffic and income will more or less be permanent.